Quotes about back
page 59

“Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.”

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

On a panel at Odyssey Con 2008 (April 2008)

Death

“Once you've taken a public stand you know is right, never back down; anything less than a rock-hard stance will let your enemies nibble you to death.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some New Tactical Reflections".

Death

“In 1850 Mr. Calhoun said, 'Let us be done with compromises. Let us go back and stand upon the Constitution'. Four years afterwards, the most Christian and most democratic statesman we have had in our history since Washington, Mr. Seward, accepted the challenge thrown out by Mr. Calhoun, solemnly saying, 'The sands of compromise are sliding from beneath my feet, and they are taking hold once more of the rock of the Constitution'.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

History

“In the January, 1933 issue of "SCIENCE FICTION" appeared a story I had written in 1932 entitled, "The Reign of the Superman." I used the pseudonym "Herbert S. Fine" which combined the name of a cousin of mine together with my mother's maiden name.
After the publication of "Reign of the Superman", it occurred to me that a different version of Superman could be the basis of an extremely powerful and successful comic book. And so I originated, together with Joe Shuster, the comic book "THE SUPERMAN", back in 1933.”

Jerry Siegel Superman

"Happy Anniversary, Superman!" http://theages.superman.ws/siegel.php (1983)

Books, Appearance, Science, Success

“The whole system of the Foreign Enlistment Act is, I may add, only 200 years old. The ancients did not know the meaning of the word "neutrality" as we know it at the present day. In the Middle Ages people were hardly aware of such a thing as neutrality; the first Foreign Enlistment Act is hardly 200 years old, and since that time that system of legislation has grown up. It has been a code of legislation that has gradually grown up, and is now looked to by the nations to assist in keeping the peace and preventing the catastrophe of a general war. Shall we be the first to roll back the tide of civilization, and thus practically go back to barbarism and the Middle Ages, by virtually repealing this international code by which we preserve the rights and interests of neutrality? I cannot but think that this House and the country, when they reflect on the facts of the case, will consider that if they in any way lend their sanction to such a retrograde policy, they would be unworthy of themselves, and would be guilty of a great crime against humanity.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1863/apr/24/observations in the House of Commons (24 April 1863). 1860s

War, People, Age, Peace

“It’s not until they tell you you’re going to die soon that you realize how short life is. Time is the most valuable thing in life because it never comes back. And whether you spend it in the arms of a loved one or alone in a prison-cell, life is what you make of it. Dream big.”

Stefán Karl Stefánsson (1975–2018) Icelandic actor

Twitter post (10 March 2018), as quoted in "LazyTown’s Stefan Karl Stefansson confirms ‘inoperable’ cancer has returned" https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/16/lazytowns-stefan-karl-stefansson-confirms-inoperable-cancer-returned-7392066/ (16 March 2018), by Emma Kelly, Metro

Love, Life, Dreams, Time

“"Duty, Honor, Country" — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn… In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Sylvanus Thayer Award acceptance speech to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York (12 May 1962)

Faith, Dreams, Hope, Courage

“Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.”

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

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

Smile

““Look at me closely, amigo,” said my dad. “Here is a hundred-dollar bill just to start with. Thirty dollars of this is for you to put in your own pocket right now. Capiche?” The bartender’s whole attitude changed. Suddenly he wasn’t tired anymore. “Yes, mi general, entiendo!” he said. “Good, and give another twenty to the chef in back and ten to the dishwasher. That leaves forty for my son and me to drink and eat a little something.” “But of course!” said the barkeeper. “The whole place is open for you! Which tequila would you like?” he added anxiously. “Herradura, and a couple of Modelo cervezas.” “I like Dos Equis,” I said. “The dark one.” “Okay,” said my dad, “one Modelo and one dark Dos Equis.” The bartender was flying, moving, truly enjoying the whole show. My dad winked at me. “Like I always say, to tip after the meal is stupid. Tip first and big, and the whole world changes.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Stupidity, World, Drink, Change

“[C]hess is not a game for dictators for numerous reasons. One, it's transparent. It’s all information hundred percent available so you know exactly what you have, you know exactly what your opponent has. You don’t know what he or she is thinking, but you definitely know what kind of resources your opponent can use to hurt you, to damage your position. Also, chess is very much a strategic game so you have to think long-term. Dictators don’t think long-term. Dictators, especially who are in power for so long as Putin is, they have to work on the survival mode. Because it’s all about today, maybe tomorrow morning. Everything that helps us survive is good. Because the moment the dictator thinks long-term, he’ll definitely miss guys from his own entourage hitting him in his own back. The game that defines dictators much better is poker because it’s about bluffs. It doesn’t matter whether you have a strong hand or weak hand. You can have a weak hand, but if you’re comfortable bluffing, raising stakes, and if you can read your opponent.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Guy, Game, Thinking, Strong

“The two men walked on and stopped eight feet in front of him and faced him head-on. Reacher flexed his fingers by his side, to test how cold they were. Eight feet was an interesting choice of distance. It meant they were going to talk before they tangled. He flexed his toes and ran some muscle tension up through his calves, his thighs, his back, his shoulders. Moved his head side to side and then back a little, to loosen his neck. He breathed in through his nose. The wind was on his back. The guy on the left took his hands out of his pockets. No gloves. And either he had bad arthritis or he was holding rolls of quarters in both palms.”

Lee Child book Without Fail

Without Fail, Ch. 1 (2002).

