Quotes about bait (64 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

For Him , Love , Fish , Heart

“[Nehru's] animus against Hinduism was derived from his love for Communism. He knew next to nothing about Buddhism; the only reason be hailed it as well as its hero, Ashoka, was that in his perception Buddhism was a 'revolt' against 'reactionary' Brahminism. Had he known the truth about Buddhism, he would have dropped it like a hot potato. The same psychology made him fall for Islam. Otherwise he was equally ignorant of, and equally indifferent to all religions. The Secularism which he espoused was not borrowed from the modem West. For him, it was only a smokescreen for Hindu-baiting. The fashion was picked up fast by a servile intelligentsia and became a national cult.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

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

Love , Truth , Religion , Communication

“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning

“It would have been better if we had fought in Italy and Austria which are really at war against us, instead of allowing them to use our unfortunate Slovenians, Croats and Moslems as bait and cannon fodder.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

From interview with Vreme, May 24, 1993
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

War

“Gordon and his friends had quite an exciting time with their 'subversive ideas'. For a whole year they ran an unofficial monthly paper called the Bolshevik, duplicated with jellygraph. It advocated Socialism, free love, the dismemberment of the British Empire, the abolition of the Army and Navy, and so on and so forth. It was great fun. Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

Love , Age , Intelligence , Boy

“Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of CHRIST as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskilful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Tract 83 http://anglicanhistory.org/tracts/tract83.html (29 June 1838).

Death , God , Truth , World

“Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.”

Molière book Tartuffe

Source: Tartuffe

Beauty , Intelligence

“I definitely had an eating disorder. What was really frustrating for me was that everyone thought I was anorexic, and I wasn't. I was really depressed and self-loathing. For me, it wasn't about being thin, it was about getting rid of the bait attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped at the point of developing my voluptuousness. I just thought that if you had a body and if you had anything on you that would be grabbed, it would be grabbed. So I did purposely get rid of it…I mean, my plan is to gain enough weight that I can really be considered voluptuous, and do my 'First Taste' video. And I am preparing myself for what is going to happen. Because soon they will be saying that I'm fat. And it will hurt me.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Rolling Stone, "The Caged Bird Sings" January [1998]

Hurt

“Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low.”

Philip Sidney book Astrophel and Stella

Sonnet 39, line 1.
Astrophel and Stella (1591)

Peace , Sleep , Indifference , Wealth

“I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Boy , Courage , Fish , Sport

“Worm that I am, consumed by passion, cast as bait for selfishness, I must nonetheless love humanity. If I can do this, and insofar as I can do this, I can also love God.”

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) German philosopher

Wurm, der ich bin, von Leidenschaften zerfressen, der Selbstsucht zum Köder hingeworfen, soll ich dennoch den Menschen lieben. Wenn ich dies kann, und sofern ich dies kann, kann ich auch Gott lieben.
Source: The Concept of Religion in the System of Philosophy (1915), p. 82 http://books.google.com/books?id=rZ9RAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA82

Love , God , Passion , Selfishness

“For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

“Oh good. I love being bait for a homicidal mutilator."
Stephanie Plum”

Janet Evanovich Two for the Dough

Source: Two for the Dough

Love

“Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

“I'm investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods.
Perfect, it will keep him occupied.
In what capacity?
Bait.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

God , People , Perfection , Training

“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

People

“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Beauty
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Beauty , Beauty

“Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Pleasure

“The only clothes Amanda has are the ones on her back. (Kyrian)
From what I saw, she had no clothes whatsoever on her back. Her front neither. (Nick)
One day, Gaitor bait… (Kyrian)
Note to self- be nice to woman, keep mouth shut. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Clothes

“Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief? Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he's challenged in a debate. When he sees a protestor at a rally. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

Men , War , Fear , Imagination

“Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. Apologies to minix-users who have heard enough about linux anyway. I'd like to be able to just "ignore the bait", but … time for some serious flamefesting!”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

comp.os.minix: LINUX is obsolete, 1992-01-29, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-12-31 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/9f3c7c165aacc83f?dmode=source,
1990s, 1991-94

Time

“We'll look back and wonder who were these barbarous people, just like we look back at those who supported bull-baiting”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

"Tony Banks close to death after stroke" http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article337229.ece, The Independent (online edition), 8 January 2006.
on fox-hunting.

