Quotes about being
page 20

“… like a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“We, the men of to-day and of the future, need many qualities if we are to do our work well. We need, first of all and most important of all, the qualities which stand at the base of individual, of family life, the fundamental and essential qualities—the homely, every-day, all-important virtues. If the average man will not work, if he has not in him the will and the power to be a good husband and father; if the average woman is not a good housewife, a good mother of many healthy children, then the state will topple, will go down, no matter what may be its brilliance of artistic development or material achievement. But these homely qualities are not enough. There must, in addition, be that power of organization, that power of working in common for a common end […]. Moreover, the things of the spirit are even more important than the things of the body. We can well do without the hard intolerance and arid intellectual barrenness of what was worst in the theological systems of the past, but there has never been greater need of a high and fine religious spirit than at the present time. So, while we can laugh good-humoredly at some of the pretensions of modern philosophy in its various branches, it would be worse than folly on our part to ignore our need of intellectual leadership. […] our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and our civilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which most highly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of science during the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never has philanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development as now; and though we must all beware of the folly, and the viciousness no worse than folly, which marks the believer in the perfectibility of man when his heart runs away with his head, or when vanity usurps the place of conscience, yet we must remember also that it is only by working along the lines laid down by the philanthropists, by the lovers of mankind, that we can be sure of lifting our civilization to a higher and more permanent plane of well-being than was ever attained by any preceding civilization.”

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

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

Life, Men, Children, Family

“In mathematics there is a certain way of seeking the truth, a way which Plato is said first to have discovered and which was called "analysis" by Theon and was defined by him as "taking the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth which is uncontested"; so, on the other hand, "synthesis" is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conclusion and comprehension of the thing sought." And although the ancients set forth a twofold analysis, the zetetic and the poristic, to which Theon's definition particularly refers, it is nevertheless fitting that there be established also a third kind, which may be called rhetic or exegetic, so that there is a zetetic art by which is found the equation or proportion between the magnitude that is being sought and those that are given, a poristic art by which from the equation or proportion the truth of the theorem set up is investigated, and an exegetic art by which from the equation set up or the proportion, there is produced the magnitude itself which is being sought. And thus, the whole threefold analytic art, claiming for itself this office, may be defined as the science of right finding in mathematics…. the zetetic art does not employ its logic on numbers—which was the tediousness of the ancient analysts—but uses its logic through a logistic which in a new way has to do with species [of number]…”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

Source: In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591), Ch. 1 as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934-1936) Appendix.

Truth, Art, Way, Mathematics

“My abandonment of former beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a relation to fact, and that facts in general are nonhuman; I still think that man is cosmically unimportant, and that a Being, if there were one, who could view the universe impartially, without the bias of here and now, would hardly mention man, except perhaps in a footnote near the end of the volume; but I no longer have the wish to thrust out human elements from regions where they belong; I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to the 'real' world. I used to think of sense, and of thought which is built on sense, as a prison from which we can be freed by thought which is emancipated from sense. I now have no such feelings. I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher.”

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

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 213

Truth, World, Travel, Feeling

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. There is evil for you. We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly evil wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. I give you a holy word: DISARM.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Statement of the husband of the woman killed in the accident
Deadeye Dick (1982)

Evil

“Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant.”

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

Essays Volume II, Essay XIV: "Private Judgment" http://www.newmanreader.org/works/essays/volume2/private.html British Critic (July 1841).

Evil

“I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.”

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

Remark to Gen. Edward H. Ripley (5 April 1865), recalled during Ripley's speech http://books.google.com/books?id=1OoSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353&dq=believe at the 41st annual meeting of the Reunion Society of Vermont Officers (1 November 1904) Posthumous attributions

“With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped inbronze. Each victory added another coat.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part I, Chapter 2, Strategy, p. 34
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Change, Success, Victory

“I believe Africa’s progress will also depend on democracy, because Africans, like people everywhere, deserve the dignity of being in control of their own lives. We all know what the ingredients of real democracy are. They include free and fair elections, but also freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly. These rights are universal. […] And I have to proclaim, democracy is not just formal elections. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance. And I'm convinced that nations cannot realize the full promise of independence until they fully protect the rights of their people.”

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

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

People, Democracy, Freedom, Universe

“It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Jeremiah 7.
Commentaries

God

“Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. III, 30.

