Quotes about back
page 8

“For all of our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives. A sense of patriotism and a sense of pride -- a lot of pride. A profound love of family. A passion for our children, a commitment to their education. And that's why I believe our grandchildren will look back on this period of isolation as an aberration, as just one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship. But we cannot, and should not, ignore the very real differences that we have -- about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

Love, Friendship, Children, People

“One of the many suppressed longings of creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach; while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our lives…The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life, Feeling, Business, Past

“Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

"James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years" The Independent (January 16, 2006)

People, Fools

“It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 68
It All Adds Up (1994)

Sense

“Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back -
Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals!Fill all the air with hungry wails -
"Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!"”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Fame's Penny-Trumpet st. 1 & 2
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Men, Soul, Knowledge, Thinking

“And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to the United Nations (September 2014)

People, History, Support, Decision

“If we go back to the intention [ Marx, Nietzsche and Freud] had in common, we find in it the decision to look upon the whole of consciousness primarily as "false" consciousness.”

Paul Ricoeur book Freud and Philosophy

Freud and Philosophy (1970), p. 33

Decision, Falseness

“Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo: The Golden Echo, line 19
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

God, Beauty

“It is said in one of the admonitions of the Lord, “As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.” The Savior, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven; but He said, “As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.” He set that up as a standard, and he who did most towards reaching that standard, attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Chicago (1858)

Men, Freedom, Perfection

“Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures… And I think back over my life and I realize that my own nature -the core me- essentially hasn't changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Life After God (1994)

Life, Age, Way, Feeling

“With the technological revolution in the military field and the enormous organizational reconstruction of the army and navy, and now that their prime shock force is made up of rocketry, voices may quite frequently be heard asserting that this is an era of "push-button warfare" where man plays nothing but an auxiliary role. This view is wrong. Without arguing the great importance of rocketry and nuclear weapons, it is a fact that regardless of the scale, nature or method of warfare, man always played, and will go on playing, a major role in it. War will still require the participation of large masses of manpower- in one case directly in the armed struggle, in another, in war production and the comprehensive material backing of armed struggle.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

p. 692

War, Nature

“I remember the casting session that I had where I was a break dancer, having this punk hair cut. They rejected me and I became really disillusioned with the business and said well this is what it's all about, and I haven't even got in to read a line. He said don't worry, some day we're going to get you back into this and it's going to happen for you, which I kind of took to heart. It was one of those situations where I was lucky and fortunate enough to be at the right places at the right time. All of a sudden I was on the set of Growing Pains and got this audition for This Boy's Life and was able to jump into the feature film world. It's really been just simply the fact that I'd been able to work, you know what I mean? I would probably still be trying to be an actor even if I was out of work, but I would probably become a little disillusioned at some point and move on to other things. But it's the one thing that I know that I love.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Love, Life, Pain, World

“My assistant showed me a video called Forks and Knives (sic) or something, about (cutting out) meat and dairy products, so I thought, 'I'll give this a shot!' … I feel OK actually, I feel better about myself, you know? I go on binges… That's the reason why I decided to cut out meat out and dairy because I've limited what I can have because when you're on the road and you're travelling, you grab buns and… burgers are everywhere… so now I've just narrowed the margin. … I'm not saying I'm gonna do it forever; I might go back - when my wife learns to cook, so that'll be never!”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

On his new vegan diet in order to get healthier, in an interview on his wife Sharon's US daytime talkshow The Talk (25 October 2011), as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne Trying Out Vegan Diet", in Contactmusic.com (25 October 2011) http://www.contactmusic.com/ozzy-osbourne/news/ozzy-osbourne-trying-out-vegan-diet_1252586