Men, Guy

“Take movement for example. Forces acting up, down, or from side to side. You make theories to explain it all, but you might well remember that it was you that invented them all. For Mach there was no reason to believe the rest of the cosmos was doing what your little bit was doing, so science should only describe not try to explain. Even description is relative. Am I moving or is the back ground? Or take the position of a star. It depends on the position you see it from, which depends on the date and time, which in turn depends on the position of the earth, in a solar orbit, in a solar system, moving around the edge of a Galaxy which may be moving away from other Galaxies. Say that you've decided that I'm moving and the background is standing still. Is the background moving relative to something else?”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

Star, Science, Time, Dependency

“This has been going if it's not going to happen anymore, folks. We're going to bring businesses back. We're going to have businesses that used to be in New Hampshire, that are now in Mexico, come back to New Hampshire and you can tell them to go f--- themselves…because they let you down, and they left. We want the businesses that stay. I know a lot of businesses up here and I knew a lot of businesses up here. These are great people, they could've left and they wanna stay. They willing to stay, they're fighting to stay. It's hard. With a highest tax nation in the entire world. It's hard for them to stay and they stay. Those are the people we have to cherish and love. These are the people that are great.”

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

At a rally in New Hampshire. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/18/priorities-usa-action/priorities-usa-donald-trump-women-ad/ (4 February 2016) 2010s, 2016, February

Love, People, World, Business

““It's been such a short visit, I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about the animal business.”
She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. “A better explanation,” she says, “is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.”
“What is it you can't say?”
“It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka— 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself?””

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 69

Money, People, Dreams, Business

“Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 7).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Age, Imagination, Strong, Country

“When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced the desired effect.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

An Outcast of the Islands http://www.gutenberg.org/files/638/638-h/638-h.htm (1896), first lines,

“Finally, in the dim region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap, human beings have evolved the “metaphor that is meant,” the flag which men will die to save, and the sacrament that is felt to be more than “an outward and visible sign, given unto us.” Here we can recognize an attempt to deny the difference between map and territory, and to get back to the absolute innocence of communication by means of pure mood-signs.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

From Part 4, section 2: A Theory of Play and Fantasy
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

Men, Religion, Art, Communication

“Seat way back listening to Anita Baker, Riding by myself smoking weed by the acre.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Upgrade
Official Mix tapes, Da Drought 3 (2007)

Way

“When laughing children chase after fireflies, they are not pursuing beetles but catching wonder.When wonder matures, it peels back experience to seek deeper layers of marvel below. This is science's highest purpose.”

David G. Haskell (1950) writer, Biologist

"July 13th — Fireflies," page 139 The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature http://theforestunseen.com/ (2012)

Children, Science

“Surely by now I should know
I can control
My highs and my lows
By questioning all that I do,
Examining every move,
Trying to get back to the rudiments.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Question

“Malema: So these popcorn and mushrooming political parties in Zimbabwe, they will never find friendship in us. They can insult us here from air-conditioned offices of Sandton, we are unshaken. They must stop shouting at us, they must go and fight with their battle in Zimbabwe and win. Even if they've got ground and they are formed on the basis of solid ground in Zim, why are they speaking in Sandton and not Mashonaland or Matabeleland? … Let them go back and go and fight there. Even when the ANC was underground in exile, we had our internal underground forces fighting for freedom.
Fisher: You live in Sandton.
Malema: And we have never spoken from … exile. Let me tell you before you are tjatjarag [i. e. chatty]. This is a building of a revolutionary party, and you know nothing about the revolution.
Fisher: So, so they are not welcome in Sandton but you are?
Malema: So here you behave or else you jump. [Fisher and others laugh. ] Don't laugh.
Fisher: You're joking.
Malema: Chief, can you get security to remove this thing here. If you are not going to behave … call security to take you out. This is not a news room this. This is a revolutionary house. And you don't come here with that tendency. Don't come here with that white tendency, not here. … If you've got a tendency of undermining blacks even while you work, you are in a wrong place …
Fisher: That's rubbish.
Malema: … and you can go out!
Fisher: Absolutely rubbish.
Malema: Rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser. … You are a small boy, you can't do anything. … Bastard! Go out! You bloody agent! … So we think that we need to ensure that we encourage Zanu PF comrades to engage in peaceful means.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

Outburst against reporter Jonah Fisher at Luthuli House on 8 April 2010, while president of the ANC youth league and after his return from Zimbabwe, ANC's Julius Malema lashes out at 'misbehaving' BBC journalist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/08/anc-julius-malema-bbc-journalist (8 April 2010)

Friendship, Peace, Boy, Thinking

“Snow had fallen and from the museum [in Pittsburgh, The ] you had a beautiful view of a valley with a railway, through some sheds, etc. But I could not finish it, and today, Sunday, I went back there again, but then the snow was already so far away that I could not make anything of it any more. It is a pity. Otherwise I could have sold something. [The painting was sold to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1934] (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Er was namelijk sneeuw gevallen en uit het museum [in Pittsburgh, Breitner nam deel aan een jury en maakte vanuit een raam aan de achterzijde van het Carnegie Institute enkele schetsen en begon aan een schilderij] had men een prachtig gezicht op een dal met een spoorweg, door wat loodsen, enz. Maar ik kon 't niet afkrijgen, en vandaag, zondag, was ik er weer heengegaan, maar toen was de sneeuw al zoo ver dat ik [er] niets meer van kon maken. Het is wel jammer. Anders had ik nog wat kunnen verkoopen misschien. [Het schilderij is in 1934 verkocht aan het Stedelijk museum Amsterdam.]
In Breitner' letter to his wife, 1909, from Pittsburgh; as cited in George Hendrik Breitner in Amsterdam, J. F. Heijbroek, Erik Schmitz; uitgeverij THOTH, Bussum, 2014, p. 22
Breitner took part in an art-jury in Pittsburgh in 1909. He started to make some sketches from a window at the back-side of the Carnegie Institute and later the painting]
1900 - 1923

