Quotes about being
page 15

“The Word is the equivalent to the spoken Truth. If things are spoken into Being through Truth, then they are good. Then what you have to decide is: if you speak the Truth, then what happens is Good, regardless of what happens. And that's faith.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Truth, Faith

“But you know, we — when we feel stress, when we feel pressure, when we’re just fed information that encourages some of our worst instincts, we tend to fall back into some of the old racial fears and racial divisions and racial stereotypes, and it’s very hard for us to break out of those and to listen and to think about people as people and to imagine being in that person’s shoes. And by the way, it’s no longer a black and white issue alone. You got Hispanic folks and you got Asian folks, this is not just the same old battles that — we’ve got this stew that’s bubbling up from people everywhere and we’re going to have to make sure that we in our own lives and our own families and work places do a better job of treating everybody with basic respect and understanding that not everybody starts off in the same situation and imaging what would it be like if you were born in an inner city and had no job prospects anywhere within a 20 mile radius or how does it feel being born in some rural county where there’s no job opportunities within in a 20 mile radius and seeing those two things as connected as opposed to separate. So, you know, we got work to do, but overall, I think on this front, the trend lines, ultimately, I think will be good.”

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

2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

People, Fear, Family, Shoe

“"They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his two bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My friend, you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say it!
"Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it. The act of slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but always ignoble. Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what we've been. But don't talk to me about military virtue because I've killed Germans."
"Nor to me," cried another in so loud a voice that no one could have replied to him even had he dared; "nor to me, because I've saved the lives of Frenchmen! Why, we might as well set fire to houses for the sake of the excellence of life-saving!"”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Life, War, Housing

“When we come to the realization that we are not this identity that the mind has created, but we're actually spirit, at that moment spirit has become conscious of itself. It's become conscious of itself as spirit, as ineffable being, as a sort of conscious presence.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Basic Teachings - Part 1: Principles of the Teaching (2009)

“The sphere of consciousness shrinks in action; no one who acts can lay claim to the universal, for to act is to cling to the properties of being at the expense of being itself, to form a reality to reality's detriment.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Temptation to Exist (1956)

Reality, Universe

“Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), p.25

Nature, Selfishness

“"Education to personality" has become a pedagogical ideal that turns its back upon the standardized-the collective and normal-human being. It thus fittingly recognizes the historical fact that the great, liberating deeds of world history have come from leading personalities and never from the inert mass that is secondary at all times and needs a demagogue if it is to move at all. The paean of the Italian nation is addressed to the personality of the Duce, and dirges of other nations lament the absence of great leaders.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Lecture, The Inner Voice, Kulturbund, Vienna (1932); quoted in The Integration of Personality, Farrar & Rinehart, NY (1939)

World, Education, History, Time

“The real alternative to being Number One is not being Number Two; it is dispensing with rankings altogether”

Alfie Kohn (1957) American author and lecturer

No Contest, chap. 9

“I firmly believe that the primary role of the tabla is saath-sangat. Which is why I enjoy being on stage with Shivji (Pt Shivkumar Sharma), Amjadbhai (Amjad Ali Khan) or Birju Maharaj. I look forward to these concerts. Unlike a solo concert where I am my own boss, here I have to strike a dialogue in the music-making process. This enriches and makes me a better musician and tabla player.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I've never wanted to fit in Abbaji's shoes: Ustad Zakir Hussain

Music

“The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

World, Feeling, Sister, Falseness

“People get annoyed with you if you treat them like they're automatons that lack free will. It's something that people find very constraining. There's something slave-like about that even. The demand that you don't have actual autonomy and, even worse, that you're not responsible for your choices – it's an insult to someone to suggest to them that they're not responsible for their decisions. To do that to someone, from a legal perspective, you have to argue something like diminished capacity. You are mentally ill, or you don't have the intellectual capacity, or you were under some substance, or you had a brain injury, and that's why you're not responsible for your actions. Part of the respect that you give other human beings is that you acknowledge that they are responsible for their actions. Part of that, too, is that if you do something good, you're also responsible for that. It's got to be more annoying than anything else to strive virtuously, to produce something of extreme value, and then to be treated as if it is a mere deterministic outcome, and that your actual choices had nothing to do with that. It can be extraordinarily punishing.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

