Quotes about being
page 3

Arthur Ashe photo
50 Cent photo

“Being broke is against my religion.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

Ryder Music
Song lyrics, The Massacre (2005)

Francisco Palau photo
Martin Luther photo
Helena Bonham Carter photo

“It was a challenge to be able to create a character without being able to use one's normal set of expressions. All the rubber and makeup attached to your face left you with only a modest range of facial movements.”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Of her role in Planet of the Apes.
Interview on Cinema.com, 2001 http://www.cinema.com/articles/547/planet-of-the-apes-interview-with-helena-bonham-carter.phtml

Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov photo
George Carlin photo
Martin Luther photo
Ali Shariati photo
Jane Goodall photo
Giovanni Boccaccio photo

“Dying more like animals than human beings.”

Non come uomini, ma quasi come bestie, morieno.
First Day, Introduction
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

Meister Eckhart photo
Smedley D. Butler photo
Jean Vanier photo
Oswald Mosley photo
Bill Skarsgård photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Attributed to Rodin in H. Read (1964), as cited in: Karl H. Pfenninger, ‎Valerie R. Shubik, ‎Bruce Adolphe (2001). The Origins of Creativity. p. 50
1950s-1990s

Modest Mussorgsky photo

“I regard the people as a great being, inspired by a single idea. This is my problem. I strove to solve it in this opera.”

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881) Russian composer

MS dedication to Boris Godunov, January 21, 1874. http://www.bklynnews.com/BklynRadio/boris%20godunov-1.htm

Albert Einstein photo

“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers who, as literary guides of Germany, had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life; but they, too, were mute.Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in “The Conflict Between Church And State In The Third Reich”, by S. Parkes Cadman, La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press (28 October 1934), viewable online on p. 9 of the issue here http://newspaperarchive.com/us/wisconsin/la-crosse/la-crosse-tribune-and-leader-press/1934/10-28/ (double-click the page to zoom). The quote is preceded by “In this connection it is worth quoting in free translation a statement made by Professor Einstein last year to one of my colleagues who has been prominently identified with the Protestant church in its contacts with Germany.” [Emphasis added.] While based on something that Einstein said, Einstein himself stated that the quote was not an accurate record of his words or opinion. After the quote appeared in Time magazine (23 December 1940), p. 38 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765103,00.html, a minister in Harbor Springs, Michigan wrote to Einstein to check if the quote was real. Einstein wrote back “It is true that I made a statement which corresponds approximately with the text you quoted. I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi-Regime — much earlier than 1940 — and my expressions were a little more moderate.” (March 1943) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200706A19.html
In a later letter to Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn, who asked if Einstein would write out the statement in his own hand, Einstein was more vehement in his repudiation of the statement (14 November 1950) http://books.google.com/books?id=T5R7JsRRtoIC&pg=PA94: <blockquote><p>The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own.</p><p> The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude.</p></blockquote>
: In his original statement Einstein was probably referring to the actions of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors organized by Martin Niemöller, and the Confessing Church which he and other prominent churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer established in opposition to Nazi policies.
: Einstein also made some scathingly negative comments about the behavior of the Church under the Nazi regime (and its behavior towards Jews throughout history) in a 1943 conversation with William Hermanns recorded in Hermanns' book Einstein and the Poet (1983). On p. 63 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q&f=false Hermanns records him saying "Never in history has violence been so widespread as in Nazi Germany. The concentration camps make the actions of Ghengis Khan look like child's play. But what makes me shudder is that the Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence.' Dr. Hermanns, you will live to see that there is moral law in the universe. . . .There are cosmic laws, Dr. Hermanns. They cannot be bribed by prayers or incense. What an insult to the principles of creation. But remember, that for God a thousand years is a day. This power maneuver of the Church, these Concordats through the centuries with worldly powers . . . the Church has to pay for it. We live now in a scientific age and in a psychological age. You are a sociologist, aren't you? You know what the Herdenmenschen (men of herd mentality) can do when they are organized and have a leader, especially if he is a spokesmen for the Church. I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2000 years had always the blessings of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him. The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the Ten Commandments state: Thou shalt not kill." And then on p. 64 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false: "I'm not a Communist but I can well understand why they destroyed the Church in Russia. All the wrongs come home, as the proverb says. The Church will pay for its dealings with Hitler, and Germany, too." And on p. 65 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false: "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanely in the past 2000 years. The fear of punishment makes the people march. Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the Inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an alter boy! The truly religious man has no fear of life and no fear of death—and certainly no blind faith; his faith must be in his conscience. . . . I am therefore against all organized religion. Too often in history, men have followed the cry of battle rather than the cry of truth." When Hermanns asked him "Isn't it only human to move along the line of least resistance?", Einstein responded "Yes. It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli, who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time? And he is now the Pope! The moment I hear the word 'religion', my hair stands on end. The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity. It would have been fine if the spirit of religion had guided the Church; instead, the Church determined the spirit of religion. Churchmen through the ages have fought political and institutional corruption very little, so long as their own sanctity and church property were preserved."
Misattributed