Beauty, Painting

“When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

First lines of Prologue
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“I disagree with Les. We always found good cunt at the Lyceum. Friendly cunt, clean cunt, spare cunt, jeans and knicker stuffed full of nice juicy hairy cunt, handfuls of cunt, palmful grabbing the cunt by the stem, or the root – infantile memories of cunt – backrow slides – slithery oily cunt, the cunt that breathes – the cunt that’s neatly wrapped in cotton, in silk, in nylon, that announces, that speaks or thrusts, that winks that’s squeezed in a triangle of furtive cloth backed by an arse that’s creamy, springy billowy cushiony tight, knicker lined, knicker skinned, circumscribed by flowers and cotton, by views, clinging knicker, juice ridden knicker, hot knicker, wet knicker, swelling vulva knicker, witty cunt, teeth smiling the eyes biting cunt, cultured cunt, culture vulture cunt, finger biting cunt, cunt that pours, cunt that spreads itself over your soft lips, that attacks, cunt that imagines – cunt you dream about, cunt you create as a Melba, a meringue with smooth sides – remembered from school boys’ smelly first cunt, first foreign cunt, amazing cunt – cunt that’s cruel. Cunt that protects itself and makes you want it even more cunt – cunt that smells of the air, of the earth, of bakeries, of old apples, of figs, of sweat of hands of sour yeast of fresh fish cunt. So – are we going Les? We might pick up a bit of crumpet.”

Steven Berkoff East

East (1975), Scene 17

School, Smile, Dreams, Imagination

“Its is important, too, to realize that deadly violence among primitives is not even remotely comparable to modern warfare. When primitives fight, two little bands of men shoot arrows or swing war-clubs at one another because they want to fight; or because they are defending themselves, their families, or their territory. In the modern world soldiers fight because they have been brainwashed into believing in some kook ideology such as that of Nazism, socialism, or what American politicians choose to call "freedom". In any case the modern soldier is merely a pawn, a dupe who dies not for his family or his tribe but for the politicians who exploit him. If he's unlucky, maybe he does not die but comes home horribly crippled in a way that would never result from an arrow- or a spear-wound. Meanwhile, thousands of non-combatants are killed or mutilated. The environment is ravaged, not only in the war zone, but also back home, due to the accelerated consumption of natural resources needed to feed the war machine. In comparison, the violence of primitive man is relatively innocuous.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

"The Truth about Primitive Life"
The Road to Revolution (2008)

Men, War, World, Family

“I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

22 May 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

People, Art

“We brought a man back who should have died long ago. The present can't stand a man like that anymore. Now they want indecision and compromise and reluctance and fear.”

Mickey Spillane book The Snake

The Snake (1964)

Fear, Indecision

“The warming propaganda machine has lost its momentum and is desperate to get it back. They want to silence Lord Monckton and remove him from the field. To that end they'll say anything. … Yet when granted a fair forum for debate, it is Monckton who triumphs.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Target: Monckton http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/12/target-monckton/, wattsupwiththat.com, August 12, 2010. 2010

Silence

“I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again." Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

As quoted in The New Yorker (25 April 1988), p. 70

People, Hell, Thinking, Light

“I see no reason why children as young as six, seven, or even three shouldn't be allowed to produce corporate comic books to relentless monthly deadlines. And have to write several titles at once to make a decent living. That's what a proper childhood's all about isn't it? This is the 21st century after all and these unruly little bastards have been milking post-Victorian sentimentality for all it's worth for way too long. Time to get kids back where they belong - up chimneys, down mines, and tied to the printing presses! If you can pick up a brick to smash a car window, then you can build me a textile factory, son … here's a whole half dollar for your day's labor. Now put down that Justin Timberlake bio-comic and get back on the production line!”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2003
http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=001597
On comics

Children, Books, Cars, Way

“Your pa had seven years at sea, mostly in foreign parts.
You’ve heard him talk. He’s got a way about him, a way with words. He can make the temple bells tinkle for you, and you can just hear them big old elephants shuff-shuffling along, the priests callin’ folks to prayer and the like.
Your pa learned a sight of things most folks never even hear of. I’ve seen scholars back off an’ look at your pa, amazed.
You take these Injuns, now. You look at the way they live and you’ll say they don’t amount to much, but what are they thinkin’? What do they know? What memories do they have? They want different things, boy, and they consider different things important. Many a thing we’d give anything to know, they just take for granted.
Some of these Injuns, maybe all of them, they’re in tune with something. I don’t know what. But some of them have lost touch with it, and others are losin’ touch. Goin’ the white folks’ way might seem the likely thing to do, but maybe they lose as much as they gain.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods (1983), Ch. 11