People , Support

“God says in Jeremiah 16 — "Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers" — that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - "Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them" — that will be the Jews — "from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust — you can't see that. So think about this — I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Herzl was? How many of you don't have a clue who he was? Woo, sweet God! Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said, "this land is our land, God wants us to live there". So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, "I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel". So few went, Herzl went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah righty? — "they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks", meaning: there's no place to hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, "my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel". Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive and say, "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God"?”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

late 2005 sermon at Cornerstone Church, quoted in

God , People , Truth , Mountain

“I had tasted the bait and knew that there was nothing more attractive and more subtle on earth than the Game. I had also observed fairly early that this enchanting Game demanded more than naive amateur players, that it took total possession of the man who had succumbed to its magic. And an instinct within me rebelled against my throwing all my energies and interests into this magic forever. Some naive feeling for simplicity, for wholeness and soundness, warned me against the spirit of the Waldzell Vicus Lusorum. I sensed in it a spirit of specialism and virtuosity, certainly highly cultivated, certainly richly elaborated, but nevertheless isolated from humanity and the whole of life — a spirit that had soared too high into haughty solitariness. For years I doubted and probed, until the decision had matured within me and in spite of everything I decided in favor of the Game. I did so because I had within me that urge to seek the supreme fulfillment and serve only the greatest master.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Life , Feeling , Game , Decision

“In the same year of AH 877 (AD 1472-73) the Sultãn made up his mind to destroy Jagat… Jagat is a very famous abode of infidelity and idolatry. Its idol is regarded as higher than all other idols in India and it is because of this idol that the place is called Dwãrkã. It is a very big nest of BrãhmaNas too. The idolaters come here from far off places and the great hardships they undergo in order to reach here is regarded by them as earnest worship… There is a fort nearby known as Bait… “…The Sultãn mounted (his horse) in the morning. The people of Jagat also got this information. They shut themselves in the fort along with Rãi Bhîm. After a few days the Sultãn entered Jagat and got its idols broken. He got its canopies pulled down and established the way of Islãm there.”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Dwarka (Gujarat) Zafaru’l-Wãlih Bi Muzaffar Wa Ãlîhi, S.A.A. Rizvi in Uttara Taimûr Kãlîna Bhãrata, Aligarh, 1959, Vol. II, p. 413-18

People , Way , Horse

“This goes back to the reason why alarmists abandoned the "global warming" term in favor of climate change. They can play this bait and switch, showing changes in climate (which always exist) and then blaming them on CO2. But there is no mechanism ever proposed by anyone where CO2 can change the climate directly without going through the intermediate step of warming. If climate is changing but we are not seeing warming, then the change can't be due to CO2.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Just where are those grid killing tornadoes anyway? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/17/just-where-are-those-grid-killing-tornadoes-anyway/, wattsupwiththat.com, June 17, 2009.
2009

Change

“The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. I, ch. 3
History of England (1849–1861)

Pain , Hate , Pleasure

“I realized that wherever she came from, whatever shaped her, she’s the quintessence of the horror behind the bright billboard. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything for and never really get. She’s the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (p. 241)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Life , Death , Money , Smile

“For angling-rod he took a sturdy oake;
For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke;
His hooke was such as heads the end of pole
To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole;
The hook was baited with a dragon's tale,—
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.”

William Davenant (1606–1668) English poet and playwright

Britannia Triumphans (1637; licensed Jan. 8, 1638; printed 1638), p. 15.
Compare:
"For angling rod he took a sturdy oak; / For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke;... His hook was baited with a dragon's tail,— / And then on rock he stood to bob for whale."
From The Mock Romance, a rhapsody attached to The Loves of Hero and Leander, published in London in 1653 and 1677, republished in Chambers's Book of Days, vol. i. p. 173; Samuel Daniel, Rural Sports, Supplement, p. 57.
"His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
His line, a cable which in storms ne'er broke;
His hook he baited with a dragon’s tail,—
And sat upon a rock, and bobb'd for whale"
William King (1663–1712), Upon a Giant’s Angling (in Chalmers's British Poets, ascribed to King).

Housing

“Postumus was clever: he guessed that this would make Cato angry enough to forget himself. And Cato rose to the bait, shouting out with a string of old-fashioned curses that in the days of his ancestor, whose memory this stammering imp was insulting, woe betide any child who failed in reverence to his elders; for they dealt out discipline with a heavy hand in those days. Whereas in these degenerate times the leading men of Rome gave any ignorant oafish lout (this was for Postumus) or any feeble-minded decrepit-limbed little whippersnapper (this was for me) full permission—
Postumus interrupted with a warning smile: "So I was right. The degenerate Augustus insults the great Censor by employing you in his degenerate family. I suppose you have told the Lady Livia just how you feel about things?"”

Robert Graves book I, Claudius

Source: I, Claudius (1934), Ch. 5.

Men , Family , Smile , Feeling

“Things should be so fixed in government, that there should be neither degrading checks, nor alluring baits to the ministry. … In some of the states, the property of preachers is free from tax. In Virginia, their persons are exempt from bearing arms. Though this is an indulgence that I feel, yet it is not consistent with my theory of politics.”