Monte Melkonian photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth edition, (1876) Vol. III, "Biology", p. 689.
Also quoted in Joseph Cook (1878), Biology, with Preludes on Current Events, Houghton, Osgood, p. 39
1870s

Saint Peter photo

“But Jehovah’s day will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, but the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved, and earth and the works in it will be exposed.”

Saint Peter (-1–67 BC) apostle and first pope

2 Peter 3:10 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/2-peter/3/, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Second Epistle of Peter

Sri Anandamoyi Ma photo
Madhvacharya photo

“All living beings are different from Him and from each other and are subordinate to Him, all their actions are controlled by Him.”

Madhvacharya (1199–1278) Hindu philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta school

Ya, Hindu Online

Thomas Mann photo

“Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“human being is by nature a philosopher”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Kurt Gödel photo

“The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

As quoted in The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us (MIT Press) 2013 by Yanofsky, Noson S

Jordan Peterson photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“There is no being without imperfection.”

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

Other

Jodie Foster photo

“I cannot believe in God when there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being and creator.”

Jodie Foster (1962) American actor, film director and producer

As quoted in Calgary Sun (10 July 2007)

Benny Hinn photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo

“Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea.”

"Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/reasons-of-state.htm (Fédéralisme, socialisme et antithéologisme), presented originally as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867)
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom" also known as "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" (September 1867)
Context: Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i. e., the emancipation of nations and men.

Camille Paglia photo

“I am being vilified by feminists for merely having a common-sense attitude about rape.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), The Rape Debate, Continued, p. 59
Context: I am being vilified by feminists for merely having a common-sense attitude about rape. I loathe this thing about date rape. Have twelve tequilas at a fraternity party and a guy asks you to go up to his room, and then you're surprised when he assaults you? Most women want to be seduced or lured. The more you study literature and art, the more you see it. Listen to Don Giovanni. Read The Faerie Queene. Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It’s part of the sizzle. Girls hurl themselves at guitarists, right down to the lowest bar band here. The guys are strutting. If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. Women have the right to freely choose and to say yes or no. Everyone should be personally responsible for what happens in life. I see the sexual impulse as egotistical and dominating, and therefore I have no problem understanding rape. Women have to understand this correctly and they'll protect themselves better. If a real rape occurs, it's got to go to the police. The business of having a campus grievance committee decide whether or not a rape is committed is an outrageous infringement of civil liberties. Today, on an Ivy League campus, if a guy tells a girl she's got great tits, she can charge him with sexual harassment. Chickenshit stuff. Is this what strong women do?

Epictetus photo
Neil Armstrong photo

“I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Apollo mission press conference (1969); ABC World News http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/neil-armstrong-man-moon-dead/story?id=12325140&page=2#.UE0Vm67hdjw; also quoted in Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) by Norman Mailer, <!-- p. 46-47 --> and in First Man: The Life of Ronnie Petch the bender (2005) by James R. Hansen<!-- p. 399 -->
Context: I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul … we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me.