Way, Boy, Learning, Memory

“I passed on the cocaine,
Said bye-bye to my methadone.
Put down the bottle for one more day.
Backing off of my Tobacco Jones.
Still I feel like a hopeless junkie,
Like a man who can't say no.
I look back and there's that monkey;
Rascal won't let go.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Little More Time With You"
Song lyrics, Hourglass (1997)

Feeling

“"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me," he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky — the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. III, ch. 16
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Hope, Way

“So what are you afraid of? What is holding you back? What is it that stands in your way? Do it!”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)

Way

“Must one go through the five official stages? What are those five stages again: "anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." Well, back up: here comes my acceptance speech. "I am now, and I have always been a flaming faggot, responsible for style in its every manifestation. I have my own five steps: flippancy, sentimentality, sarcasm, camp, and smut. They've got me through life, and deity dammit, they'll get me through death!"”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

Pouf Positive
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Life, Death, Anger

“Calico Pie,
The little Birds fly
Down to the calico tree,
Their wings were blue,
And they sang "Tilly-loo!"
Till away they flew,—
And they never came back to me!”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

Calico Pie http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/calico.html, st. 1 (1871).

Bird, Tree, Flying

“I never asked for nothin' I don't demand of myself / Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth / Death before dishonor and I tell you what else / I tighten my belt 'fore I beg for help / Foolish pride is what held me together through the years / I wasn't felt which is why I ain't never played myself / I just play the hand I'm dealt, I can't say I've never knelt / Before God and asked for better cards at times to no avail / But I never sat back feelin sorry for myself / If you don't give me heaven I'll raise hell”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

'Til it's heaven
Justify My Thug
The Black Album (2003)

Death, God, Hell, Time

“The view of things [called Pantheism] … — that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated. That such was, moreover, the fount whence Pythagoras drew his wisdom, cannot be doubted … That it formed practically the central point in the whole philosophy of the Eleatic School, is likewise a familiar fact. Later on, the New Platonists were steeped in the same … In the ninth century we find it unexpectedly appearing in Europe. It kindles the spirit of no less a divine than Johannes Scotus Erigena, who endeavours to clothe it with the forms and terminology of the Christian religion. Among the Mohammedans we detect it again in the rapt mysticism of the Sufi. In the West Giordano Bruno cannot resist the impulse to utter it aloud; but his reward is a death of shame and torture. And at the same time we find the Christian Mystics losing themselves in it, against their own will and intention, whenever and wherever we read of them! Spinoza's name is identified with it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 269 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/269/mode/2up-272 On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Life, Death, Wisdom, Books

“It is just most delightful to me that I live in this way in the heart of Amsterdam. In a second you can eat somewhere and be back home again. You never have to wait for the tram. It is less than seven minutes [walking] from Dam Square. To me that is so unusual and so pleasant. I walk there daily.... the window [of his new studio] is about 2.25 m wide and high, and underneath a standing window of the same size, breadth-wise.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) 't is al allerheerlijkst voor me, dat ik zoo midden in Amsterdam woon. In een oogenblik kun je ergens gaan eten en weer 't huis zijn. Je hoeft nooit op de tram te gaan staan. 't is niet verder dan een minuut of zeven van de Dam. dat is voor mij zoo ongewoon en zoo prettig. Ik loop er heen, dag in en uit.. ..'t raam [van het atelier] is ongeveer 2.25 m breed en hoog, en daaronder een staand raam van zelfde breedte. Quote of Breitner in his letter from Amsterdam, 11 May 1893, to Herman van der Weele; from the original letter in the RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/1154 1890 - 1900

Way, Home, Waiting, Heart

“Coin matching and finger flashing were among the first formal games to arise in the history of gambling. The class of Morra games extends back to the pre-Christian era, although not until comparatively recent times have game-theoretic solutions been derived.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 75

History, Game, Time

“The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit.
We wish our descendants happiness. But over time one criterion alone will judge our efforts.
Survival.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 12 (p. 192)
Glory Season (1993)

Life, Children, Penalty, Effort

“We need one or two more pitchers. We'll see. I always said that any team can be good with two or three good pitchers. The best example is the Atlanta Braves with Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine back in the day.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Gano, Rick, Colorado 5, Cubs 2 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=260929116,Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 6, 2007. 2007

“I have just come back from the internment camps of Europe where I looked on the survivors of the Nazi charnel houses. I was in Dachau and Belsen. I saw chambers where hundreds of Jews were throttled every day. They were brought naked, as if to bathe, and the Nazis would peer through peepholes and watch them writhing in their death agonies.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

An address at Hebrew University (28 November 1945), as quoted in Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (1954), p. 151

Death, Housing

“I had always assumed that if I made it to Parliament I would not remain a back bencher.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 4, Sixty days of decision, p. 46

“I think so. I guess if I look back on it now, I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

[In response to the question "Do you think that you underestimated the insurgency's strength?"] Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize Luncheon http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060619-10.html, June 19, 2006 2000s, 2006

Thinking

“In Puerto Rico, we like to laugh and talk before a game. Then we go out and play as hard as we can to win. Afterwards, we laugh and talk again. But in America, baseball is much more of a business. Play well and you get pats on the back and congratulations. Play bad and no pats and maybe nobody talks to you.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Roberto Clementeː Pounder from Puerto Rico" by John Devaney, in Baseball Stars of 1964 (1964), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 149
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Game, Business