Travel, Feeling, Learning, Cooking

“Though I remained insensitive to the subtleties and delicate gradations of colour.... my eyes at least did not deceive me when I drew back and looked at the subject in its broad lines, and this was the starting-point of new compositions... Slowly I tried my strength in innumerable rough sketches which convinced me... I could see as clearly as ever when it came to vivid colours isolated in a mass of dark tones. How was I to put this to use? My intentions gradually became clearer... I said to myself, as I made my sketches, that a series of general impressions, captured at the times of day when I had the best chance of seeing correctly, would not be without interest. I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of the themes to settle themselves in my brain little by little, of their own accord; and the day when I felt I held enough cards to be able to try my luck with a real hope of success, I determined to pass to action, and did so.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 132
1900 - 1920

Hope, Idea, Chance, Time

“It was a long season of mourning and there were times when I wondered if I should mourn all my life and never again be free of it; but at last I could remember without weeping, and recall the days of love without unending sorrow welling up like tears from the very depths of my being. There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever; even in dreams, I never saw again his face, and though I longed for it, I came at last to see that it was just as well, lest I live all the rest of my life in dreams…but at last there came a day when I could look back and know that the time for mourning was ended.”

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

Morgaine
The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Love, Life, Dreams, Knowledge

“Being black only helps them. Many times they get sponsors because they are black. And they have had a lot of advantages because they can always say, 'It's racism.' They can always come back and say, 'Because we are this color, things happen.”

Martina Hingis (1980) Swiss tennis player

Julianne Malveaux on Business and Economics https://web.archive.org/web/20110701141810/http://www.juliannemalveaux.com:80/affirm_action_adv.htm.

Color, Time, Help

“Our girls have to be treated the same. We can’t let old traditions stand in the way. The march of history shows that we have the capacity to broaden our moral imaginations. We come to see that some traditions are good for us, they keep us grounded, but that, in our modern world, other traditions set us back. When African girls are subjected to the mutilation of their bodies, or forced into marriage at the ages of 9 or 10 or 11 -- that sets us back. That's not a good tradition. It needs to end. […]”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

Marriage, Age, World, Way

“We have to acknowledge that those past human right abuses existed and so we can't go forward without looking back, and understanding that was enormous problem, not just for America but also problem for the Indonesian people…”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview with Putra Nababan in the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sFgxBhpkU (March 2010) 2010

People, Understanding, Problem, Past

“[Capablanca] wanted to change the rules already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It’s a terrible game now. Very uncreative.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, October 16 2006 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_35_3.MP3 2000s

Game, Change, Dead

“I won't be here long, I am working as hard as I can, as I told you [in a letter] yesterday, I am very happy to be here Etretat, Normandy] and I hope to come up with something good, in any case I will bring lots of studies back with me so I can work on some big things at home.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter from Etretat to his second [future] wife Alice Hoschedé, 1883; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 51
1870 - 1890

Hope, Home, Study, Happiness

“We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life. We are reluctant, of course, to treat birth as a scourge: has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good — have we not been told that the worst came at the end, not at the outset of our lives? Yet evil, the real evil, is behind, not ahead of us. What escaped Jesus did not escape Buddha: "If three things did not exist in the world, O disciples, the Perfect One would not appear in the world. …" And ahead of old age and death he places the fact of birth, source of every infirmity, every disaster.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Life, Death, Age, World

“I didn't like the music business and I didn't like me. There's an element of falseness about the whole thing. Even things like doing an interview. It's not as though we just met in the pub and are having a chat — it's part of a process. If you do it all day, every day for years, you end up thinking: 'Who the hell am I?' I was lucky enough to make some money, enough to let me kick back. It was a great experience and it was nice to have a couple of No.1s but the best thing about it was that the money I made allowed me to have freedom and choice in my life.”