Alan Watts photo
James Watt photo

“It now appeared that the cylinder of the model, being of brass, would conduct heat much better than the cast-iron cylinders of larger engines,”

James Watt (1736–1819) British engineer

"Notes on Professor Robison's Dissertation on Steam-engines" (1769)
Context: In the winter of 1763-4, having occasion to repair a model of Newcomen's engine belonging to the Natural Philosophy class of the University of Glasgow, my mind was again directed to it. At that period my knowledge was derived principally from Desaguliers, and partly from Belidor. I set about repairing it as a mere mechanician; and when that was done, and it was set to work, I was surprised to find that its boiler could not supply it with steam, though apparently quite large enough... By blowing the fire it was made to take a few strokes, but required an enormous quantity of injection water, though it was very lightly loaded by the column of water in the pump. It soon occurred that this was caused by the little cylinder exposing a greater surface to condense the steam, than the cylinders of larger engines did in proportion to their respective contents. It was found that by shortening the column of water in the pump, the boiler could supply the cylinder with steam, and that the engine would work regularly with a moderate quantity of injection. It now appeared that the cylinder of the model, being of brass, would conduct heat much better than the cast-iron cylinders of larger engines, (generally covered on the inside with a stony crust), and that considerable advantage could be gained by making the cylinders of some substance that would receive and give out heat slowly. Of these, wood seemed to be the most likely, provided it should prove sufficiently durable. A small engine was, therefore, constructed... made of wood, soaked in linseed oil, and baked to dryness. With this engine many experiments were made; but it was soon found that the wooden cylinder was not likely to prove durable, and that the steam condensed in filling it still exceeded the proportion of that required for large engines, according to the statements of Desaguliers. It was also found that all attempts to produce a better exhaustion by throwing in more injection, caused a disproportionate waste of steam. On reflection, the cause of this seemed to be the boiling of water in vacuo at low heats, a discovery lately made by Dr. Cullen and some other philosophers... and consequently at greater heats, the water in the cylinder would, produce a steam which would in part resist the pressure of the atmosphere.

Herodotus photo
Eugene V. Debs photo

“The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties — differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Sun Tzu photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Pierre Bonnard photo
Qasem Soleimani photo

“One type of paradise that is portrayed for mankind is streams, beautiful nymphs and greeneries. But there is another kind of paradise. ... The warfront was the lost paradise of the human beings, indeed.”

Qasem Soleimani (1957–2020) Iranian senior military officer

In a 2009 interview
Quoted in "Soleimani, a General Who Became Iran Icon by Targeting US" https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/ap-ml-iran-qassem-soleimani.html. The Associated Press

Ho Chi Minh photo

“Our era being a civilized, revolutionary era, one must rely all the more on the force of the collective, of society, in all undertakings. More than ever the individual cannot stand apart but must join the collective, join society.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"On Revolutionary Morality" (1958)
1950's, On Revolutionary Morality (1958)

Martin Luther photo

“And I must speak plainly. If I were a judge, I would have such a poisonous, syphilitic whore tortured by being broken on the wheel and having her veins lacerated, for it is not to be denied what damage such a filthy whore does to young blood, so that it is unspeakably damaged before it is even fully grown and destroyed in the blood.”

Source: Table Talk (1569), pp. 552-554 (1566); cited in Susan C. Karant-Nunn & Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks [editors and translators], Luther on Women: a Sourcebook, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 157-158)

Jacque Fresco photo
Jacinda Ardern photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo

“Spiritual awakening is not a special feeling, state, or experience. It is not a goal or destination, somewhere to reach in the future. As the Buddha was trying to tell us (though few actually listened), it is not a superhuman achievement or attainment. You don’t have to travel to India to find it. It is not a special state of perfection reserved for the lucky or the privileged few. It is not an exclusive club. It is not an out-of-body experience, and it does not involve living in a cave, shutting off all your beautiful senses, detaching yourself from the realities of this modern world. It cannot be transmitted to you by a fancy bearded (or non-bearded) guru, nor can it be taken away or lost. You do not have to become anyone’s disciple or follower, or give away all your possessions. You do not have to join a cult. You do not have to follow anyone.