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

Willa Cather book Death Comes for the Archbishop

Book I, Ch. 4
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

“Let knowledge be guessed by the sign of equality to all beings.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sri Ramana Gita

Knowledge

“Learn every day. Human beings must learn and know. It is only by learning and knowing, that they can raise their ‘level’. People are affected by what their eyes see, what their ears hear and by how they learn.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from Proverbs Blog https://providencepath.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/jung-myung-seok-learn-every-day/

People, Learning

“Time, as succession of past, present and future, really has its being totum simul for the thought of a spectator, and this justifies its ‘spatialized’ presentation as a line of which we can see the whole at once.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 150

Time, Success, Past, Future

“We believe in taking care of each other, and in lifting each other up, and leaving no one behind, and in meeting the collective responsibilities that we can only meet together: The security of our nation. The education for our children. Dignity for our seniors. Equal rights for all of our citizens. Health care -- which is now a right for everybody. And the care and well-being of our veterans and your families. That is a responsibility for all of us, not just a few. We all have to do our part.”

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

2016, Convention (August 2016)

Children, Health, Education, Family

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

Alice Munro book Selected Stories

Selected Stories, 1968-1994 (1996)

World, Sense, Time, Housing

“The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the “learned,” who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.”

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

Source: Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988), p. 15

Books, World, Study, Learning

“When earth meets with fire and is dissolved by the keenness of it, it would drift about, whether it were dissolved in fire itself, or in some mass of air or water, until the parts of it meeting and again being united became earth once more; for it never could pass into any other kind. But when water is divided by fire or by air, it may be formed again and become one particle of fire and two of air: and the divisions of air may become for every particle broken up two particles of fire. And again when fire is caught in air or in waters or in earth, a little in a great bulk, moving amid a rushing body, and contending with it is vanquished and broken up, two particles of fire combine into one figure of air: and when air is vanquished and broken small, from two whole and one half particle one whole figure of water will be composed. Let us also reckon it once again thus: when any of the other kinds is intercepted in fire and is divided by it through the sharpness of its angles and its sides, if it forms into the shape of fire, it at once ceases from being divided…”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 57a, Tr. R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888) pp. 203-205. https://books.google.com/books?id=q2YMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA203 Timaeus

Water, Parting

“I do not mean to manipulate others with the motivation of self-interest. But with good use of wisdom,
to benefit self and others while being empathetic to all sentient beings.”

Richard Gombrich (1937) British Indologist

"When I say I'm a Buddhist"[citation needed]

Wisdom, Motivation

“I don’t know if race made it more difficult, but definitely it made me stronger, knowing that I [had] no excuse [for] making mistakes or being kind of so-so, because maybe I [wouldn’t] be accepted as a white person [would’ve been]. But if [I was] better, they had no choice but to accept it and say, ‘She did so well.”

Surya Bonaly (1973) French figure skater

From the ESPN documentary Rebel on Ice http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=13416371&categoryid=12740388 (2015); as quoted in " The Rebellious, Back-Flipping Black Figure Skater Who Changed the Sport Forever https://newrepublic.com/article/122561/back-flipping-black-figure-skater-who-changed-sport-forever", in the New Republic (18 August 2015).

Personality

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

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

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

Life, Death, Children, Peace

“There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

https://archive.is/20130704013203/www.ejpress.org/article/10660

“I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we're really qualified to take on the responsibility we're designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth?”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Truth, Communication, Courage, Thinking

“Absolute greatness will never be great and also small, but that greatness in us or in the concrete will never admit the small or admit of even being exceeded; instead of this, one of two things will happen—either the greater will fly and retire before the opposite, which is the less, or the advance of the less will cease to exist; but will not, if allowing or admitting smallness, be changed by that…nor can any other opposite which remains the same ever be or become its own opposite, but either passes away or perishes in the change.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Change, Flying

“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Fichte Studies § 651

Perfection

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

Austin Aries (1978) professional wrestler

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

People, Education, Food, Hope

“The Jat community votes for non-sectarian in lines far greater proportion than any other in Meerut. They are un-educated, live in villages, have no pull in the public, economic or administrative life of the country and yet would not reconcile themselves to an inferior position in society. They would not put with the taunt of being a Jat. Fifty percent of the Hindu Jats within a short period of 40 years (1891-1931) left their old faith to turn Sikhs or Muslims so that nobody could any longer treat them with contempt.”