Rick Astley (1966) British singer and songwriter

As quoted in Metro (3 September 2004)

Life, Money, Music, Hell

“While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the famous statue "Juno Ludovisi", Letter 15
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Love, God

“I have given notice. I am going away to-morrow evening, I with my tremendous memory. Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may be reserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or more important when I shall have lived my life with all its weight.
But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII

Life, Pain, Tear, Memory

“Is it one wid this you'd be, Yank — black smoke from the funnels smudging the sea, smudging the decks — the bloody engines pounding and throbbing and shaking — wid divil a sight of sun or a breath of clean air — choking our lungs wid coal dust — breaking our backs and hearts in the hell of the stokehole — feeding the bloody furnace — feeding our lives along wid the coal, I'm thinking — caged in by steel from a sight of the sky like bloody apes in the Zoo!”

Eugene O'Neill The Hairy Ape

Paddy: Scene 1
The Hairy Ape (1922)

Hell, Thinking, Sun, Heart

“This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

God, People, Truth, Peace

“After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

Home

“None of us will become perfect in a day or a month or a year. We will not accomplish it in a lifetime, but we can begin now, starting with our more obvious weaknesses and gradually converting them to strengths as we go forward with our lives. This quest may be a long one; in fact, it will be lifelong. It may be fraught with many mistakes, with falling down and getting back up again. And it will take much effort. But we must not sell ourselves short. We must make a little extra effort. We would be wise to kneel before our God in supplication. He will help us. He will bless us. He will comfort and sustain us. He will help us to do more, and be more, than we can ever accomplish or be on our own.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

God, Effort, Help, Perfection

“Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this [surrender], but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy?”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)

Life, War, People, Peace

“My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: 'Back Esperanto loyally.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

"A Philologist on Esperanto" in The British Esperantist (May 1932).
Years later, in a 1956 letter (quoted more extensively below) he stated that Esperanto and other constructed languages were "dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends."

Time

“Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

World, Thinking, Country

“On the independence of irrelevant alternatives: Morgenbesser, ordering dessert, is told by the waitress that he can choose between apple pie and blueberry pie. He orders the apple pie. Shortly thereafter, the waitress comes back and says that cherry pie is also an option; Morgenbesser says "In that case I'll have the blueberry pie."”

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

Gaming the vote: why elections aren't fair (and what we can do about it), William Poundstone, p. 50, ISBN 0-8090-4893-0.

“This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan. … Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement — not a single step back without order from higher command.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"The Order of the National Commissar for the Defense of the Soviet Union" (28 July 1942) Moscow http://www.stalingrad-info.com/order227.htm Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Law, Time

“When you're knocked on your back and you life's a flop,
When you're down on the bottom and there's nothing else but to shout to the top!”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Shout To The Top! (1984)

Life

“He did not know their songs, and only listened and was borne along on the music, until from up front there came sweeping back wave by wave down the great slow-moving river of people a tune he knew. He lifted his head high and sang it with them, in his own language as he had learned it: the Hymn of the Insurrection. It had been sung in these streets, in this same street, two hundred years ago, by these people, his people.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Hainish Cycle, (1974)

People, Music, Learning

“Well, I cannot run the political machine; I have enough on my hands without that. It is the people's business, - the election is in their hands. If they turn their backs to the fire, and get scorched in the rear, they'll find they have got to ’sit ’ on the ’blister’!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, reporting what a "friend, the private secretary of a cabinet minister", told him about a conversation with Lincoln, whom the friend had met alone in the White House in August 1864. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. The Story of a Picture. New York 1866, p. 275 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ny0OAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA275&dq=blister Posthumous attributions

People, Business

“If Jesus Christ was the being which those Mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of to die, the only real suffering he could have endured, would have been to live. His existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from Heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die. In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

World, Way, Suffering, Christ

“One of the things I love about Kate Bush is her absolute ability to take things, to pluck things that you would never expect to see on a rock album, and put them there and make them work. James Joyce's Ulysses — one of the greatest passages in all of English or Anglo-Irish literature, is Molly Bloom's glorious soliloquy ending in a sequence of Yeses. It's about embracing the world of the senses, embracing yourself, embracing sex, embracing love, embracing the future, embracing all possibility, and it goes all the way back to me, to "Wuthering Heights" — this is somebody who is not afraid of books. This is somebody who is not afraid of reading, somebody who's not afraid of writers, and who's not afraid of translating, being an intermediary, being a door, between the world of books and the world of rock.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

