Quotes about being (10000 quotes, page 46)

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men , God , War , Health

“An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed.”

David Mermin (1935) American physicist

quoting a joke he heard from Rudolf Peierls. [N. David Mermin, Boojums all the way through: communicating science in a prosaic age, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 0-521-38880-5, 57]

Light , Distant , Future , Speed

“When you lose, you really feel a sense of self … You actually feel that you are being taken apart, rather than just your pieces.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

Game of thrones with world chess champion Viswanathan Anand

Feeling , Sense

“In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse- quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“The Female Body,” Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

Women , Forgiveness

“There are no degrees of being, a gradual difference of only states or relations being thinkable. Accordingly, if an agent strives to preserve or to restore itself, then it must be a state or relation.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Causality
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

“When you're on Earth, if you go to the top of a mountain, the stars look much brighter than they do at sea level. And because the space shuttle is above Earth's atmosphere, it's like being on a very, very high mountain. So they look brighter, but not bigger.”

Sally Ride (1951–2012) American physicist and astronaut

Scholastic interview (1998)

Mountain , Star , Sea

“If I were a woman I would not be reassured by being told the legislators are apparently not concerned with the health of a woman. They should be.”

David Norris (1944) Irish scholar, independent Senator, and gay and civil rights activist

1 May 2013 http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2013-05-01a.7&s=speaker%3A210#g16

Health

“What role would men and governments in new countries like the mass media to play?… The mass media can help to present Singapore's problems simply and clearly and then explain how if they support certain programmes and policies these problems can be solved. More important, we want the mass media to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday, 9th June, 1971 http://journalism.sg/lee-kuan-yews-1971-speech-on-the-press/
1970s

Men , School , Support , Problem

“I was… informed, that Baptista Porta, and one or two more, had written somewhat of that Subject, upon this Information I was willing to see whether I might from any of them find any Directions, that might help mee, if I should afterwards have the like Occasion: But I found very little in any of them for my Purpose. Their Businesse being for the most Part, onely to shew how to write in Cipher, (which was not my Work,) and that Things so written were beyond the Skill of Men to decipher. Onely in Baptista Porta (who alone if I mistake not, hath written any Thing to Purpose about deciphering, and was it seemes famous in his Time for his Abilities that Way;) I found that there were some general Directions, such as were obvious from the Nature of the Thing, and which I had before of myself taken Notice of, and made use of so far as the Nature of an intricate Cipher would permit. But the Truth of it is, there are scarce any of his Rules, which the present Way of Cipher (which is now much improved, beyond what, it seemes, it was in his Days) doth not in a Manner wholly elude…”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

Men , Truth , Way , Nature

“I don't know, it's not like I was thinking about it being my trademark or whatever it is. I mean I don't think I'll get it removed or anything. But, I don't know - it's part of me, I'm used to it.”

Skye Sweetnam (1988) Canadian singer-songwriter

On her beauty mark

Thinking , Parting

“It has been proven psychologically that human beings can only appreciate or apprise, i. e. comprehend and understand, something new, if they can succeed in raising up the subconscious immured in their brain cells into their higher consciousness. If this cannot be achieved, then all preaching is useless. And even the eye has first to learn how to see everything new; it too must therefore be awoken from its latency before it can grasp the seen. Above all, there must be readiness to consider even supposed wonders as the forerunners of forthcoming realities, for only thus can the foundations be laid upon which rational mind can calculate and analyse.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger in a letter to Hermann Jaeger, 31st October 1957, Implosion Magazine, No. 103, p. 20 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Understanding , Reality , Learning

“We have discussed quantity, order and meaning with regard to their contributions to science in general and to psychology in particular. We extracted each of our categories from a different science, but we claimed that despite their different origins, they are all universally applicable. And as a matter of fact, in our treatment of the issues involved in each of our three categories we have found the same general principle: to integrate quantity and quality, mechanism and vitalism, explanation and comprehension or understanding, we had to abandon the treatment of a number of separate facts for the consideration of a group of facts in their specific form of connection. Only thus could quantity be qualitative, and order and meaning be saved from being either introduced into the system of science as new entities, the privileges of life and mind, or discarded as mere figments.
Do we then claim that all facts are contained in such interconnected groups or units that each quantification is a description of true quality, each complex and sequence of events orderly and meaningful? In short, do we claim that the universe and all events in it form one big gestalt?”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 21-22