John Leland (Baptist) (1754–1841) American Baptist minister

Source: The Virginia Chronicle (1790), p. 122

Feeling , Personality

“Can't you feel 'em circlin' honey?
Can't you feel 'em swimmin' around?
You got fins to the left, fins to the right,
And you're the only bait in town.
You got fins to the left, fins to the right,
And you're the only girl in town.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Fins, written with Deborah McColl, Barry Chance, and Tom Corcoran
Song lyrics, Volcano (1979)

Feeling , Girl

“I'm not mad at Limbaugh. He expresses no shame to the game he's been running for two decades. He's an opportunistic, race-baiting, anti-black entertainer. The popularity of the gangsta element of hip-hop music culture has allowed Limbaugh to proudly claim that his form of entertainment is mainstream.”

Jason Whitlock (1967) American TV person

" Keep Rush Limbaugh Out of the NFL http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/20227", Fox Sports, October 13, 2009.

Music , Game , Madness

“He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. … He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship. …This is a resource that you can either mine or not. It's not as blatant as we're talking about. You don't think about it that much. You don't immediately realize how old she was at the time. It would be subtle. She could talk about it. "I was jail bait the last time we were together." She can flaunt it at him, but at the same time she never says, "I was fifteen years old." Even if we don't mention it, when we go to cast the part we're going to end up with a woman who's about twenty-three and a hero who's about thirty- five.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

1970s

Girl , Thinking , Time , Parting

“The same critics who spend hundreds of pages discussing various peculiarities of the author's supposed nature often devote none to that much more significant person, the reader for whom he wrote. […] It is a failure that disqualifies a great deal of head-scratching and hypothesizing. It amounts to saying that the letter is more important than its recipient, the signal more important than the changing image created from it, the bait more important than the fish.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Endangered Species (1989), Introduction
Nonfiction

Failure , Nature , Fish , Change

“The fears of children were simpler and usually more powerful. The fears of children could often be summoned up in a single face… and if bait were needed, why, what child did not love a clown?”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Love , Children , Fear

“If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate.
Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring.
This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Ho Ho Ho, Merry Imus!" (11 April 2007).
2007

Women , Men , Flowers , Kiss

“Vegans and vegetarians are commonly baited by nonvegetarians with “what if” scenarios that typically have no relevance to or bearing on most people's real-life situations.”

Joanne Stepaniak (1954) American writer

Source: Being Vegan (2000), p. 44

Life , People

“Dweller in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation, mark!
Who in widow weeds appears,
Laden with unhonoured years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse?”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Ode on Mrs. Oswald.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion … who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who … can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters … Milton was not one of these. He had lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and worth, [not] to be tempted by such idle baits.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Milton's Sonnets"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Life , Men , Fashion , Time

“Mary? After all, what was she? Just another babe. True, I was disgusted with her for letting herself be used as bait. It was all right for her to use her femaleness as an agent; the Section had to have female operatives. There have always been female spies, and the young and pretty ones have always used the same tools.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Puppet Masters

Source: The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 10 (p. 61)

“This is an industry, it's a business. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap.”

Ted Koppel (1940) television journalist

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/tv/mmx-0511200452nov20,0,991635.story?coll=mmx-television_heds

Money , Business

“There's always a sense of camaraderie between bands. The only thing that I ever remember that starts to go outside of the normal healthy competition was when Kurt [Cobain] was slamming Pearl Jam. Once you get outside of your local little scene, lot of cases, writers will bait you and lead you down that path as cunningly as they can. I've seen it happen dozens of times. I've had people say, "Well, so-and-so said this about you, what do you say about that?" And they might be misquoting them, or maybe that's not what that person meant, or maybe that person was just in a bad mood. It's provoked out of you. They'll get you in a position where you start firing and they'll throw out little things about different people. But everyone that anyone would know as a successful Seattle band, or even an integral part of the scene, are all friends. Always have been.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

People , Mood , Sense , Time

“Bull and bear-baiting is not encouraged by persons of rank and opulence in the present day; and when practiced, which rarely happens, it is attended only by the lowest and most despicable part of the people; which plainly indicates a general refinement of manners and prevalency of humanity among the moderns; on the contrary, this barbarous pastime was highly relished by the nobility in former ages, and countenanced by persons of the most exalted rank, without exception even of the fair sex.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 257
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

People , Age , Sex , Parting

“Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world
and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,
for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,
wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book VII, line 356
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Men , World , Dreams , Hope

“Should swim along, staying and conquering
In this complex ocean of life with desire not attaching.
Lovingly in this birth, like a lotus leaf on a drop of rain
Singing Rama’s name, those who want to win and gain.
Like the cashew nut on its fruit, just touching the life path
Not keeping any desire, those devoted to the brave Srinath.
Like a fish that grabs the bait meat and gets hooked sadly
Not getting cheated, thinking of Purandara Vittala, the Lord only.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this three examples are cited by Das cautioning against desire as quoted here [Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 77]

Life , Birth , Thinking , Fish

“Never fish for praise; it is not worth the bait.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Fish

“I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?"”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), Ch. 3.