The Kate Bush Story (2014)

Love, Books, World, Sex

“That is the fourth course, which in future I trust the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) will not forget. The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small precedent. He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle. His precedents are generally tea-kettle precedents.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/11/maynooth-college in the House of Commons (11 April 1845). 1840s

Future, Tea, Forgetting

“When an opponent comes forward, move in and greet him; if he wants to pull back, send him on his way.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Way

“Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

About Rome.
Letter Five (29 October 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Love, Learning, Parting

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)

Justice, Parting, Personality, Gratitude

“You have done nothing, and have protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something that you are now doing. What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your institutions be wholly changed; let your State Constitutions be subverted, glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade — for what? You have brought owned labor with it to compete with your own labor, to underwork you, and to degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)

Shoe, Thinking, Change

“I left home, and I wasn’t going back until I could make a living on manga. I’m happy that my wish was granted and that I’ve gotten a series, but now I’m busy and have no time to go home. I’m kind of happy and kind of sad.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Sadness, Home, Business, Time

““What are you doing here?” I asked at last.
“Probably the same thing you are.”
“What’s that?”
She looked serious. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I went back to my knife. “Sharpening my machete.”
“I'm sharpening my mind,” she said. “There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.””

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 2
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

“Ultimately this virtual reality will go inside the brain and then really will be fully merging with all of the senses. Virtual reality ultimately will have all of the features of real reality plus a lot more that you can chose from millions of virtual environments. You can be someone else, you don’t have to pick the same boring body every time you can be different people and different situations and over time our biological bodies will become obsolete. We’ll have many bodies and we’ll look back at the idea of having one body and being dependent on just one biological body and having no back-up for a mind file as a very primitive time”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Transcendent Man (2009)

People, Idea, Reality, Sense

“And that’s the question we all must answer -- what kind of Europe, what kind of America, what kind of world will we leave behind. And I believe that if we hold firm to our principles, and are willing to back our beliefs with courage and resolve, then hope will ultimately overcome fear, and freedom will continue to triumph over tyranny -- because that is what forever stirs in the human heart.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

World, Fear, Hope, Courage

“Sir; You are directed to have a transport.. sent to the colored colony of San Domingo to bring back to this country such of the colonists there as desire to return.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Orders to the Secretary of War https://books.google.com/books?id=uEc_cG58dZQC&pg=PA19 (1 February 1864) 1860s

Color, Country

“This is a superfight. I look up at that poster and I see myself tucked in the back there. I see a guy who has.. his last gate was $1.7 million, he fought on free tv. He's never brought a dime to the company, he's never made a dime, yet he is sitting there on the front of my poster. I think that's a department that needs to be looked at, somebody is sleeping on the job.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

"UFC 197 press conference" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75xAdA3uVeY (January 2016), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC 2010s, 2016

Guy, Thinking, Sleep

“The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“No man was ever a good soldier but the man who goes into the battle determined to conquer, or not to come back from the battle field (cheers). No other principle makes a good soldier.”

Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) Irish political leader

O’Connell recalling the spirited conduct of the Irish soldiers in Wellington’s army, at the Monster meeting held at Mullaghmast. Envoi, Taking Leave of Roy Foster, by Brendan Clifford and Julianne Herlihy, Aubane Historical Society, Cork.pg 16

“One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto [Jorge Luis] Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two-Birds in the same way.”

John Barth (1930) American writer

Boston Sunday Globe, C7 (2 Nov 2008)

Way, Bird, Reading

“One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), pp. 140–141

Life, People, World, Way

“But look — he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gesture one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves (1931), p. 30

Love

“The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more.”

Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist

CBN News interview

War, People, Way, Country

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Alice Munro book Selected Stories

Selected Stories, 1968-1994 (1996)

World, Sense, Time, Housing

“Chuang Tzu's wife died and Hui Tzu came to console him, but Chuang Tzu was sitting, legs akimbo, bashing a battered tub and singing. Hui Tzu said, 'You lived as man and wife, she reared your children. At her death surely the least you should be doing is to be on the verge of weeping, rather than banging the tub and singing: this is not right!' Chuang Tzu said, 'Certainly not. When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else! However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her body was created but before the origin of life's breath. Her life's breath wrought a transformation and she had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born. Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead. She is like the four seasons in the way that spring, summer, autumn and winter follow each other. She is now at peace, lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of destiny. This is why I stopped.<nowiki/”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Ch. 18 (Martin Palmer/Elizabeth Breuily, Penguin Publishing 1996)

Life, Death, Children, Peace

“Now hell and heaven grapple on our backs and all our old pretense is ripped away. Aye, and God's icy wind will blow.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

God, Hell

“At the core, eating other creatures doesn't appeal to me. … Finally after seeing Forks Over Knives, I decided it was time to cut out all dairy and eggs as well. Being a decade long vegetarian at the time, the transition was much easier. … I also hope to use my platform to educate and transform people's perceptions on plant based diets, what plant based athletes look like, and can achieve, and to just encourage everyone, no matter what your lifestyle is, to be more mindful of the choices we have when it comes to diet and the impact those choices have on ourselves, our culture, and the environment. … I just encourage everyone, especially parents and kids, to really get educated on the corporate food system currently in place. It's causing an epidemic of sick people. Take the power back, and put the nourishment of your body, mind, and soul back into your own hands. Every little step you make to eliminate animal products in your meals is a one step closer to the big leap we all could benefit from taking.”

Austin Aries (1978) professional wrestler

" Austin Aries, vegan wrestler http://www.greatveganathletes.com/austin-aries-vegan-wrestler" by Cris Iles-Wright. Interview for greatveganathletes.com, 2014.

People, Education, Food, Hope

“I came across this Asian guy who was talking to a white girl. The sight of that filled me with rage. I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them? I thought with rage. I glared at them for a bit, and then decided I had been insulted enough. I angrily walked toward them and bumped the Asian guy aside, trying to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl. My drunken state got the better of me, and I almost fell over to the floor after a few minutes of this. They said something along the lines that I was very drunk and that I needed to get some water, so I angrily left them and went out to the front yard, where the main partying happened. Rage fumed inside me as I realized that I just walked away from that confrontation, so I rushed back into the house and spitefully insulted the Asian before walking outside again.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Beauty, Guy, Girl, Boy

“We meet neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter
It seems that the dead are there.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
'T is all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already,—
Hurrah for the next that dies!”

Bartholomew Dowling (1823–1863) Irish poet

The Revel: Time of the Famine and Plague in India, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); alternately attributed to Alfred Domett.

Laughter, Dead

“Everybody does that now. We all take pics… you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture ‘cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On taking pics.
Monster (2004)

Photo, Business, Time, Holiday

“Yes, in our world, old thinking can be a stubborn thing. That's one of the reasons why we need term limits -- old people think old ways. […] The old ways can be stubborn. But I believe the human heart is stronger. I believe hearts can change. I believe minds can open. That’s how change happens. That’s how societies move forward. It's not always a straight line -- step by halting step -- sometimes you go forward, you move back a little bit. But I believe we are marching, we are pointing towards ideals of justice and equality.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

People, World, Justice, Way

“My back was up against the wall
And you slowly just walked away
You never really heard my call
When I cried out that way
With my face against the sun
You pointed out for me to go
Then you said I was the one
Had to reap what you did sow.”