Life , Understanding , Universe , Science

“I didn’t know at that time Emily Dickinson’s great definition, her 'Publication is not the business of poets’; being a poet is all, being known as a poet is nothing.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Business , Time

“Demanding that wolf populations be allowed to continue to increase is not only a false conservation goal, but also a counterproductive tactic that is bound for short-term failure. It is strategically preferable to promote wolf range expansion and to accept reduction of unacceptable levels of conflict through scientifically planned and managed culling rather than through uncontrolled poaching. Full protection of wolf populations living near, or interspersed with, human settlements leads sooner or later to surplus wolves being killed, legally or illegally. Opposing wolf killing altogether implies accepting that all wolves will eventually be removed from these areas, whereas accepting some wolf control will allow wolves over much larger ranges. This vision requires a fundamental shift in the way wolves are perceived by folks who consider every wolf a symbol of the conservation battle or an animal with special rights among all other species. In the end, this approach probably will yield many more wolves than we could afford to keep in a few fully protected areas, no matter how large.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

Way , Failure , Wolf , Animals

“The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 317
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Fear , Art , Wedding

“The way out from complication and doubt is to reduce the good to pleasure, something close to the body, or to utility, something useful to the body. … The body is considered as a factor all human beings have in common, hence an easy basis for generalization.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Pleasure , Way

“By the principles of the Declaration of Independence, majority rule in a free society is not an end in itself, nor is it a source of the purposes served by free government. Majority rule exists to secure the rights with which all human persons are "endowed by their Creator." The recognition of the origin of these rights, in God and nature, comes before any action of any majority. Only as we all recognize that "the just powers of government" exist to secure the equal rights possessed by every human being, whether in the majority or minority, can tyranny be prevented.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

God , Nature , Personality

“Imprisoned under all our layers of long underwear, thick socks, shirts, vests, jackets, coats and hoods were these tropical bodies; the steam and hot water brought color back into the pallor, found the nacreous hollow in a hip, detected the subtly raised triceps, rinsed a sharp clavicle in a softening flood, swirled dull brown hair into a smooth black cap and pulled evening gloves of light over raw hands and skinny, blue-veined forearms.Just as each shell held to the ears roars with a different ocean timbre, each of these bodies spoke to me with a different music, though all sounded to me unlike my own and only with the greatest effort could I remember I was longing after my own sex. Indeed, each of these beings seemed to possess his very own sex.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Six (p. 153).

Music , Sex , Color , Effort

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Ends of Good and Evil), Book I, section 33; Translation by H. Rackham (1914)

Men , Pain , Pleasure , Business

“Could it be, nevertheless, that Einstein's theory is wrong? Might it be necessary to modify it—to find a new theory of gravity that can explain both the stronger gravity and the apparent antigravity being observed today—rather than simply throwing in invisible things to make the standard model work?”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Introduction, A New Gravity Theory, p. xi
Reinventing Gravity (2008)

“The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious, is it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13

World

“Once again we see Islam self-detonate (if you'll pardon the expression) and show once again why it's about as welcome on this planet as an asteroid. Once again we see thousands of Islamic nutcases take time out from beating up their wives to show their sensitive side. How? By smashing up the towns they live in, egged on by clerical ignoramuses whose motives are even lower than the literacy level of their followers. And once again we in the civilised world are being urged to censor ourselves out of respect for a religion that violates the human rights of half the people on the planet and that doubles as a political ideology indistinguishable from Nazism. It would be funny if it wasn't so obscene.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A Word To Rioting Muslims" (20 September 2012) http://youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg
2012

People , World , Religion , Motivation

“Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas' Report to the United Nations Human Rights Council http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13704&LangID=E UN expert calls for concrete protection to support civil society voices, including ‘whistleblowers’.
2013

Reality , Country

“Nothing makes us angrier than the fear that some pleasure is being enjoyed by others but forever denied to us.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter X : Beyond Youth: Recovery Of Self, p. 279

Pleasure , Fear

“One thing is quite clear to me; all that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness and I am in and beyond that consciousness. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Awareness and consciousness
Source: "I am That." P.91-2.