Charan Singh (1902–1987) prime minister of India

His negative reaction in a letter addressed to Nehru who had made a remark “jatpan’ [jat characteristics] in jest, in: p. 197
Profiles of Indian Prime Ministers

Life, Education, Faith, Communication

“Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Men, Error, Nature, Memory

“Movement will cease before we are weary of being useful.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"When woman is boss", Colliers, January 30, 1926

Communication

“"I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!"
"You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you."
Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I talk to her?"
"You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had you."
"She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely."”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

Love, Boy

“You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

People, Family, Thinking

“It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Ten (26 December 1908)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Thinking, Decision, Solitude

“I am the poor man's poet; because I am poor myself and I have known what it is to be in love. Not being able to pay them in presents, I pay my mistresses in poetry.”
Pauperibus vates ego sum, quia pauper amavi; Cum dare non possem munera, verba dabam.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book II, lines 165–166 (tr. J. Lewis May)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

Love

“In Nekhludoff, as in all people, there were two beings; one spiritual, who sought only such happiness for himself as also benefited others; and the animal being, seeking his own happiness for the sake of which he is willing to sacrifice that of the world.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 14

Happiness, People, World, Animals

“Right now the only thing that I am concerned with in my life is being an artist … I had to suppress it for so many years in high school because I was made fun of but now I'm completely insulated in my box of insanity and I can do whatever I like.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

The world goes crazy for Lady Gaga (2009)

Life, School, Box

“I believe that the only protection that man has against himself is the trust and confidence of his friends. For example, my cynicism tells me that the man who makes a career of "people-hunting" or "people-hating" is a man who desperately fears being chased or not loved.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

This I Believe (1951)

Love, Hate, People, Fear

“The original Jethro Tull was a 19th century English agriculturist who invented a seed drill you see… the first automatic process where by small holes were made in Mother Earth and even smaller seeds were deposited one at a time and neetly covered over as a cat does after having being naughty.”

Ian Anderson (1947) Scottish musician, leader of Jethro Tull

GTK Ep 899. Broadcast 12th August 1974, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, interviewed by Gary Hyde.

Cats, Time

“I will not change my opinion, dear people, it is 5 minutes before twelve. Not just here in Holland. but in the whole of Europe. And is that what you want? I take my stand for this country, that which has been build up in the last five or six centuries. Damn it, we have a fifth column… Okay, let me tell you now straight the way it is! A fifth column of people who want to destroy this country! I will not go for that, and I say, "you can stay here, but you must adapt." I must hear "Allah is great", that I am a "dirty pig"… you are a "Christian dog". That is what they say, and you think that is okay… And I have so far been very reserved. I have never repeated that… but you accept being walked over, and I will not let that happen anymore. And that's where I get all those seats from (in the polls). Because this country is fed up! … C'est ça! That is what I stand for. And if I must express that otherwise, well, fine… but it is about your children, your grandchildren. For what else is this about? Must I explain more here? I can not do it any other way, and will not do it any other way. Then I would rather be finished off. Okay, fine… but the problem sir, will remain. That will remain. People have had more than enough of it. Damn it, in my city, Moroccan boys, Turkish boys… who do not rob the Turks, the Moroccans, but rob you and me and little old ladies. And the police? What they do? Damn it… nothing. They tell you: "If you say that, you discriminate". And that is what I express from the Dutch people. And I stand for it, I stand for it. Is that not allowed? Okay, I respect that. C'est ça”

Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002) Dutch politician

That’s all Nederland 2 documentary "The Night of Fortuyn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgM9JozWOf0

Children, People, Dogs, Way

“We admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul existed before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Death, Soul, Birth

“What, in substance, both the Esquimaux wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this: the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." … "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

.
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Dreams, Waiting, Housing, Dead

“Something that's everything lacks limitation… There are advantages to not being able to do things. If you had everything you wanted at every moment at your fingertips, then there's nothing. There's no story. It's like Superman being able to bounces hydrogen bombs off of him. The whole series died because he didn't have any flaws. There's no story without limitation.”

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

Other

“He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat.”

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

Source: Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848), p. 146

Fear

“As we meet here today, men and women and children are being tortured, detained and murdered by the Syrian regime. Thousands have been killed, many during the holy time of Ramadan. Thousands more have poured across Syria’s borders. The Syrian people have shown dignity and courage in their pursuit of justice -- protesting peacefully, standing silently in the streets, dying for the same values that this institution is supposed to stand for. And the question for us is clear: Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?”