“The task of instilling pathos into a creature that was, after all, an innocent victim of circumstances was something I had set myself from the outset, although I was restrained by the script… The Beast is a poor lost soul brought back to life by man and then destroyed by man. If it sounds familiar, it is. King Kong was a huge influence, as he would be in all the other creatures I would be father to.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), p. 57

Life, Soul

“Those of us in the military may have even underestimated the degree of support the American people still afforded the military, for a recent public opinion survey revealed that the military services are among the public institutions that the people trust most. For one looking back on thirty-six years of service in the United States Army, that is a rewarding thought. So, too, I am struck, upon reflection, by the unprecedented changes that occurred during those thirty-six years. From the World War I Stokes mortar and the Model 1897 French 75 artillery piece to sophisticated guided missiles; from the model 1902 rifle to the M-16; from carrier pigeons and Morse code telegraphy to walkie-talkies, computers, and sensors; from a private's pay of $21 a month and a second lieutenant's of $125 to today's private's pay of $344 a month and today's second lieutenant's of $634; through three wars and a number of police actions; from volunteer army back to volunteer army; and from isolationism to multiple international commitments. As one in the middle of the changes at various levels of command responsibility, I have always been impressed by the loyalty, flexibility, durability, and overall effectiveness of the United States Army. The traumatic experience of Vietnam was no exception.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 424.

War, People, World, Support

“We are going through a period of uncertainty, but we are in a good position to strengthen ourselves and win back a majority. We have already got rid of much deadwood and Kinnock is winning back younger voters. He is politically intelligent, has character and courage; but he has never been a minister, lacks experience, and people know it. In troubled times, the electorate looks for a strong leader and Mrs Thatcher is seen as one.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Interview for La Stampa (5 April 1986), quoted in The Times (7 April 1986), p. 2
1980s

People, Intelligence, Courage, Strong

“Dave would punch or slap people in the face repeatedly when they delivered bad news, or when people talked back with anything other than what he wanted to hear. I would say over a period of five years between 2000 and 2005 I saw him do this maybe 30 to 40 times. I saw him hit Jeff on at least one or two occasions.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Marc Headley referring to incidents involving former Scientology executive, Jeff Hawkins, interviewed in — [Selling Scientology: A Former Scientologist Marketing Guru Turns Against the Church, Matt, Davis, August 7, 2008, http://www.portlandmercury.com/news/selling_scientology/Content?oid=862344, 2010-07-03, The Portland Mercury, Portland, Oregon].
About

People, Time

“The Government's determination to push through the controversial Amnesty Bill has created deep divisions in the nation, and leaves behind indelible impressions of an administration that backs lawless elements in society.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

New Year message, 22 December 2005 (excerpts)

“I'm thinking that somewhere around the world, I remember after this 9/11 event back home, people didn't feel much like playing, singing, people didn't feel like going out. But then I thought you know, that somewhere in the world, somebody's hiding behind a rock or a tree, or a wall, or something, and somebody else has been shooting at them for quite some time. Somebody's dreaming, somebody's hoping that somewhere, somebody's singing. Somebody's smiling, and laughing, and life is good, and it's fun to be a human being, and it's all right. And I thought man we got to keep that spirit going, you know, and so we got back out on the road. But I think of that every time that we play now. It would be nice to go anywhere in the world to go and do these kind of things and have fun and live right and not be worried about stuff like that. That's my hope, that everywhere in the world that will happen soon.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Statements said on "Live in Sydney" before playing "Highway in the Wind"

Life, People, World, Smile

“I'll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn't know sad things now. After all I shouldn't complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can't imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier. If you still in the hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote of Kahlo, in her letter to Georgia O'Keeffe, 1 March 1933, from http://www.patronofthearts.com/2015/07/frida-kahlos-letter-to-georgia-okeefe/ 1925 - 1945

Sadness, Color, Way, Imagination

“If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. That, I think, is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear that freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Press conference (8 July 2005)

Life, People, World, Fear

“I seem to be able to only see the positive things in life and the beautiful things in life and when I see, for instance, garbage or ugliness, then I turn my back or I seem to be able to skip it.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

Quoted in "Imelda (2003).

Life, Beauty

“You can't rearrange freshly fallen snow, you can't fix snow so it looks untouched. You can rework earth, and sand and even grass if you try hard enough. Water takes care of itself, because it swallows everything and flows back together once it's done swallowing. And air is always in place because you can't see it. Everything but snow would have kept quiet.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 11

Grass, Water

“Our government has a responsibility to defend our borders, but we must do so in a way that makes us safer and upholds all that is decent and exceptional about our nation.It is clear from the confusion at our airports across the nation that President Trump's executive order was not properly vetted. We are particularly concerned by reports that this order went into effect with little to no consultation with the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security.Such a hasty process risks harmful results. We should not stop green-card holders from returning to the country they call home. We should not stop those who have served as interpreters for our military and diplomats from seeking refuge in the country they risked their lives to help. And we should not turn our backs on those refugees who have been shown through extensive vetting to pose no demonstrable threat to our nation, and who have suffered unspeakable horrors, most of them women and children.Ultimately, we fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism. At this very moment, American troops are fighting side-by-side with our Iraqi partners to defeat ISIL. But this executive order bans Iraqi pilots from coming to military bases in Arizona to fight our common enemies. Our most important allies in the fight against ISIL are the vast majority of Muslims who reject its apocalyptic ideology of hatred. This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.”