“Imagine being killed by a bow and arrow. That would suck, an arrow killed you? They would never solve the crime. "Look at that dead guy. Let's go that way."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

Way , Guy , Imagination , Dead

“In the service no distinction should be made between man and man. We have to serve all, be he a Christian or a Muslim, or a human being of any other persuasion; for calamities, distress and misfortunes make no such distinction but afflict all alike. And in serving to relieve the sufferings of man, let it not be in a spirit of condescension or mere compassion, but in the true spirit of our dharma of surrendering our all in the humble service of Lord who abides in the hearts of all beings.”

M. S. Golwalkar (1906–1973) second head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Affliction , Suffering , Heart

“Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Into the Silence.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Understanding , Silence

“I did find Calypso hotdog — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (1866); published as "The Calypso Borealis, Botanical Enthusiasm" in Boston Recorder, 21 December 1866; republished in Bonnie Johanna Gisel, Kindred & Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (2001), page 41
Muir's first published writing, concerning the orchid Calypso http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CABU.
1860s

Love , Joy

“The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 405

Dreams , Past

“Life was growing and spreading here the way a disease propagates and eats and in the eating must kill. There should be something more, he thought. A kind of being might come into the universe that did not want to finally eat everything or to command all or to fill every niche and site with its own precious self. It would be a strange thing, with enough of the brute biology in it to have the quick, darting sense of survival. But it would also have to carry something of the machine in it, the passive and accepting quality of duty, of waiting, and of thought that went beyond the endless eating or the fear of dying. To such a thing the universe would not be a battleground but a theater, where eternal dramas were acted out and it was best to be in the audience. Perhaps evolution, which had been at the beginning a blind force that pushed against everything, could find a path to that shambling, curiously lasting state.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 4 (p. 226)
Against Infinity (1983)

Life , Fear , Disease , Way

“Being consistent is WAY less interesting than being yourself. And if you're not interesting? Good luck with your Big Consistency Project.”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/81389251425615872
Tweeting as @hotdogsladies

Way

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993)
1990s
Variant: Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me.

Night

“Today war seems to have undergone a change of meaning, insofar as it is not a war of religion but a war of interests, not a war of conflicting cultures or civilizations but a war of national areas, not a war of human beings but a technical struggle of machines one against another and all against the non–combatant population.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

War , Religion , Change

“The cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called "systems consciousness." Actually, this shifts from the direct shaping of matter to a concern for organizing quantities of energy and information. Seen another way, it is a refocusing of aesthetic awareness – based on future scientific-technological evolution – on matter-energy information exchanges and away from the invention of solid artefacts. These new systems prompt us not to look at the skin of objects, but at those meaningful relations within and between their visible boundaries.”

Jack Burnham (1931) American art historian

Source: Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968, p. 369-70

Art , Way , Future

“Worn with tights it is not an issue, although there is something deeply unfeminist about not being able to sit down in one comfortably.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Something deeply unfeminist about a miniskirt Article http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article432962.ece. Cinemania. May 27, 2004.
Guillory speaks in response to the question, How old is too old for a micro-mini?

“Nobody wants to cook "Five Spice Stew With a Mother Deer Shot With a High-Powered Rifle While Her Baby Slept Nearby." But what about "Five Spice Venison Stew"? Much more palatable. … But when we tell ourselves that we're humanely harvesting venison out of reverence for the deer -- rather than killing a sentient being to satisfy our palate -- we're not so much connecting with our food as we are manipulating language to avoid knowing what we don't want to know.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Hunting for Euphemisms: How We Trick Ourselves to Excuse Killing", in The Atlantic (21 December 2011) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/hunting-for-euphemisms-how-we-trick-ourselves-to-excuse-killing/250213/.