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

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

Women, Men, Children, People

“As for New England as a seat of weirdness—a little historic reflection will show why it is more naturally redolent of the bizarre & the sinister than any other part of America. It was here that the most gloomy-minded of all the colonists settled; & here that the dark moods & cryptic hills pressed closest. An abnormal Puritan psychology led to all kinds of repression, furtiveness, & grotesque hidden crime, while the long winters & backwoods isolation fostered monstrous secrets which never came to light. To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred? Rhode Island does not share these tenedencies—its history & settlement being different from those of other parts of New England—but just across the line in the old Bay State the macabre broods at its strongest.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (9 October 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 423
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, History, Mood, Nature

“The principle is that what is Romanian we'll put in Bucovina: what is foreign, Ukrainian, etc. we'll put in camps and from there dispatch them to the Slavic countries. (…) Gentlemen, you shall consider the need for this people to profit - in this desaster - to be puriefied, to be homogeneous. We're without mercy. I don't think at man; I think at the general interests of the Romanian people, who dictate for us to no longer be lenient as we were until now which resulted in our country being filled with so many neighbours who did for us the worst evil.”

Ion Antonescu (1882–1946) prime minister and conducător of Romania during World War II

People, Thinking, Evil, Country

“For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

God

“I've been 15 years in the nut ward, for trying to stop the trees from being cut down, from trying to rearrange the lifestyle of a bunch of people who don't want to change. But they're gonna change because a cold wind is blowing. You're gonna change or else there's going to be no life left on the planet Earth.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq2aN9tYE by Penny Daniels (1989)

Life, People, Tree, Change

“The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.
I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales's secretary.
You know I didn't think they'd rake through my bins, I didn't expect to be photographed on the beach through long lenses. I never dreamt it would impact my daughter's life negatively, which at times it has.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

As quoted in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, on Newsnight, as quoted in 'Harry is a lot, lot, lot angrier in this book' in The Telegraph (20 June 2003) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3596993/Harry-is-a-lot-lot-lot-angrier-in-this-book.html) 2000s

Life, Books, Home, Imagination

“It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Love, Wisdom, Beauty, Business

“If police organizations and departments acknowledge that there's a problem and there's an issue, then that, too, is going to contribute to real solutions. And, as I said yesterday, that is what's going to ultimately help make the job of being a cop a lot safer.”

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

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rajoy of Spain After Bilateral Meeting https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/10/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rajoy-spain-after-bilateral (10 July 2016) 2016

Problem, Help

“And then I realized I was being checked out by GUYS! And I know they were checking me out, because they were looking at me like I look at tacos. And I thought to myself, "Oh my god, I can turn on a man! [Grins and struts] Shoot!" And I called my girlfriend, and I said, "Baby, you better not mess this up; I have options!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy (2009)

God, Guy, Baby

“Moreover, in Christ's second discourse, the mode in which the mention of Jonas is understood in Matthew, verse 40, is wholly unsuited to the context and to the application which even there is made of it; and if we do not take this for a later interpolation, for which no adequate inducement suggests itself, it must be considered as an erroneous comment of the reporter, which he has mixed up with Christ’s own words, of course without being conscious of it, a thing which might easily happen when his recollection had become dim and confused. In addition to the signs already adduced of Matthew’s reporter having been so circumstanced comes the fact, that he omits the little incident related in Luke, which intervenes between Christ’s two discourses, namely, the admiring ejaculation of a woman in the crowd and the reply to it.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar

Friedrich Schleiermacher, A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke https://archive.org/details/gospelofstluke00schluoft, 1825, pp. 185–186

Christ

“The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one's mood…. coming in from a dark bedroom in the morning into the sitting room one will, for example, see everything in a bluish light. Even the deepest shadows are topped with bright light. After a while one will accustom oneself to the light and the shadows will be deeper and everything will be seen more sharply. If an atmosphere of this kind is being painted it won't do merely to sit and gaze at everything 'just as one sees'. One must paint precisely the fleeting moment of significance – one must capture the exact experience separating that significant moment from the next – the exact moment when the motif struck one… In some circumstances a chair may seem to be just as interesting as a human being. In some way or another it must have caught the interest in which case the onlooker's interest must somehow be engaged in the same way. It's not the chair that should be painted, but what the person has felt at the sight of it [written in Saint Cloud, 1890 - probably related to the chair of Vincent van Gogh”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

Quote of Munch from: T 2770, (1890); as cited in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 83-84
1880 - 1895

Way, Mood, Light, Painting

“Some people think that - excuse my expression here - that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No. Parenthood is about being responsible. This is clear.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Said to the press on the flight back from the 2018 Papal visit to the Philippines in response to a question about what he would say to families who had more children than they could afford because the Church forbids artificial contraception. As reported on BBC news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30890989 and other outlets. (19 January 2018) 2010s, 2018

People, Thinking

“Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.”