People, Decision, Parting

“A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.
The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church or maybe their "revolutionary" political meeting.
Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspapers with the articles like "Girl 12 raped by 14 men" sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?
Women, for their own preservation, are trying to pull themselves together. And it is necessary for all of us that they do so.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

"Man – and Woman" in Vermont Freeman (Mid-February 1972) http://www.motherjones.com/files/Man_and_Woman_0.jpg; partially quoted, out of context in "Bernie Sanders: Woman 'fantasizes being raped'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bernie-sanders-woman-fantasizes-being-raped/article/2565191 by Ariel Cohen, Washington Examiner (28 May 2015) 1970s

Women, Men, Home, Girl

“On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him, because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered his head with the words, “Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 21,
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Thinking

“The idea that paradise, the proper habitat of a human being, is a walled garden – is a good one. It's an echo back to the chaos/order idea. Walls: culture. Garden: nature. The proper human habitat is a properly tended garden.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s "Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death"

Idea, Nature

“Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.”

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

Letter to Thurlow Weed (15 March 1865), reproduced in Lord Charnwood (1916), Abraham Lincoln: A Biography
1860s

Men

“Hegel … destroyed the illusion of the subject’s being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity. … However, … we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with the greatest efforts, with infinite pains?”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 16

Pain, Youth, Question, Effort

“We thought being offered the M. B. E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Quoted by Hunter Davies in The Beatles (1968)

Parting

“Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the sense this term is commonly understood. It is a system encompassing all fields of living. Islam means politics, economics, legislation, science, humanism, health, psychology and sociology. It is a system which makes no discrimination on the basis of race, color, language or other external categories. Its appeal is to all mankind. It wants to reach the heart of every human being.”

Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) Indian theologian, politician and philosopher

1978, Towards Understanding Islam, Chapter 7, Lahore, Pakistan.
1970s

Health, Religion, Color, Sense

“There are today an increasing number of people whose awareness is, in the strict sense of the phrase, without a focus; and the techniques which have transformed the framework of daily life for such people at such a prodigious pace – I am thinking particularly of the cinema and the radio – are making a most powerful contribution towards this defocalizing process. … The human creature under normal conditions finds his bearings in relation to other people, and also to physical objects, that are not only close to him in space but also linked to him by a feeling of intimacy. Of this feeling of intimacy, I would say that in itself it tends to create a focus for human awareness. One might go farther and speak of a kind of constellation, at once material and spiritual, which under normal conditions assembles itself around each human being. … This kind of constellation around the individual life is, in a great many countries, in process of dissolution.”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), pp. 146-147

Life, People, Feeling, Thinking

“As regards the Sādōcaeans and Boēthosians, they are the sectarians who are anathemised in our prayer. The followers of Jesus are "the Baptists" who adopted the doctrine of baptism, being baptized in the Jordan."”

Judah Halevi book Kuzari

Part Three, "the Baptists" refers to the word meshumadim in the jewish prayer, followed by the words "will have no hope", the hebrew word can be explained in other ways
Kuzari (1140)

“Men's minds are as variant as their faces, and, where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Benjamin Harrison V (9 March 1789), published in Washington's Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdid=book-DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdot=1, Volume IX, p. 475. 1780s

Men, Motivation, Nature, Appearance

“I am amused at my relations with her: left so ardent in January – and now what? Also I like her presence and her beauty. Am I in love with her? But what is love? Her being 'in love' with me, excites and flatters; and interests. What is this 'love?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Thursday 20 May 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Love, Beauty

“It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Billy Budd
Billy Budd (1962)

“Fast, truly exciting cars are being killed off so that pretty soon the officers will all be gone, leaving us with a field full of enlisted men.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 34

Men, Cars

“In art [the Chinese] aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XI: Chinese and Western Civilization Contrasted
1920s

Life, Art

“Although Rahu attempts to attack both the sun and the Moon, they are protected by Lord Visnu. Being very afraid of Lord Visnu’s cakra, Rahu cannot stay in front of the sun or Moon for more than a muhurta (forty-eight minutes). The phenomenon that occurs when Rahu blocks the light of the sun or Moon is called an eclipse. The attempt of the scientists of this earth to go to the Moon is as demoniac as Rahu’s attack. Of course, their attempts will be failures because no one can enter the Moon or sun so easily. Like the attack of Rahu, such attempts will certainly be failures.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 5, Chapter 24, verse 3, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/5/24/3 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Failure, Light, Sun

“But when returning into herself she [the soul] reflects; then she passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Wisdom, Way, Soul

“It is my hope that in such a way we may again, as Marx claimed, find scientific arguments in the competition between various systems, but up-to-date scientific arguments rather than obsolete ones. This more fundamental research in economics deserves relatively more attention and resources than the more superficial versions of economic research directed at forecasting or analysing very short-term fluctuations in market prices, on which quite some money is being spent to-day.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

"The Use of Models: Experience," 1969

Money, Hope, Way

“There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent.”