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

These Dreams of You
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Way, Sun

“You know what a poor correspondent I am. Ever since I received your very agreeable letter of the 22nd. of May I have been intending to write you in answer to it. You suggest that in political action now, you and I would differ. I suppose we would; not quite as much, however, as you may think. You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave — especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you to yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations, under the constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)

Hate, People, Feeling, Exercises

“In the face of Russian aggression, we’re not going to turn our back to our allies in Europe. We’re going to stay united in NATO, which is the world’s strongest alliance.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Convention (August 2016)

World

“Once Nasreddin was invited to deliver a sermon. When he got on the pulpit, he asked, Do you know what I am going to say? The audience replied "no", so he announced, I have no desire to speak to people who don't even know what I will be talking about! and left.
The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time, when he asked the same question, the people replied yes. So Nasreddin said, Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won't waste any more of your time! and left.
Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mulla to speak the following week. Once again he asked the same question – Do you know what I am going to say? Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered "yes" while the other half replied "no."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

So Nasreddin said Let the half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the half who don't, and left.
Alice Kelsey, Once the Hodja (1943), ISBN 0679251014

People, Question, Time

“He put his hands on the young woman's shoulders, and looked at her, in readiness for his eager embrace.
They held each other close, staggering. They said the same word at the same time, "At last!" That was all they said, but they said it over and over again in a low voice, chanting it together. Their eyes uttered the same sweet cry. Their breasts communicated it to each other. It seemed to be tying them together and making them merge into one. At last! Their long separation was over. Their love was victor. At last they were together. And I saw her quiver from head to foot. I saw her whole body welcome him while her eyes opened and then closed on him again. They made a great effort to speak to each other. The few shreds of conversation held them back a moment.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XV

Love, Communication, Effort, Time

“Is discord going to show itself while we are still fighting, is the Jew once again worth less than another? Oh, it is sad, very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time, the old truth is confirmed: "What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews."”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

22 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Truth, Sadness, Time, Fight

“In many, many fields. I expected people in the social sciences-economics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, politics, sociology, religion and numerous other areas to pick up on it. It's been somewhat of a mystery to me why even to this day, so few social scientists have discovered how useful it could be. Instead, Fuzzy Logic was first embraced by engineers and used in industrial process controls and in "smart" consumer products such as hand-held camcorders that cancel out jittering and microwaves that cook your food perfectly at the touch of a single button. I didn't expect it to play out this way back in 1965.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Response to the question: "How did you think Fuzzy Logic would be used at first?"
1990s, Interview with Lotfi Zadeh, Creator of Fuzzy Logic (1994)

People, Religion, Food, Way

“When I got back from the war in 1946 people didn't want the Mr. Smith kind of movie any more, and I refused to make war pictures.”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

On how he started doing westerns, as quoted in "Innocent Revisited" in TIME magazine (29 June 1970) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878861,00.html

War, People

“We toured Cape Coast Castle, a place for centuries where men, women, and children of this nation and surrounding areas were sold into slavery. I'll never forget the image of my two young daughters, the descendants of Africans and African Americans, walking through those doors of no return, but then walking back those doors of return. It was a remarkable reminder that while the future is unknowable, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Barack Obama: "Remarks Prior to Departure from Accra, Ghana," July 11, 2009. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=86393&st=&st1= 2009

Women, Men, Children, Future

“It is true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate that they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't in good conscience support tax cuts where the benefit went to the wealthy at the expense of middle class Americans who most need the tax relief. That's his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments at a campaign rally in Tampa; Florida (20 October 2008) http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/10/20/394027.html 2008

Quotes, Support, Forgetting

“I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

Love, Nature, Thinking, Sister

“This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead … on … arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash, which in duty bound, we had to take.”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

Monday Night Football, December 8, 1980.