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

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

War

“At this point, an urgent question arises:… Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 41.

Law, Question, Nature, Time

“There's nothing wrong with being incompetent.… It just means you don't have to do as much.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

NBC interview (1987)

“When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.”

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

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Idea, Thinking, Appearance

“This is a vicious circle. This is the fishmarket. This is working for survival. This is survival of the fastest. This is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. A head afraid is a head haunted. A head haunted is a head hunted. Run for your life. Run from the guillotine to a head hunter who saves your head and raises your salary—so you’ll be caught in the red of the fishmarket buying gadgets to distract your fragile imagination that is cut in the red market of blood—running and escaping—running again—changing your resume to update the fear you feel of being unemployed tomorrow—in the streets—and from there to welfare—and from there to begging.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Life, World, Fear, Feeling

“The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; then it is that man finds himself outside nature and at strife with himself.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book IV

Love, Spring, Nature, Sense

“And are not the temperate exactly in the same case? They are temperate because they are intemperate—which may seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish temperance. For there are pleasures which they must have, and are afraid of losing; and therefore they abstain from one class of pleasures because they are overcome by another: and whereas intemperance is defined as "being under the domination of pleasure," they overcome only because they are overcome by pleasure.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Pleasure

“We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”

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

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Life, Men, Freedom

“Seen as a whole, the direction of theological thinking has been characterized by a transference away from attention to the being per se of supernatural realities, and toward attention to their relationship with man, with the world, and with the problems and the affirmations of all those who for us represent the others.”

Yves Congar (1904–1995) Dominican priest and cardinal

Situation et tâches (1967), p. 27, as cited in Theology of Liberation (1973), pp. 7-8

World, Problem, Thinking, Reality

“What’s at stake in this debate goes far beyond a few months of headlines, or passing tensions in our foreign policy. When you cut through the noise, what’s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are in a world that is remaking itself at dizzying speed. Whether it’s the ability of individuals to communicate ideas; to access information that would have once filled every great library in every country in the world; or to forge bonds with people on other sides of the globe, technology is remaking what is possible for individuals, and for institutions, and for the international order. So while the reforms that I have announced will point us in a new direction, I am mindful that more work will be needed in the future. One thing I’m certain of: This debate will make us stronger. And I also know that in this time of change, the United States of America will have to lead. It may seem sometimes that America is being held to a different standard. And I'll admit the readiness of some to assume the worst motives by our government can be frustrating. No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs, or Russia to take privacy concerns of citizens in other places into account. But let’s remember: We are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront of defending personal privacy and human dignity.”

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

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

People, World, Communication, Motivation

“It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical.”

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

Logical Atomism (1924)
1920s

People, Hope, Error, Science

““A god intervened, Captain Paran. Returned the life to you. You might think it was on your behalf, but I’m afraid there wasn’t any altruism involved. Are you following me?”
“I’m being used,” Paran stated flatly.
She raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t bother you?”
Paran shrugged and turned away. “It’s nothing new,” he muttered.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 9 (p. 263)

Life, God, Thinking

“The art of war consists in being always able, even with an inferior army, to have stronger forces than the enemy at the point of attack or the point which is attacked.”

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

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

War, Art

“Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.”

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

1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)

Life, Men, Way, Feeling

“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Human Options (1981)

Loneliness, Missing You

“The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out-and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 418

Cars, Imagination, Light

“As regards to its use on the coinage we have actual experience by which to go. In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of having appealed to any high emotion in him. But I have literally hundreds of times heard it used as an occasion of, and incitement to, the sneering ridicule which it is above all things undesirable that so beautiful and exalted a phrase should excite.”

