Quotes about back
page 63

“Amazeen: “Is there anything you’d do differently if you could go back?””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Lent and Amazeen (2015), Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship, Interview with Edward S. Herman on September 2, 2013, pp. 56-57.
2010s

John Major photo
David Brin photo

“One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise.
Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else.
Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex.
Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species.
Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive.
Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth.”

Introduction to Chapter 8 (pp. 123-124)
Glory Season (1993)

Michelle Obama photo

“He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Campaign rally at UCLA, quoted in "It’s All About Him" by William Kristol in The New York Times (25 February 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/opinion/25kristol.html?ref=opinion
2000s

Sarah McLachlan photo

“Open the doors that lead on in to Eden
Don't want no cheap disguise.
I follow the signs marked back to the beginning,
No more compromise.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Into the Fire, written by Sarah McLachlan and Pierre Marchand
Song lyrics, Solace (1992)

Charlie Sheen photo
Bill Bryson photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Nick Cave photo
Kage Baker photo
John Fante photo
Kazimir Malevich photo

“Painting has turned back from the non-objective way to the object, and the development of painting has returned to the figurative part of the way that had led to the destruction of the object. But on the way back, painting came across a new object that the proletarian revolution had brought to the fore and which had to be given form, which means that it had to be raised to the level of a work of art... I am utterly convinced that if you keep to the way of Constructivism, where you are now firmly stuck, which raises not one artistic issue except for pure utilitarianism and in theater simple agitation, which may be one hundred percent consistent ideologically but is completely castrated as regards artistic problems, and forfeits half its value... If you go on as you are.... then Stanislavski will emerge as the winner in the theater and the old forms will survive. And as to architecture, if the architects do not produce artistic architecture, the Greco-Roman style of Zyeltovski will prevail, together with the Repin style in painting..”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich from his letter 8 April 1932, to Meyerhold, in 'Two Letters to Meyerhold', in Kunst & Museumjournaal 6, (1990), pp. 9-10; as quoted by Paul Wood in The great Utopia, - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112
This quote clarifies Malevich's famous return to the figuration of the Russian peasant life, in the time of forced collectivization of Russian agriculture: 'for him [= Malevich] the return to figuration was not a break with the Revolution but a way of safeguarding it and preventing the return of Classicism and Naturalism' (Paul Wood in The great Utopia; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112)
1931 - 1935

“The masses of the people could not be held back from Nazism, so powerful was its appeal, and this same priest, who would not leave his people, went with them to Nazism, too.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

Source: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955), p. 219

Chuck Berry photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Jenny Lewis photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Albert Finney photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Thomas Sowell photo
Rahul Dravid photo
Ernst Bloch photo
Walter Scott photo

“With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,
In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto I, stanza 17.
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Nathan Lane photo

“I'll always go back to the stage.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

Betsy Pickle (December 19, 1997) "Mouse Confusion", The Knoxville News-Sentinel, p. T10.

David Frawley photo
Matthew Prior photo

“He ranged his tropes, and preached up patience;
Backed his opinion with quotations.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

Paulo Purganti and His Wife (1708).

Donald J. Trump photo
Joyce Grenfell photo
Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan photo
Richard Stallman photo

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On why he decided against writing proprietary software; quoted in Free as in Freedom : Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software' (2002) by Sam Williams http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html
2000s

Michael Moore photo
Billy Joel photo
Mohamed Nasheed photo

“Sanctions imposed can easily be rolled back. But unless they are imposed, President (Abdullah) Yameen will have no incentive to take further action. It is only a question of time before the Maldives witnesses an incident comparable to the tragedy that occurred on the beaches of Tunisia last year. I will definitely go to the Maldives. But only the question is how and when.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Mohamed Nasheed, Reuters (January 25, 2016), "Former Maldives' president calls for sanctions against government figures" http://www.reuters.com/article/britain-maldives-nasheed-idUSKCN0V3270

“I'm telling you, back in those Wendover days, it wasn't that hard to get it out of me.”

Radio From Hell (August 31, 2006)

Boris Johnson photo

“In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Boris Johnson on South Bank for Barclays Cycle Hire launch http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/4722, London SE1, 30 July 2010
Said during the official launch of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.
2010s, 2010

Vita Sackville-West photo
Sarah Grimké photo
John McCain photo

“It's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq. That's well known. We continue to be concerned about the Iranians taking al-Qaeda into Iran and training them and sending them back…. I am sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda, not al-Qaeda, I am sorry.”

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

During an official visit in Amman, Jordon, making a statement and then being corrected by Senator Joe Lieberman http://web.archive.org/web/20080324115205/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtqD_x9yYIuq_7S2dimSjMV5qRmg (18 March 2008)
2000s, 2008

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Noel Gallagher photo

“Another reason to vote Labour is if you ******g don't and the Conservatives get in, Phil Collins is threatening to come back and live here, and let's face it none of us want that.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Controversy with other artists
Source: Noel Gets Political, Manchester Evening News, 30 June 2005, 28 January 2018 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music/noel-gets-political-1065026,

John Diefenbaker photo

“Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I can't waste any more time on you. I must get back to work.”