Game, Football, Dead

“Ordinary men died, men of iron were taken prisoner: I only brought back with me men of bronze.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Statement of 1812, quoted in Napoleon's Cavalry and its Leaders (1978) by David Johnson Les hommes ordinaires ont succombé, disait-il; les hommes de fer ont été faits prisonniers; je ne ramène avec moi que les hommes de bronze. Mémoires du colonel Combe sur les campagnes de Russie 1812, de Saxe 1813, de France 1814 et 1815. Paris 1853. p. 184 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=KhlYAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA184

Men

“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

ABC News interview (16 August 2006)

Way, Change, Sea

“She is one with me. Love — it comes back to me. Love is an unhappy man and unhappy woman.
I awake — uttering the feeble cry of the babe new-born.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi

Love, Cry

“I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

About his distinctive light sound
Unsourced

Thinking

“I was still a kid when I gave up modeling and moved to London to devote myself to music. At the time, I had a band. Two years later, broke, I was forced to return to New York to go back to modeling and earn my living. But, when I’d call my agent, she replied to me: "You are now an old-fashioned model, you have a 'has-been' look." In fact, I could not even manage to get castings. Can you imagine what it’s like when you’re told that you’re over at the age of 18?”

Milla Jovovich (1975) Ukrainian-born american model and actress

Interview 1

Age, Music, Imagination, Fashion

“The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done — turn back and get at something profitable — no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 22 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-22.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Cats, Learning, Time, Horse

“Mr. Hitler had to leave the stadium early, but after winning I hurried up to the radio booth. When I passed near the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me and I waved back at him.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Quoted in "Owens, Back, Gets Hearty Reception" by Louis Effrat, The New York Times, 25 August 1936, p.25 http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=940CEFDC1E30E13BBC4D51DFBE66838D629EDE. 1930s

“Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people's cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

People, Truth, Justice

“I don't care whether I go back home or not. I just care how you can move our country forward, how the rule of law will be respected, and how the dignity of the Thai people must be respected.”

Thaksin Shinawatra (1949) Thai politician

Interview with World Policy http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2016/04/21/interview-thaksin-shinawatra-thailand

People, Law, Home, Country

“I should not ask anything better, but when it is a question of several painters living in community life, I stipulate before everything that there must be an abbot to keep order, and that would naturally be Gauguin. That is why I would like Gauguin to be here [in Arles ] first... If I can get back the money already spent which you [Theo] have lent me for several years, we will launch out, and try to found a studio for a renaissance and not for a decadence.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Autumn 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 544), p. 37 1880s, 1888

Life, Money, Communication, Question

“I have given up my studio & torn up my father's portrait, & have not touched a brush for six weeks nor ever will again until I see some prospect of getting back to Europe. I am very anxious to go out west next fall & get some employment, but I have not yet decided where.”

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) American painter and printmaker

Quote from her letter of July, 1871; as quoted in her biography online at https://www.marycassatt.org/biography.html

“What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Was wir Trauer nennen, ist vielleicht nicht sowohl der Schmerz über die Unmöglichkeit, unsere Toten ins Leben kehren zu sehen, als darüber, dies gar nicht wünschen zu können.
http://books.google.com/books?id=q4UdAAAAMAAJ&q=%22was+wir+Trauer+nennen+ist+vielleicht+nicht+sowohl+der+Schmerz+%C3%BCber+die+Unm%C3%B6glichkeit+unsere+Toten+ins+Leben+kehren+zu+sehen+als+dar%C3%BCber+dies+gar+nicht+w%C3%BCnschen+zu+k%C3%B6nnen%22&pg=PA562#v=onepage
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 7

Dead

“Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness — this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 78-79

Faith, Law, Forgiveness, Hell

“It was the greatest learning summer of my whole life, but then came the fall, and I was told that I’d have to go back to school again. “NO WAY, JOSÉ!” I screamed, because I now knew that at school they were trying to “break” us, not “amanzar” us.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Life, School, Way, Learning