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French philosopher and writer

Pierre Bayle, Works, Volume II, p. 779; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 653-54: About quotation.

Happiness, Books

“The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives of American liberty from thirteen States of the confederacy; twelve of which were slaveholding communities. We need not discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slaveholding communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the slave trade. So general was conviction, the public determination, to abolish the African slave trade, that the provision which I have referred to as being placed in the Constitution, declared that it should not be abolished prior to the year 1808. A constitutional provision was necessary to prevent the people, through Congress, from putting a stop to the traffic immediately at the close of the war. Now, if slavery had been a good thing, would the Fathers of the Republic have taken a step calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves, and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures… Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built…”

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

1850s, Speech at Lewistown, Illinois (1858)

Life, Men, War, Happiness

“At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery.”

Ernest Bramah book The Wallet of Kai Lung

The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat Huang
The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900)

Universe, Cry

“I never gave a thought to any kind of danger, being all too engrossed in matters of an utterly different character.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

“When God sees the Soul pure as it was in its origins, He tugs at it with a glance, draws it and binds it to Himself with a fiery love that by itself could annihilate the immortal soul. In so acting, God so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God; and He continues to draw it up into His fiery love until He restores it to that pure state from which it first issued. These rays purify and then annihilate. The soul becomes like gold that becomes purer as it is fired, all dross being cast out. Having come to the point of twenty-four carats, gold cannot be purified any further; and this is what happens to the soul in the fire of God’s love”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Source: The Treatise on Purgatory, p. 79-80

Love, God, Soul, Drawing

“For some queer and deplorable reason most human beings are more impressed by words than by figures, to the great disadvantage of mankind.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

Jan Tinbergen. "The necessity of quantitative social research." Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series B (1973): 141-148.

“Solidarity is a beautiful word because it means that you reach out to those who are different from you and who have to cope with different circumstances because we recognize that we all share the same human needs and same values. It is the values that count most of all. The value of freedom of thought, the value of democratic practices, the value of respect for your fellow human beings.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech (2013)

Beauty, Freedom

“The dominant culture of the world teaches us that The Other is a threat, that our fellow human beings are a danger. We will all continue to be exiles in one form or another as long as we continue to accept the paradigm that the world is a racetrack or a battlefield.”

Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) Uruguayan writer

as interviewed by Jonah Raskin, "Saying More with Less," Monthly Review, vo. 61, n. 5, October 2009.

World

“Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena.... but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation….”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

System of positive polity (1852)

Mathematics, Question, Nature

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Pain, Fate, Feeling, History

“You know, there’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about what America has lost — people who tell us that our way of life is being undermined by pernicious changes and dark forces beyond our control. They tell voters there’s a “real America” out there that must be restored. This isn’t an idea, by the way, that started with Donald Trump. It’s been peddled by politicians for a long time — probably from the start of our Republic.
And it’s got me thinking about the story I told you 12 years ago tonight, about my Kansas grandparents and the things they taught me when I was growing up. See, my grandparents, they came from the heartland. Their ancestors began settling there about 200 years ago. I don’t know if they have their birth certificates — but they were there. They were Scotch-Irish mostly — farmers, teachers, ranch hands, pharmacists, oil rig workers. Hardy, small town folks. Some were Democrats, but a lot of them — maybe even most of them — were Republicans. Party of Lincoln.
And my grandparents explained that folks in these parts, they didn’t like show-offs. They didn’t admire braggarts or bullies. They didn’t respect mean-spiritedness, or folks who were always looking for shortcuts in life. Instead, what they valued were traits like honesty and hard work, kindness, courtesy, humility, responsibility, helping each other out. That’s what they believed in. True things. Things that last. The things we try to teach our kids.”