John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada

From a conversation with Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier (29 July 1910) when Diefenbaker was 14; quoted in Canada's Prime Ministers, 1867 - 1994: Biographies and Anecdotes (Ottawa: National Archives of Canada, 1994).

Gloria Estefan photo

“Dad joined the US Army by this point [1964], and initially he was stationed in Texas and then South Carolina. But the Vietnam war brought our normal life to an end. Once again, Dad was gone. Communications were very basic back then: Dad couldn't just pick up a cellphone and let us know he was okay. Months would go by without a letter or anything. Eventually he bought two tape recorders -- one he kept with him and one for our house. Dad used to talk into the recorder and send the tapes home. Then we would gather round our machine and tell Dad stories. And I would sing. I still have all the tapes, but I can't listen to them. It hurts too much. After Dad came back from Nam, he wasn't well. He'd been poisoned by Agent Orange and needed quite a lot of looking after. Mum was busy trying to get her Cuban qualifications revalidated by a US university, so I had to take care of Dad and my little sister [Becky]. It was tough. Toward the end, Dad was too far gone and he didn't really know what was hapening around him. I joined Miami Sound Machine in 1975 and we were getting quite successful, but Dad didn't even know who I was. He had to be moved to the hospital. On my wedding day in 1978 [September 2] I went to visit him, still wearing my wedding dress. That was the last time that he said my name. Dad died in 1980, but he touches my life every day. On my last album [Unwrapped] I did a lot of writing while I was looking at a picture of him in his younger days -- so happy and in the prime of his life. I'm not sure if he sees me, but I can feel him all around me. I hope he knows that I am so very proud of him.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Włodzimierz Ptak photo

“I don't like to stay long outside of Kraków. I was always happy to go back there, just like a cat. Well, that's my mental structure.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Jesse Ventura photo

“If I could be reincarnated as a fabric, I would come back as a 38 double-D bra.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Interview in Playboy (November 1999)

C. J. Cherryh photo
David Bowie photo

“The tragic youth was going down on me
(…)
I've been right and I've been wrong
Now I'm back where I started from
Never looked over reality's shoulder”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

"Reality"
Song lyrics, Reality (2003)

William Grey Walter photo
Eugene Cernan photo
Richard Quest photo
John Ogilby photo

“I the Mountain take,
Bearing my aged Father on my Back.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Russell Crowe photo

“There's nothing like sitting back and talking to your cows.”

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

On missing his Australian ranch, US Weekly, (Issue 304)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

April 3, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

Amir Taheri photo
Thom Yorke photo
Elbridge G. Spaulding photo
Adolf Eichmann photo
Albert Camus photo
Muhammad Yunus photo

“Poor people always pay back their loans. It's us, the creators of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Grameen Bank II: Designed to Open New Possibilities (2002)

Friedrich Engels photo

“You have reduced the number of wars – to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition! When have you done anything out of pure humanity, from consciousness of the futility of the opposition between the general and the individual interest? When have you been moral without being interested, without harbouring at the back of your mind immoral, egoistical motives?”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Ihr habt ... die Kriege vermindert, um im Frieden desto mehr zu verdienen, um die Feindschaft der einzelnen, den ehrlosen Krieg der Konkurrenz, auf die höchste Spitze zu treiben!
Wo habt ihr etwas aus reiner Humanität, aus dem Bewußtsein der Nichtigkeit des Gegensatzes zwischen dem allgemeinen und individuellen Interesse getan? Wo seid ihr sittlich gewesen, ohne interessiert zu sein, ohne unsittliche, egoistische Motive im Hintergrund zu hegen?
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

Fritz Leiber photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“My body is old and tired, but I'll bounce back. I think Mazeroski can do the same if he takes off a few pounds and gives them to me. I need them.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

On being informed that Mazeroski had claimed he wouldn't be retiring if he had Clemente's body; as quoted in "Sidelights on Sports: Monday Morning's Sports Wash" by Al Abrams, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Monday, October 2, 1972), p. 24
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

Robert Charles Wilson photo
Tom Petty photo
Conor Oberst photo
Will Arnett photo

“Yeah, I don't think you can live anywhere else -- it's such a great city [New York]. L. A. is kind of a necessary evil, but man, I love going back to New York.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-1.html
2005

Sarah Grimké photo

“At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline. Yet I have sometimes tasted exquisite joy and have found solace for many a woe in the innocence and earnest love of Theodore's children. But for this my life would have little to record of mundane pleasures.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter to Harriot Hunt (1853), as quoted in The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman's [sic] Rights and Abolition, p. 241, by Gerda Lerner. Editorial Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195106032.