“Morphy and Capablanca had enormous talent, they are two of my favorites. Steinitz was very great too. Alekhine was great, but I am not a big fan of his. Maybe it’s just my taste. I’ve studied his games a lot, but I much prefer Capablanca and Morphy. Alekhine had a rather heavy style, Capablanca was much more brilliant and talented, he had a real light touch. Everyone I’ve spoken to who saw Capablanca play still speak of him with awe. If you showed him any position he would instantly tell you the right move. When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties – before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since. Capablanca really was fantastic. But even he had his weaknesses, especially when you play over his games with his notes he would make idiotic statements like 'I played the rest of the game perfectly.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

But then you play through the moves and it is not true at all. But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. Radio Interview, October 16 2006 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_35_3.MP3

People, Game, Study, Light

“Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?

Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!

Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?”

Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days

Phileas Fogg avait gagné son pari. Il avait accompli en quatre-vingts jours ce voyage autour du monde ! Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L'excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d'exactitude. Mais après ? Qu'avait-il gagné à ce déplacement ? Qu'avait-il rapporté de ce voyage ?Rien, dira-t-on ? Rien, soit, si ce n'est une charmante femme, qui — quelque invraisemblable que cela puisse paraître — le rendit le plus heureux des hommes !En vérité, ne ferait-on pas, pour moins que cela, le Tour du Monde ?
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Ch. XXXVII: In Which It Is Shown that Phileas Fogg Gained Nothing by His Tour Around the World, Unless It Were Happiness

Men, World, Appearance

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Asolando, "Epilogue" (1889).

Dreams, Sleep, Fight

“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

TV interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cReCQE8B5nY after 90-day moratorium (March 1964)

Way

“Oh thinkin’ about all our younger years.
There was only you and me.
We were young and wild and free.
Now nothing can take you away from me.
We've been down that road before.
But that's over now.
You keep me coming back for more.And baby you're all that I want.
When you're lying here in my arms,
I’m finding it hard to believe we're in heaven.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Heaven
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Lying, Baby

“What your soldier wants -- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

“Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!—
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

All Lovely Things (1916)

Love, Youth, Time, Heart

“And so we can preserve great traditions -- music, food, dance, language, art -- but if there’s a tradition anywhere in Africa, or here in the United States, or anywhere in the world that involves treating people differently because you’re scared of them, or because you're ignorant about them, or because you want to feel superior to them, it's a bad tradition. And you have to challenge it. And you can't accept excuses for it. […] But the truth of the matter is, is that if you’re treating people differently just because of who they love and who they are, then there’s a connection between that mindset and the mindset that led to racism, and the mindset that leads to ethnic conflict. It means that you’re not able to see somebody else as a human being. And so you can’t, on the one hand, complain when somebody else does that to you, and then you’re doing it to somebody else. You can’t do it. There’s got to be some consistency to how you think about these issues. And that’s going to be up to young people -- because old people get stuck in their ways. […] And that doesn’t mean that everything suddenly is perfect. It just means that, young people, you can lead the way and set a good example. But it requires some courage, because the old thinking, people will push back at you. And if you don’t have the convictions and the courage to be able to stand up for what you think is right, then cruelty will perpetuate itself.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Young African Leaders Initiative Presidential Summit Town Hall speech (August 2015)

Love, People, Truth, World

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech on the floor of the US Senate in which he opposed raising the US debt limit. (16 March 2006)
2006

Children, Failure, Problem

“All my strength has come back to me. I am no longer wounded or ill. I carry her in my arms. It is difficult work to carry in your arms a being equal to yourself. Strong as you may be, you hardly suffice for it. And what I say as I look at her and see her, I say because I am strong and not because I am weak:
"You're everything for me because you are you, and I love all of you."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love, Strong

“The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

First published in The Educational Monthly of Canada, Volume 24‎ (1901), p. 29
Attributed
Context: Somehow not only for Christmas
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing
Returns to make you glad.

Christmas, Joy

Quotes about back page 8

Quotes about back
page 8