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

Statement by Senators McCain & Graham on Executive Order on Immigration (January 27, 2017) from the Office of Senator John McCain http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/1/statement-by-senators-mccain-graham-on-executive-order-on-immigration regarding [Donald J. Trump]'s Executive Order 13769 entitled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States", as quoted by Jacob Sallum from Reason magazine in Here Is What Republican Critics of Trump's Immigration Order Are Saying on January 31, 2017 http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/31/here-is-what-republican-critics-of-trump 2010s, 2017

Women, Fear, Justice, Way

“He disrupted things and that’s fine, but now things have been shaken up so much that it’s been shaken up into little bits and the little bits have been shaken up into even smaller bits. We are saying let’s put it all back together.”

Charles Thomson (artist) (1953) British artist

Richard Moss, "Stuckist's Punk Victorian gatecrashes Walker's Biennial" http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/exh_gfx_en/ART24134.html 24hourmuseum.org.uk, 2004-09-17. Accessed 2007-02-01. On Marcel Duchamp.

“They were having terrorism problems, just like we do, and he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs' blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs' blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn't a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn't a problem.”

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

During a campaign stop in Pawley's Island, South Carolina (February 19, 2016) http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450574/donald-trump-tweet-fake-history-libel-war-crime. Referring to a false story about John J. Pershing which has circulated on the Internet. 2010s, 2016, February

Men, People, Problem, Personality

“I started [acting] when I was a young teenager. My mom encouraged me to go to read for some stuff in Toronto, and I ended up doing a couple of crappy commercials and was like, "Oh, yeah, I'd like to do this!" And then kind of put it on the back burner, and then pursued it a little bit when I was in Toronto, like studying a little bit here and there. And I decided to move to New York and go to Lee Strasberg. And I kind of, for the first time ever, really felt like I was doing something that I enjoyed, and that I felt like I could conceivably be good at. And when those two things happen, [ironically] you're off to the races.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-2.html 2005

Moms, Study, Time, Reading

“When happily ever after fails
And weve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly
But I know a place where we can go
Thats still untouched by man
Well sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind.
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me.
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence.”

Don Henley (1947) American singer, lyricist, producer and drummer

"The End of the Innocence" (co-written with Bruce Hornsby)
Song lyrics, The End of the Innocence (1989)

Grass, Flying

“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 17 (pp. 192-193)

Hate, People, Age, Law

“Top back, candy paint
Damn I got expensive taste
Flex on 'em everyday
Champagne, celebrate
I get freaky, all my girls we have a kiki
Rock a party like
Purple boomin' Lamborghini”

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

"Cars"
Song lyrics, Other songs

Girl, Painting

“Except for Marxian theories, nearly all modern theories of the business cycle have essential elements that trace back to Knut Wicksell's turn-of-the-century writings on interest and prices. Austrians, New Classicists, Monetarists, and even Keynesians can legitimately claim a kinship on this basis. Accordingly, the recognition, that both the Austrians and the New Classicists have a Swedish ancestry does not translate into a meaningful claim that the two schools are essentially similar. To the contrary, identifying their particular relationships to Wicksellian ideas, like comparing the two formally similar business-cycle theories themselves, reveals more differences than similarities. … [T]o establish the essential difference between the Austrians and the New Classicists, it needs to be added that the focus of the Austrian theory is on the actual market process that translates the monetary cause into the real phenomena and hence on the institutional setting in which this process plays itself out.The New Classicists deliberately abstract from institutional considerations and specifically deny, on the basis of empirical evidence, that the interest rate plays a significant role in cyclical fluctuations (Lucas 1981, p. 237 151–1). Thus, Wicksell's Interest and Prices is at best only half relevant to EBCT. … Taking the Wicksellian metaphor as their cue, the New Classicists are led away from the pre-eminent Austrian concern about the actual market process that transforms cause into effect and towards the belief that a full specification of the economy's structure, which is possible only in the context of an artificial economy, can shed light on an effect whose nature is fundamentally independent of the cause.”

Roger Garrison (1944) American economist

Pages 98–99.
"New Classical and Old Austrian Economics", 1991

School, Idea, Business, Nature

“Looking back at Batman from a distance — after all the hype has dried up and the franchise has at least temporarily been abandoned — it's easy to see the movie for what it is: a moderately diverting motion picture that should have been shorter and better paced. There are a lot of things wrong with Batman, but it still makes for decent entertainment in the fine tradition of the typical low-intelligence summer movie. The best thing that can be said about Batman is that it led to Batman Returns, which was a far superior effort.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=758 of Batman (1989). Two-and-a-half star reviews

Intelligence, Effort, Summer

“Well now everything dies baby that's a fact,
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty,
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Atlantic City"
Song lyrics, Nebraska (1982)

Baby

“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, … back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book VI, Ch. 44: The Way of No Return
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Family, Dreams, Home, Memory