Hank Green photo

“I forgot how to throw a boomerang, but then it came back to me.”

Hank Green (1980) American vlogger

Mules are So Half Ass http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbqeyHxH-zU
Songs

Steve Jobs photo
George Carlin photo
Edward Hopper photo

“It seemed awful crude and raw here when I got back [after his return from his third and last trip to Europe, in 1910]. It took me ten years to get over Europe.”

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

In a letter to his mother, c. 1910; as quoted in Edward Hopper, Gail Levin, Bonfini Press, Switzerland 1984, p. 27
1905 - 1910

Charles Darwin photo

“I often find myself going back to Darwin's saying about the duration of a man's friendships being one of the best measures of his worth.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

from Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning by Anne Thackeray Ritchie http://www.victorianweb.org/books/aplin.html (Harper and Brothers, New York, 1893) page 170
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Donald J. Trump photo

“And I have to give the FBI credit, that was so bad, what happened, originally, and it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made, in light of the kind of opposition he had, with their trying to protect her from criminal prosecution, you know that. It took a lot of guts, I really disagreed with him, I was not his fan, but I'll tell you what, what he did, he brought back his reputation, he brought it back. He's got to hang tough, because there's a lot of, lotta people, want him to do the wrong thing, what he did was the right thing.”

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

At a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/10/31/donald-trump-james-comey-has-guts-grand-rapids-sot.cnn shortly after Comey announced the FBI would investigate further emails relating to Hillary Clinton, but before his statement that no incriminating information was found within them (31 October 2016)
2010s, 2016, October

George William Curtis photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Lawrence Wright photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“Several fallacies have been accepted too freely recently about the position of our manufacturing industry in the balance of our economy. The biggest fallacy is the view that salvation lies in services, and only in services. The corollary to that is that it is inevitable and desirable that over the past two decades there has been a reduction of nearly 3 million in employment in manufacturing industry. That is a massive reduction and represents nearly 40 per cent. of the total in manufacturing industry over that time. I do not believe that that should have been the case. That has been precipitate and dangerous and it has not been associated with an increase in productivity which has led to our maintaining our relative manufacturing position…I have come increasingly to the view that the Government stand back too much from industry. In my experience, they do so more than any other Government in the European Community. They do so more than the United States Government. We have to remember the vast US defence involvement in industry. They certainly stand back more than do the Japanese Government. To some extent, the motive is the feeling that we have had an uncompetitive and rather complacent industry which must be exposed to the full blasts of competition, and if that means contracts, even Government contracts, going overseas, we should shrug our shoulders and say that the wind should be stimulating. That process has been carried much further in Britain than in any other comparable rival country. I am resolutely opposed to protectionism. I am sure that it diminishes the employment and wealth-creating capacity of the world as a whole. That would be the result of plunging back into that policy. I also believe, however, that this totally arm's-length approach in the relationship between Government and industry is something that no other comparable Government contemplate to the extent that we do. It is not producing good results for British industry and it is a recipe for a further decline in Britain's position in the Western world. The Government should examine it carefully and reverse it in several important respects.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/jul/07/future-of-manufacturing-industry in the House of Commons (7 July 1986).
1980s

Bill Engvall photo
J. M. G. Le Clézio photo
John Carpenter photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Noting Italy's declaration of war against France on that day, during the commencement address at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (June 10, 1940); reported in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (1941), p. 263
1940s

Woody Guthrie photo
Roberto Bolaño photo
Jane Goodall photo
Olga Rozanova photo

“Opponents of the New Art fall back on this calculation, rejecting its self-sufficient meaning and, having declared it 'Transitional,' being unable even to understand properly the conception of this Art, lumping together Cubism, Futurism, and other phenomena of artistic life, not ascertaining for themselves either their essential differences or the shared tenets that link them.”

Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) Russian artist

Olga Rozanova, in 'Osnovy Novogo Tvorchestva i printsipy ego neponimaniia,' Soiuz molodezhi 3 (March 1913), p. 18; as quoted by Svetlana Dzhafarova, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 (transl. Jane Bobko); Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 477
Olga Rozanova accused the critics and their brethren of bad faith, citing as a prime example Aleksandr Benua's "Kubizm ili Kukishizm" ("Cubism or Je-m'en-foutisme"), a scathing 1912 review

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, and fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.”

Thomas Brown (1662–1704) English translator and writer of satire

Laconics, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt", Sorbienne (1610–1670); also used in Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison.
Source: Brown, Thomas, 1663-1704. Laconics, Or, New Maxims of State And Conversation: Relating to the Affairs And Manners of the Present Times : In Three Parts. London: Printed for Thomas Hodgson ..., 1701. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015013771368?urlappend=%3Bseq=117