People , Thinking , Sense , Fish

“For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death; and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the Divine doctrines of the Essens about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Death , Men , God

“The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder…
Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Love , Truth , Fear , Idea

“Many a time I have sat in the jungle in Central India watching a bait, in the form of a bullock or calf tied to a tree, awaiting the arrival of the lord of the forest, and put there as a trap to entice him to his doom. On this occasion, I have exactly the same feelings as those of the miserable animal whom I have so often looked upon in that position, and, if I compare myself to that bait, I may compare my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) to the tiger. I hope that hon. Members and the right hon. Gentleman himself will remember, however, that there is waiting for the tiger a pair of lynx eyes and a sure and safe rifle to ensure his ultimate fate.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Speech on Indian Constitutional Reform http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/mar/29/indian-constitutional-reform (29 March 1933).

Fate , Hope , Feeling , Tree

“All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. All Praise is due to Allah. So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

Suffering , Loss , Clothes

“I have already informed my readers, that bull-baiting, or worrying of bulls with dogs, was one of the spectacles exhibited by the jugglers and their successors. It is also necessary to observe, that this cruel pastime was not confined to the boundaries of the bear-gardens; but was universally practiced on various occasions, in almost every town or village throughout the kingdom, and especially in market towns, where we find it was sanctioned by the law; and in some of them, I believe, the bull-rings, to which the unfortunate animals were fastened, are remaining to the present hour. It may seem strange, that the legislature should have permitted the exercise of such a barbarous diversion, which was frequently productive of much mischief by drawing together a large concourse of idle and dissipated persons, and affording them an opportunity of committing many grross disorders with impunity. Indeed a public bull-baiting rarely ended without some riot and confusion.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 277
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Law , Dogs , Exercises , Universe

“It is important to recognise that comparison is not a method or even an academic technique; rather, it is a discursive strategy. There are a few important points to bear in mind when one wants to make a comparison. First of all, one has to decide, in any given work, whether one is mainly after similarities or differences. It is very difficult, for example, to say, let alone prove, that Japan and China or Korea are basically similar or basically different. Either case could be made, depending on one’s angle of vision, one’s framework, and the conclusions towards which one intends to move. (In the jingoist years on the eve of the First World War, when Germans and Frenchmen were encouraged to hate each other, the great Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer enjoyed baiting both sides by saying that contemporary Parisians and Berliners had far more in common than either had with their respective medieval ancestors.) Here I have tried, as perhaps offering a useful example, to show how the comparative works I wrote between the early 1970s and the 2000s reflected, in their real difference, changing perspectives, framings and (political) intentions.”

Benedict Anderson (1936–2015) American political scientist

Benedict Anderson, " Frameworks of Comparison: Benedict Anderson reflects on his intellectual formation http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n02/benedict-anderson/frameworks-of-comparison," London Review of Books, Vol. 38, No. 2. 21 January 2016, p. 15-18

Hate , War , World , Change

“[About Algol W] It was not only a worthy successor of ALGOL 60, it was even a worthy predecessor of PASCAL […] I was astonished when the working group, consisting of all the best known international experts of programming languages, resolved to lay aside the commissioned draft on which we had all been working and swallow a line with such an unattractive bait.”

C. A. R. Hoare (1934) British computer scientist

The Emperor's Old Clothes

“Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.”

Étienne de La Boétie book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Part 2
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Children , People , Pleasure , Books

“I've been haunting bookshops and hiding behind display signs of TV chefs (Nigella is excellent to hide behind as she has a huge arse) as I spy on the short fiction section and see if anyone's tempted by my sweet bait. I've also been counting how many copies of the book are left in shops, and I've been covering other “upcoming” authors’ books with mine.”

Kevin Barry (1902–1920) 18 year old medical student and Irish republican, executed by Britain.

Interview with Kevin Barry (c. 2012)

Books

“Fishing … is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

Fish , Sport

“Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet choose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; … that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; and therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust or emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religions opinion, is depriving him injudiciously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow-citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emolumerits, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, … and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Chapter 82 (1779). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf, pp. 438–441. Comparison of Jefferson's proposed draft and the bill enacted http://web.archive.org/web/19990128135214/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/bill-act.htm
1770s

Confidence , Dependency , Self-confidence , Falseness