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

1900s, "In God we Trust" letter (1907)

Life, Beauty, Time

“We ought to be able to see more clearly just for what reason the mass-man is so easily turned into a fanatic. What I seem to myself to have grasped is this, that such permeability is due to the fact that man, that the individual, in order to belong to the mass, to be a mass-man, has had, as a preliminary, though without having had the least awareness of it, to divest himself of that substantial reality which was linked to his initial individuality or rather to the fact of his belonging to a small actual group. The incredibly sinister role of the press, the cinema, the radio, has consisted in passing that original reality through a pair of flattening rollers to substitute for it a superimposed pattern of ideas and images with no real roots in the deep being of the subject of this experiment.”

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

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), pp. 140-141

Idea, Reality

“The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous — cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Elle [la nation juive] ose étaler une haine irréconciliable contre toutes les nations; elle se révolte contre tous ses maîtres. Toujours superstitieuse, toujours avide du bien d’autrui, toujours barbare, rampante dans le malheur, et insolente dans la prospérité. Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations (1753), Introduction, XLII: Des Juifs depuis Saül http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/11/07INTFIN.html#i42 Citas

“In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The “sage” of antiquity does not have the same firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 92

Love, Fear

“Between the ages of 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God, but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfilment, was given to me during my body's sleep by several teachers, some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane. Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded, the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these Beings became more and more clear and frequent.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

At the young age when she started developing her developing interest in occultism, quoted in "Birth and Girlhood". Also in 125th Birth Anniversary of The Mother, 21st February, 2003 by Mother (2003) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=gX7XAAAAMAAJ, p. 4

Life, God, Age, Sleep

“I was sitting alone in an empty locker room, left leg injured. I need to prove my worth when the opportunity is given. I look at my leg, powerless, and wonder why I had to get hurt in this moment. Then, Coach Hiddink appears out of nowhere with an interpretor and speaks to me in English. Not understanding, I stare at the interpretor. He says you have great mentality. With that kind of mental strength, you will become a great player. I was shocked. Before I could murmur the easy 'thank you' in English, he was gone. My heart was pounding. The coach always seemed to be so far away, but he came to me and told me I have great mentality. Somewhere inside, energy was rousing up…. mentality. I have nothing else to boast, but one thing I could do is to never give up. I will endure all hardships, even if I would die from it. And I will keep this mentality…. in the entire World Cup, I played with those words ringing in my ears. With my mentality, I can become a great player. I kicked the ball and ran around the field clinging on to those words. For better or for worse, I am calm and quiet, so not many people take notice of me. But I was sure that Coach Hiddink would be looking at me and urging me to move on. This gave me courage. If it was not for Coach Hiddink, I would not be where I am now. With the words 'where I am now,' I am not referring to me becoming famous or being able to purchase a spacious condo for my parents. I am referring to the fact that I learned to love myself more. Within a minute, what Coach Hiddink said to me changed my life forever. I feel a bit shy thinking about what he would think after reading this, but he is my 'master' and I owe him everything and I won't be able to repay it in my lifetime.”

Park Ji-sung (1981) South Korean footballer

From Park's autobiography, praising the efforts of Guus Hiddink.

Love, Life, People, World

“It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew-they were expressly notified-that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that this Government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution, trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object — to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to immediate dissolution. That this was their object the Executive well understood; and having said to them in the inaugural address, "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors," he took pains not only to keep this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the Government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort, sent to that harbor years before for their own protection, and still ready to give that protection in whatever was lawful. In this act, discarding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue, "Immediate dissolution or blood."”

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

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Men, Pain, World, Law

“We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings […]. Cadres decide everything!”

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

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2495035?uid=3738776&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104844992271 A more accurate translation, with respect to the context, might read: "Cadres are the key to everything" In Russian: [...] из всех ценных капиталов, имеющихся в мире, самым ценным и самым решающим капиталом являются люди [...]. Кадры решают все! Address to the Graduates from the Red Army Academies http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/GRA35.html. (4 May 1935); Variant translation: Human resources solve all! Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

World, Understanding, Decision

“A philosophical frame of mind. Generally we strive to acquire one emotional stance, one viewpoint for all life situations and events: we usually call that being of a philosophical frame of mind. But rather than making oneself uniform, we may find greater value for the enrichment of knowledge by listening to the soft voice of different life situations; each brings its own views with it. Thus we acknowledge and share the life and nature of many by not treating ourselves like rigid, invariable, single individuals.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 618
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Life, Nature, Knowledge

“I was criticized for being too much concerned with the average Canadians. I can't help that; I am one of them!”