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

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)

Life, People, Way, Idea

“To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that’s on their minds, even before it’s on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a walkman so what’s going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn’t much like being talked at; he can’t conceal how easily he gets bored.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#127
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

People, Thinking

“Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on inside. And on and on.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Bennington College address (1970)

Love, People, Books, Art

“And if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, I say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the Arno which fell from the Gonfolina near to Monte Lupo, where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. And a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards Castel Florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid Arno flowed into that sea. And from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at Colle Gonzoli, laid open by the Arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. And if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between Gibraltar and Ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. And if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers — as we see them now in our time.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XVI Physical Geography

Mountain, Nature, Water, Time

“Two Years He Walks The Earth. No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, No Cigarettes. Ultimate Freedom. An Extremist. An Aesthetic Voyager Whose Home Is The Road. Escaped From Atlanta. Thou Shalt Not Return, Cause "The West Is The Best." And Now After Two Rambling Years Comes The Final And Greatest Adventure. The Climactic Battle To Kill The False Being Within And Victoriously Conclude The Spiritual Revolution! Ten Days + Nights Of Freight Trains And Hitchhiking Bring Him To The Great White North. No Longer To Be Poisoned By Civilization He Flees, And Walks Alone Upon The Land To Become Lost In The Wild [double underline under "Wild"]. Alexander Supertramp May 1992.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

Carved into a sheet of plywood inside the "Magic Bus", May 2, 1992

Home, Freedom, Victory, Falseness

“There was a dodgy digital period when things didn't sound that great, but now we are figuring that out. The basics haven't changed, which is talented human beings playing together in a room.”

Hans Zimmer (1957) German film composer and music producer

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13964918.

Change

“All things which have being, have it from the essence of God by his participation: but pure love cannot stop to contemplate this general participation coming from God, nor to consider whether in itself, considered as a creature, it receives it in the same way as do the other creatures which more or less participate with God. Pure love cannot endure such comparison; on the contrary, it exclaims with a great impetus of love; my being is God, not by participation only but by a true transformation and annihilation of my proper being.”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

Love, God, Way

“To narrate is to create, for living is just being lived.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Narrar é criar, pois viver é apenas ser vivido.

“The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, The Terrorism Hype, p. 81
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

Fight

“Now I'm really trying not to cry, but one of the best things, for all the kids who are watching tonight, who don't understand that Kurt Hummel is a character… they saw him win and that's great." -Chris Colfer, when asked about being a gay rights figure.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Interview Quotes, 68th Golden Globes Speech (2011)

Understanding, Cry

“When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know the department of philosophy which is called Natural Science; this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being the science which has to do with the causes of things, and which teaches why a thing is, and is created and destroyed; and I always agitated myself with the consideration of such questions as these… I went on to examine the decay of them, and then to the study of the heaven and earth, and at last I concluded that I was wholly incapable of these inquiries… There was a time when I thought that I understood the meaning of greater and less pretty well… that ten is more than eight, and that two cubits are more than one, because two is twice one. I should be far from imagining… that I knew the cause of any of them, indeed I should, for I cannot satisfy myself that when one is added to one, the one to which the addition is made becomes two… nor can I understand how the division of one is the way to make two; for then a different cause would produce the same effect.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Way, Imagination, Understanding, Question

“For the time being, the ominous peril of the communist parties in the West lies in their stand on foreign affairs. The distinctive mark of all present-day communist parties is their devotion to the aggressive foreign policy of the Soviets. Whenever they must choose between Russia and their own country, they do not hesitate to prefer Russia. Their principle is: Right or wrong, my Russia. They strictly obey all orders issued from Moscow. When Russia was an ally of Hitler, the French communists sabotaged their own country's war effort and the American communists passionately opposed President Roosevelt's plans to aid England and France in their struggle against the Nazis.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

War, Effort, Passion, Time

“Aim at being loved without being admired.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 38e

Love

“We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right… And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Speech at the XIIIth Party Congress (May 1924)

Way, History, Support, Thinking

“When I was an atheist it was because I rejected authority, and why not reject the supreme authority of God, particularly that boring fucker on Songs of Praise. I could reject him with the unsentimental dispatch of a clipped toenail. When I got clean from drugs and alcohol, I saw that the way I’d always seen the world was limited. It will always be limited. By yielding authority to a benign power, I found a key to transcend previous limitations. Modest limitations, like being unable to survive without the use of drugs and alcohol. Until the time when I got clean, I’d had little experience of loving, powerful authority. Authority had only been corrupt or inefficient in my experience.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love, God, Alcohol, World