“Now that's what we've got to do in our world today. We've left a lot of precious values behind; we've lost a lot of precious values. And if we are to go forward, if we are to make this a better world in which to live, we've got to go back. We've got to rediscover these precious values that we've left behind.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Context: Sometimes, you know, it's necessary to go backward in order to go forward. That's an analogy of life. I remember the other day I was driving out of New York City into Boston, and I stopped off in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to visit some friends. And I went out of New York on a highway that’s known as the Merritt Parkway, it leads into Boston, a very fine parkway. And I stopped in Bridgeport, and after being there for two or three hours I decided to go on to Boston, and I wanted to get back on the Merritt Parkway. And I went out thinking that I was going toward the Merritt Parkway. I started out, and I rode, and I kept riding, and I looked up and I saw a sign saying two miles to a little town that I knew I was to bypass—I wasn't to pass through that particular town. So I thought I was on the wrong road. I stopped and I asked a gentleman on the road which way would I get to the Merritt Parkway. And he said, "The Merritt Parkway is about twelve or fifteen miles back that way. You've got to turn around and go back to the Merritt Parkway; you are out of the way now." In other words, before I could go forward to Boston, I had to go back about twelve or fifteen miles to get to the Merritt Parkway. May it not be that modern man has gotten on the wrong parkway? And if he is to go forward to the city of salvation, he's got to go back and get on the right parkway. [... ] Now that's what we've got to do in our world today. We've left a lot of precious values behind; we've lost a lot of precious values. And if we are to go forward, if we are to make this a better world in which to live, we've got to go back. We've got to rediscover these precious values that we've left behind.

World

“I believe in Serbia that moves forward - towards the European Union. There will be no going back for Serbia, only forwards”

Boris Tadić (1958) Serbian politician, President of Serbia 2004–2012

http://www.predsednik.yu/mwc/default.asp?c=101500&g=20060904151245&lng=eng&hs1=1
At the presidential inauguration ceremony.

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men, People, World, Hope

“Iraq hasn't suddenly 'slipped back into' this backward and benighted state. It was bombed there by a mulish military power which didn't know Shiite from Shinola. [translated from German]”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Irak: Von Tuten und Blasen keine Ahnung gehabt" http://jungefreiheit.de/kolumne/2014/irak-von-tuten-und-blasen-keine-ahnung-gehabt/, Junge Freiheit, June 27, 2014. 2010s, 2014

“My final word about editing. I was to appear on the cover of a business magazine, and the writer who came to interview me was intrigued with engineers, scientists, PhDs founding and running companies. It was somewhat more unusual back in those days than now, although it was not without ample precedents in the past. So the question he put to me right away starting the interview was, "Would you say, Dr. Ramo, that engineers make the best managers?" And I said, "Engineers make the best engineers." It may be that some engineers will have managerial talents, and be in the right place at the right time, just as may be true of lawyers or accountants or salesmen, or tax experts or whatever. Now, on the magazine then, here was this picture of me, and here was this quote: "Engineers make the best engineers." Well, someone, before the cover actually got out, knew that that was a mistake. Obviously that had been a misprint. So looking at the text, and seeing the question that was asked of me, he changed it to: "Engineers make the best managers." "I quote Dr. Ramo on engineers."”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

All right. An Interview Conducted by Frederik Nebeker, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 27 February 1995; Republished at Oral-History:Simon Ramo http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:Simon_Ramo, at ieeeghn.org, accessed May 30, 2014.

Quotes, Question, Business, Appearance

“We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward cross the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Zurich University (September 19, 1946) ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html) ( http://www.peshawar.ch/varia/winston.htm). Post-war years (1945–1955)

Revenge, Past, Future

“They think we should be more “spiritual;” that is to say, willing to live upon the labor of others; willing to ask alms, saying, in the meantime, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” If this is so, why not give the money back?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

Money, Thinking

“Imagining the flower-pot attacked it
The kitten flung the violets near and far
And yet, who knows? This morning, as I backed it,
My car was set upon by a parked car.”

Vikram Seth (1952) Indian writer

Malefic Things from All You Who Sleep Tonight (Viking/Penguin India, 1990).

Cars, Imagination, Flowers

“Mr. Khan is the one that went out and struck the first blow, and in a campaign, if you're going to go out and think you can take a shot at someone and not have incoming coming back at you, shame on you. I think the Democrats used him in a way that quite frankly I'm not sure I approve of. We love our veterans, we love our Gold Star families, but the fact of the matter is Mr. Khan politically used his time on that stage to go after Donald Trump, why in the world he thought that he would get a free ride with that is beyond me. He shouldn’t get a free ride when he’s going to inject himself in the political arena.”

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

About the Khan family and Donald Trump controversy. As quoted by Politico — Rick Perry accuses Khan of striking 'first blow' against Trump http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/rick-perry-khizr-khan-227081 (August 16, 2016) 2016

Love, World, Family, Way

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

Life, Women, Secret, World

“I sell my time to get enough money to buy it back.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#151
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Money, Time

“It’s quite an obsession to me to communicate at this moment, at this time, with my audience. I don’t only play for them, it’s something I want to give back to them. I feel how each listener in the audience is listening to me, and I feel its warmness, for example, and I give it back to the complete audience. I feel the intensity of hearing, of listening. This is like electricity, and this I give back to the audience. It’s very stimulating.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on the audience and studio recordings

Feeling, Communication, Time

“We women are doing pretty well. We're almost back to where we were in the twenties.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

1976
As quoted in Margaret Mead: A Life (1984) by Jane Howard, p. 362
1970s

Women

“We had thought Mike the greatest; now we began to discover he was only human and, worse, we had our first dismaying confrontation with the fact that he would not back up his ministers.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 4, Sixty days of decision, p. 63