Rather, is a constant and ancient invitation – throughout every moment of your life – to trust and embrace yourself exactly as you are, in all your glorious imperfection. It is about being fully present and awake to each precious moment, coming out of the epic movie of past and future (“The Story of Me”) and showing up for life, knowing that even your feelings of non-acceptance are accepted here. It is about radically opening up to this extraordinary gift of existence, embracing both the pain and the joy of it, the bliss and the sorrow, the ecstasy and the overwhelm, the certainty and the doubt. Knowing that you are never separate from the Whole, never broken, never truly lost.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

Dante Alighieri photo

“For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.”

Libri iii, Caput XIII, (XV.) emendati Johann Heinrich F. Karl Witte (1874) p. 25. https://www.google.com/books/edition/De_monarchia_libri_iii_emendati_per_C_Wi/_RhcAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA25&printsec=frontcover Translation as quoted by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958) p. 175. https://archive.org/details/humancondition0000aren/page/175/mode/1up
De Monarchia (1312-1313)
Original: (la) Nam in omni actione principaliter intenditur ab agente, sive necessitate naturae, sive voluntarie agat, propriam similitudinem explicare, unde fit, quod omne agens, in quantum huiusmodi, delectatur; quia, quum omne quod est appetat suum esse, ac in agendo agentis esse quodammodo amplietur, sequiturde necessitate delectatio... Nihil igitur agit, nisi tale existens, quale patiens fieri debet...

Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Harriet Taylor Mill photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo

“Being an Aryan, in or out of prison, is a lifelong struggle of "becoming," of becoming a higher man or woman.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Drugs and Governments
Focus Fourteen

Plato photo

“Man: a being in search of meaning.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Sebastian Stan photo
George Orwell photo
Kian barazandeh photo

“I'm motivated by the fear of being an average.”

Kian barazandeh (1998) Actor , Model

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVfV-ndshd4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

“Being a Songwriter isn't hard as you think, like If you want to pursue on your dreams and no matter how difficult it is.”

Daniel Larze (2005) Puerto Rican singer-songwriter (born 2005)

Source: https://www.npvmedia.ga/2022/02/daniel-2015.html

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar photo
Yukio Mishima photo
C.G. Jung photo

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

Variant: ‎"... the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 326

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Nora Ephron photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“It is in the nature of the human being to seek afor his actions.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII

Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Source: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Barrett 1845-1846 Vol I

Elvis Presley photo

“The image is one thing and the human being is another…it's very hard to live up to an image.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Press conference (June 1972),also quoted in Elvis Culture : Fans, Faith, & Image (1999) by Erika Lee Doss, p. 218

Jimmy Carter photo
Rita Rudner photo
James Baldwin photo

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

C.G. Jung photo
Zelda Fitzgerald photo

“Excuse me for being so intellectual. I know you would prefer something nice and feminine and affectionate.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Osamu Dazai photo
George Orwell photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Lynn Margulis photo
George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I: England Your England http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/lionunicorn.html
"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Source: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
Context: As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage”

"The Coalmining Situation", Speech to the House of Commons (October 13, 1943)
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Google books link https://books.google.com/books?id=hc8pAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT373&lpg=PT373&dq=%22if+anyone+says+anything+back+that+is+an+outrage%22&source=bl&ots=vQG7eKCVNO&sig=FgGJGUVc7MSNY3-hyQrYpC8tiOY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CFEQ6AEwDWoVChMI-J-rpoiWyQIVF9tjCh2cLAel#v=onepage&q=%22if%20anyone%20says%20anything%20back%20that%20is%20an%20outrage%22&f=false

Franz Kafka photo
Pablo Picasso photo
Tupac Shakur photo