“If we are to believe he is really alive with all that that implies, then we have to believe without proof. And of course that is the only way it could be. If it could be somehow proved, then we would have no choice but to believe. We would lose our freedom not to believe. And in the very moment that we lost that freedom, we would cease to be human beings. Our love of God would have been forced upon us, and love that is forced is of course not love at all. Love must be freely given. Love must live in the freedom not to love; it must take risks. Love must be prepared to suffer even as Jesus on the Cross suffered, and part of that suffering is doubt.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

The Magnificent Defeat (1966)

Love, God, Way, Freedom

“I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
1930s

God, Happiness, People, Sadness

“Each nation has its own pet sins to which it is merciful, and also sins which it treats as most abhorrent. In America, we are peculiarly sensitive about big money contributions for which the donors expect any reward. In England, where in some ways the standard is higher than here, such contributions are accepted as a matter of course, nay, as one of the methods by which wealthy men obtain peerages. It would be well-nigh an impossibility for a man to secure a seat in the United States Senate by mere campaign contributions, in the way that seats in the British House of Lords have often been secured without any scandal being caused thereby.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VIII : The New York Governorship

Men, Money, Way, Housing

“And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

211
The Symposium

Love, Beauty

“Materialistic people are sometimes called sudras, or descendants of monkeys, due to their monkey like intelligence. They do not care to know how the evolutionary process is taking place, nor are they eager to know what will happen after they finish their small human life span. This is the attitude of sudras. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s mission, this Krishna consciousness movement, is trying to elevate sudras to the brahmana platform so that they will know the real goal of life. Unfortunately, being overly attached to sense gratification, materialists are not serious in helping this movement. Instead, some of them try to suppress it. Thus it is the business of monkeys to disturb the activities of the brahmanas.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, Canto 5, Chapter 14, verse 31. (1999)

Life, People, Intelligence, Business

“It doesn't matter who you love, it's that you love. Who cares if men marry men or women marry women? In San Francisco you don't care, and I applaud that. And I applaud Mayor Newsom for being so brave.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Upon receiving GLAAD's Golden Gate Award, which honors a member of the entertainment or media community for their outstanding contribution in combating homophobia

Love, Women, Men

“The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

Law, Question, Nature, Future

“If there is continuity in the universe, it is fitting that there should be intelligent beings without bodies which are called angels.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925). p. 86

Angels, Intelligence, Universe

“Model for others. He who wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue; then others can imitate and, at the same time, rise above the one being imitated - something which people love.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 561
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Love, People, Time

“Something in all human beings makes them want to do the right thing. Not that this desire always prevails; oftentimes it is overcome and they turn towards evil. But some power is constantly calling them back. Ever there comes a resistance to wrongdoing. When bad conditions begun to accumulate, when the forces of darkness become prevalent, always they are ultimately doomed to fail, as the better angels of human nature are roused to resistance.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Angels, Nature, Evil

“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”

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

Book III, Chapter 2.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)

“In the second place, Harrison and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Diaries, General Patton : A Soldier's Life (2002) by Stanley P. Hirshson, p. 661

Animals, Personality

“For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Two Treatises of Government. The Second Treatise. Chapter 3: The State of War, §20 p. 281 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=gRNDLAK4kPUC&pg=PA281

War, Justice, Law, Suffering

“It would be better for me … that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Words spoken by Socrates, 482c
Gorgias

Men

“Do not Bodies act upon Light at a distance, and by their action bend its Rays; and is not this action (caeteris paribus) [all else being equal] strongest at the least distance?”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 1
Opticks (1704)

Light

“Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book VII, sec. 4.
Naturalis Historia

Nature, Learning

“I have never dared to face the disappointments that my true vocal range may bring. I have many fundamentals in my voice that give the appearance of it being very deep or very high, when in fact I believe it's quite narrow and limited.”

Lisa Gerrard (1961) Australian musician, singer and composer

Disappointment, Appearance

“Being on the moon had a profound spiritual impact upon my life. Before I entered space with the Apollo 15 mission in July of 1971, I was a lukewarm Christian, to say the least! I was even a silent Christian, but I feel the Lord sent me to the moon so I could return to the earth and share his Son, Jesus Christ. The entire space achievement is put in proper perspective when one realizes that God walking on the earth is more important than man walking on the moon. I believe that God walked on the earth 2,000 years ago in the person of Jesus Christ. I have totally yielded my life to the Lord’s service to tell people everywhere about the life-changing message of Christ.”