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

September, 1967. Speech to PC convention, quoted in I Never Say Anything Provocative by Wente, Margaret. (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Limited, 1975.)

Help

“Before being humans, we are animals.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Source: Artificial Societies of Intelligent Agents (2001), p. 26 (also on p. 4)

Animals

“They would have preferred for me, instead of Bloch, companions who would have given me no more than it is proper to give according to the laws of middle-class morality, who would not unexpectedly send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have thought of me with affection, but who, being incapable of inclining in my favour, by a simple impulse of imagination and sensibility, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, would be equally incapable of loading the scales to my detriment. Even our faults will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us those conventional natures of which the model was my great-aunt who, estranged for years from a niece to whom she never spoke, yet made no change in the will in which she left that niece the whole of her fortune, because she was her next-of-kin and it was the 'proper thing to do.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

"Combray"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Friendship, Law, Imagination, Nature

“He knew, better than the cynic, that if you look out over the arc of history, human beings should be filled not with fear but with hope.”

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

Remarks by President Obama at Memorial Service for Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/30/remarks-president-obama-memorial-service-former-israeli-president-shimon (30 September 2016) 2016

Fear, Hope, History

“When you're young, you're afraid of being alone. Solitude is a burden and you try to escape from it. You always wonder when it's going to come to an end. Sometimes you can't get rid of it. At the age of 38, you use it in a different way. You've learned how to live with it, and you don't try to get rid of it by all means anymore. After all you may call this resignation, but I don't think it's harmful. You're not just standing there, in pain, asking yourself 'Why am I alone? Why don't I go out?' etc. You don't ask yourself these questions anymore. You adapt yourself. Living alone does not mean living in nothingness.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "My gilded prison", interview by J. C. Panek, L'Indic magazine https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Indic_magazine (November 1997). In interviews etc., About love

Pain, Age, Way, Question

“I was reading even before I could spell properly, even though I couldn't necessarily understand what I was reading. Being able to identify a word I knew was like finding a signpost on the road telling me I was on the right path, heading in the right direction. And so it was, in this rather unusual way, Diário by Diário, month by month, pretending not to hear the jokey comments made by the adults in the house, who were amused by the way I would stare at the newspaper as if at a wall, that my moment to astonish them finally came, when, one day, nervous but triumphant, I read out loud, in one go, without hesitation, several consecutive lines of print.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Mal sabendo ainda soletrar, já lia, sem perceber que estava lendo. Identificar na escrita do jornal uma palavra que eu conhecesse era como encontrar um marco na estrada a dizer-me que ia bem, que seguia na boa direcção. E foi assim, desta maneira algo invulgar, Diário após Diário, mês após mês, fazendo de conta que não ouvia as piadas dos adultos da casa, que se divertiam por estar eu a olhar para o jornal como se fosse um muro, que a minha hora de os deixar sem fala chegou, quando, um dia, de um fôlego, li em voz alta, sem titubear, nervoso mas triunfante, umas quantas linhas seguidas.
Source: Small Memories (2006), pp. 87–88

Way, Understanding, Reading, Housing

“It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them.”

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

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Life, God, School, Error

“I don't fear death. But I don't like being dangled out there like a piece of meat on a fishing rod to it either. If I'm going to die, take me out now. Don't let me suffer. That's not exactly the way I wanted to go. I don't want to be in limbo, I don't want to know that I might die. The mights don't work with me. I'm too literal.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

"I don't fear death" http://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/mar/15/popandrock1, The Guardian.com, March 15, 2004. General Quotes

Death, Fear, Way, Fish

“For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.”

Larry Niven book Flash Crowd

Flash Crowd, section 9, in Three Trips in Time and Space (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg, p. 74

Change

“Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie withing every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 7)

Truth, Lie, Hope, Learning

“Just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.”

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

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of Power

Life, Men, Children, Education

“They were two and beautiful and wanted to be something else; love delayed itself to them in the tedium of the future, and regret of what would happen to be was already being the daughter of the love they hadn't had.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 288
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Eram dois e belos e desejavam ser outra coisa; o amor tardava-lhes no tédio do futuro, e a saudade do que haveria de ser vinha já sendo filha do amor que não tinham tido.

Love, Beauty, Future, Daughters