“There was strong warrant for pretensions… As far back as 1493, Pope Alexander VI had settled disputes between Spain and Portugal arising out of their rivalry in the Orient and the Occident by drawing a line from pole to pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores, giving all west of it to the Spanish, all east of it to the Portuguese. Both these nations attempted more or less persistently to exercise the sway thus given over the oceans as well as over the continent. The Portuguese forbade under heavy penalties any person, whether native or alien, to pass through the waters off the African and Brazilian coasts without special permission; the Spanish were hardly less severe toward those who without leave approached their dependencies. But, though the realization of the earth's rotundity renewed the old difficulty, and Spain and Portugal discovered that the Papal decision was futile, since all their new dominions could be approached both from the east and the west, both nations continued to maintain, as best they could, their sovereignty over the vast oceans. Other nations followed these examples.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 60-61

Penalty, Exercises, Decision, Strong

“What Jim wanted to do, and it was totally his vision, was to get back to the darkness of the original Grimm’s fairy tales. He thought it was fine to scare children. He didn’t think it was healthy for children to always feel safe.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Frank Oz, as quoted in Q&A: Frank Oz on Henson, “Dark Crystal” and the Kwik Way http://blog.sfgate.com/parenting/2007/06/28/qa-frank-oz-on-henson-dark-crystal-and-the-kwik-way/, SFGate, (June 28, 2007). About

Children, Feeling, Thinking

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Life-Line

Life-Line (p. 25)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Law, History, Support, Change

“There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"Face it: it's all your own fat fault", Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2004, p. 24.
On the dangers of obesity.
2000s, 2004

Night

“There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version. It was exactly what was released two months later with the exception of a couple of reaction shots which we went back in to get. I liked the movie very much and asked him what the studio's problem was. I felt that he was at a point where they might have worn him down”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

if that's at all possible
Mohican Press interview (2005)

Way, Problem, Time

“Four men describe how their wives hit them in the lower back with a pole, cracked them over the head or in the neck with a frying pan… the audience renews its laughter after each story. The men are part of a “PMS Men’s Support Group.” Imagine an audience of men laughing as battered women describe how their husbands threatened them with brain or spinal cord injuries by battering them over their heads or in their necks with a frying pan.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Men, Imagination, Support

“Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part II, ch. 10 (Jerry "Cutter" Hyams)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

People, Feeling, Teachers

“[Churchill's wartime menus] show him slurping bottles of whisky, champagne [and] brandy with every sumptuous meal, while the underclass fought and starved for the privilege of poverty and unemployment. Thankfully, the Germans bombed Glasgow back to full employment. Even in the 1960s Earl Mountbatten was prosecuted for adding water to the milk on his farm so you can imagine how the landed gentry 'rationed' themselves during the war.”

Ian Brady (1938–2017) British serial killer, perpetrator of the Moors murders

As quoted by Jean Rafferty in "My friend Ian Brady" http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/my-friend-ian-brady.18076533, Scotland Herald (8 July 2012)

War, Imagination, Water

“Maybe if I looked in my heart, I could find a back door.”

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

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

Heart

“Whatever we experience in our day, whatever we hope to learn, whatever we most desire, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

Hope, Way, Learning

“People have their reasons for giving rides, all of them different. Maybe they hitched a lot when they were younger and now they're settled and comfortable they want to put back what they took out. Like a circular thing. Maybe they have charitable natures. Or maybe they're just lonely and want a little conversation.”

Lee Child book Echo Burning

Echo Burning, Ch. 1.

People, Nature

“The most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition—and the most original and independent—is that of India, which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century BCE. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Pavle Ivić in: Linguistics http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342418/linguistics#ref411727, britannica.com, 9 April 2013.

Way

“A scrip on my back, and a staff in my hand,
I march on in haste through an enemy's land;
The road may be rough, but it cannot be long;
And I'll smooth it with hope, and I'll cheer it with song.”

Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847) Anglican priest, hymn-writer and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 49.

Hope

“Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, Suicide of a Superpower (2011)

World

“Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. … If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D. C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.”

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

Statement of 12 September 2001 attributed to Moore, as published in [Michael Moore, Humbug, City Journal, Summer 2003, Kay S., Hymowitz, http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_michael_moore.html]
2001

People, Family

“I was all for setting up a separate Jewish state in Madagascar or Palestine or someplace, but not to exterminate them. Besides, by exterminating 4 million Jews - they say 5 or 6 million at this trial, but that is all propaganda, I am sure it wasn't more than 4.5 million - they have made martyrs out of those Jews. For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Country

“Bod walked back into the graveyard and up the hill, until he reached the Frobisher mausoleum. He did not enter it. He climbed up the side of the building, using the thick ivy root as a foothold, and he pulled himself up onto the stone roof, where he sat and thought looking out at the world of moving things beyond the graveyard, and he remembered the way Scarlett had held him and how safe he felt, if only for a moment, and how fine it would be to walk safely in the lands beyond the graveyard, and how good it was to be master of his own small world.”

Neil Gaiman book The Graveyard Book

Source: The Graveyard Book (2008), Ch. 7

World, Way

“When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on Aids, 46664 Concert, Tromso, Norway (11 Jun 2005). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes 2000s

History, Time

“I suppose I'm still too young to say everything I want to say, though nobody'd ever give me credit for holding anything back. But I do … I just have no desire or need to slag Joe Fiennes. But I would look at that particular thing differently. I see the opportunity differently.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

Quotes about back page 59

Quotes about back
page 59