James Irwin book More Than Earthlings

More Than Earthlings: An Astronaut's Thoughts for Christ-Centered Living (1983)

Life, God, People, Feeling

“Nothing moves young people so much as to witness a sublime and virile gloom. Michelangelo's thinker staring down into the abyss of his own thoughts, Beethoven's poignantly drawn lips; these tragical masks of universal suffering touch the crude emotions of youth far more than Mozart's silver melodies or the crystalline light that radiates from Leonardo's figures. Being itself beauty, youth has no need of transfiguration. In the superabundance of its vital forces, it is allured by the tragical, and in its inexperience, is prone to accept the embraces of melancholy. That, too, is why youth is always ready for danger, and ever willing to extend a brotherly hand towards mental pain.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

Pain, People, Youth, Beauty

“That little, small voice in your mind and in your heart that makes you curious about being vegan is something you should listen to, because that’s the sound of your conscience making you be compassionate.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Longtime Vegan Bellamy Young: Variety Is Infinite", video interview with PETA (10 February 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLjdSQqq52o.

Heart

“It’s been an enormous challenge and enormously gratifying. Andrew and I wanted to travel less and the opportunity of living and working in Sydney was irresistible, especially when it came to being able to give our children roots. I also felt drawn to the stimulating kind of environment that the theatre offers in a way that is completely different from film. To direct a company has its own challenges, and there’s nothing like the terror and thrill that comes from performing live in front of an audience. So it’s been a marvellous experience for both of us.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

On running the Sydney Theatre Company with husband Andrew Upton. Quoted in: Cate Blanchett: From 'The Hobbit' to latest thriller 'Carol', Static Multimedia http://staticmultimedia.com/movies/%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BCcate-blanchett-from-the-hobbit-to-latest-thriller-carol,

Children, Way, Travel

“One is too taken up with all that one sees and hears in Paris, however strong one is, and what I do here will at least have the merit of being unlike anyone else, at least I believe so, because it will simply be the expression of what I, and only I have felt. The further I get, the more I regret how little I know, that's what hinders me the most... I don't think I will spend much time in Paris now, a month at the very most, each year.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille; as quoted in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 31.
1850 - 1870

Thinking, Strong, Time

“The idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype. There is in the psyche some superior power, and if it is not consciously a god, it is the "belly" at least, in St. Paul's words. I therefore consider it wiser to acknowledge the idea of God consciously, for, if we do not, something else is made God, usually something quite inappropiate and stupid such as only an "enlightened" intellect could hatch forth.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

C. G. Jung. 2014. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press. p. 71

God, Stupidity, Idea

“Danger of our culture. We belong to a time in which culture is in danger of being destroyed by the means of culture.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 520
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Time

“In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Chapter XXXI "The Philosophy of Logical Analysis"

Truth

“Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 110
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Evil

“Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, "How to get rid of having anything to unlearn."”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 7
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Learning

“In many ways, fear is the force that stands between human beings and their dreams. Fear of conflict and the weapons of war. Fear of a future that is different from the past. Fear of changes that are reordering our societies and economy. Fear of people who look different, or come from a different place, or worship in a different way. In some of her darkest moments, when Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned, she wrote an essay about freedom from fear. She said fear of losing corrupts those who wield it -- “Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” That's the fear that you can leave behind. We see that chance in leaders who are beginning to understand that power comes from appealing to people’s hopes, not people's fears.”

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

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

War, People, Fear, Dreams

“For example, a man who had seen a great many white swans might argue, by our principle, that on the data it was probable that all swans were white, and this might be a perfectly sound argument. The argument is not disproved by the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things often fail to fulfill our expectations is no evidence that our expectations will not probably be fulfilled in a given case or a given class of cases. Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"On Induction"
1910s, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Error, Knowledge, Animals

“Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 184.

Men, Fear

“The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Discipline Of Transcendence (1978)

Dreams, History, Reading, Past

“Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Really? Human nature being what it is, isn't it hopeless to expect that we can do better regardless of whether we remember anything or not? And what if what we remember leads us to false analogies and misunderstandings? I prefer: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility."”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Or how about this: "Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it." Source: The Grump (no. 1) http://www.errolmorris.com/content/grump/grump1.html

Nature, Sense, Past, Falseness

“One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge — that is the picture.”

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

"The Day They Signed the Treaty" (1979), p. 224
It All Adds Up (1994)

Hell, Understanding, Nature

“"Neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness are for the being abandoned to doubt." - This point in the Gita is my death sentence.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Death, Happiness, World

“Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“August: The Green Pasture”, p. 51.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

Success, Painting

“Are we surprised if a sick man cannot walk, or keep awake, or stand upright? Would it not be more surprising if he was the same man as when he was well? If we have a headache, or have slept badly, we are excused for telling incapable of work, and yet no one suspects us of always being lazy. Shall we deny a dying man the privilege we grant a man with a headache? And dare we assert that the man who lacks courage in his last agony never possessed virtue when he was well.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 172.

Courage

“The entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private property – more precisely, in that of the economy. This material, immediately perceptible private property is the material perceptible expression of estranged human life. Its movement – production and consumption – is the perceptible revelation of the movement of all production until now, i. e., the realisation or the reality of man. Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the return of man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i. e., social, existence. Religious estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but economic estrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both aspects. It is evident that the initial stage of the movement amongst the various peoples depends on whether the true recognised life of the people manifests itself more in consciousness or in the external world – is more ideal or real. Communism begins where atheism begins (Owen), but atheism is at the outset still far from being communism; indeed it is still for the most part an abstraction. The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, and that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Private Property and Communism
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

Life, People, World, Family

“One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life, Way, Mountain, Motivation

“Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

6
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

Hate

“Before the war, it was said 'the United States are' - grammatically it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war it was always 'the United States is', as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an 'is'.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

Interviewed in the documentary series The Civil War, 1990

War, Way

“Let him sensibly perceive, that the kindness he shews to others, is no ill husbandry for himself; but that it brings a return in kindness both from those that receive it, and those who look on. Make this a contest among children, who shall out-do one another in this way: and by this means, by a constant practise, children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have, good nature may be settled in them into a habit, and they may take pleasure, and pique themselves in being kind, liberal and civil, to others.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 110
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children, Pleasure, Way, Nature

“I was…attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing “simple” music, blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused of renouncing my “true Russian heritage.” People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried “sacrilege”: “The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.” To them all my answer was and is the same: You “respect,” but I love.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian composer, pianist and conductor

Expositions and Developments (1959), pp. 113-114
1950s

Love, People, Music

“Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

As quoted in "China's Xi to tread peaceful, patient path on Taiwan" http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/25/us-china-taiwan-idUSBRE91O0CC20130225 in Reuters (25 February 2013). 2010s

“"It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible. There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by Ray Monk
1910s

Sense

“Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,
Who living had no roofe to shrowd his head.”

Thomas Heywood (1574–1641) English playwright, actor, and author

Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (1635). Compare: "Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did 'go from door to door and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 6.

War, Dead

“The notion that every single human being – regardless of their peculiarities and their strangenesses and sins and crimes and all of that – has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analgous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. It's a magnificent, remarkable and crazy idea. Yet we developed it. And I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system. I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. That's the notion that everyone is equal before God. That's such a strange idea. It's very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say the natural way of viewing someone, or human beings, is in this extremely hierarchical manner where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value whatsoever, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top. But if you look way that the idea of individual sovereignty developed, it is clear that it unfolded over thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years, where it became something that was fixed in the imagination that each individual had something of transcendent value about them. And, man, I can tell you – we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. And if you're going to take that idea seriously – and you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn't be law-abiding citizens. It's shared by anyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it? Assuming that you believe what you act out – which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining belief.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

God, People, World, Law

“We go back home. We wait and then have dinner. We live these few hours. And we see ourselves alone in the house, facing each other, as never we saw ourselves, and we do not know what to do! It is a real drama of vacancy which is breaking loose. We are living together; our movements are in harmony, they touch and mingle. But all of it is empty. We do not long for each other, we can no longer expect each other, we have no dreams, we are not happy. It is a sort of imitation of life by phantoms, by beings who, in the distance are beings, but close by — so close — are phantoms!”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

Life, Happiness, Dreams, Home

Quotes about being page 15

Quotes about being
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