Food , Baby , Cooking

“I think that’s just a throwaway line, because most people don’t really care if they are being true to their original nature. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be wearing clothes and driving cars, but out picking berries and eating bark. If you study anthropology — which most people don’t — and you start to learn about our intestinal structure, our teeth, our digestive system, our mouth structure, you begin to realize that maybe we aren’t meant to be eating animals after all.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Montreal Mirror http://web.archive.org/20020703023107/www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/032102/news3.html
In response to people who say it is natural to eat meat

People , Cars , Nature , Thinking

“Never confuse sitting on your side with being on your side.”

Ian Paisley (1926–2014) Politician and former church minister

To Jeremy Hanley, who had introduced himself to Paisley saying "How do you do? I did not realise that you were on our side."http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1990-11-07/Debate-2.html

“Sexual dysfunction often plays a key role in risk management by couples over time. It seems crucial not to get too excited about the other, and diminished excitement serves the purposes at once of self-protection and revenge. I was once excited about you, the diminished arousal seems to be expressing, but there is not much to get excited about now. Often lovers work together to pretend they are safer (even if also a bit sadder) over time, by collapsing their expectations of each other in collusively arranged, choreographed routine. Each feels the other is less exciting because of being so familiar and predictable. And each acts towards the other in as wholly and artificially predictable a fashion as possible. But, of course, lowering expectations also empties out passion. No risk, no gain.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 143

Feeling , Lovers , Fashion , Revenge

“The remarkable thing about the Diversity cult is that all the circumstances of the actual human world refute its tenets, wherever we look. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there has never been an ideology so heartily and jealously embraced by all the main institutions of a society, that was at the same time so obviously at odds with the evidence of our senses. It is as if the entire Western world had committed itself to the belief that human beings can fly by flapping their arms.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

World , Thinking , Sense , Time

“[with Stephen Colbert, after presenting the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series to Ricky Gervais and being informed that Gervais was not there] Ricky Gervais couldn't be here tonight, so instead we're going to give this to our friend Steve Carell.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Carell, who was among the nominees who had just lost to Gervais, then ran onto the stage, where the three of them group-hugged and jumped around screaming.
The 59th Primetime Emmy Awards (2007)

“The forces of being remain. They are what the writer, as distinct from the contemporary popular mythmaker, still engage today, as myth in its ancient form attempted to do.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

“I don’t hate her personally, though if she were enough of a person to be worth such a strong emotion I think I easily could. What I hate is what she represents: the willingness of human beings to be reduced to a slick visual package, like a new television set—up-to-the-minute casing, same old works.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (8) “Be Kind To Your Forfeited Friends”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Hate , Thinking , Strong , Personality

“These horrific murders are only a symptom of a deeper malaise. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Quoted in Was Arundhati Roy really misquoted by Pakistans... https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/was-arundhati-roy-really-misquoted-by-paks-un-rep-or-is-this-leftist-spin

Life , Hell

“Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is something; but progress in the sense of being, is a great deal more. To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the years go on; to conquer difficulties, and acquire more and more power; to feel all one's faculties unfolding, and truth descending into the soul, — this makes life worth living.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 565.

Life , Truth , Feeling , Soul

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Life , Hostility , Fate , World

“Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis

Fish

“Being in love means never having to say 'giddy-up.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (January 12, 2006)

Love

“I speak not with a feeling of anger or hatred towards those who are responsible for the immense suffering of our people and the destruction of our land, homes and culture. They too are human beings who struggle to find happiness and deserve our compassion. I speak to inform you of the sad situation in my country today and of the aspirations of my people, because in our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel lecture (1989)

People , Truth , Sadness , Feeling

“The next superstar could very well be ET!!! Sincerely, at that point in the history of Hollywood, there were no stars. Paul Newman has said on record, ‘What’s the point in my being an actor? The three greatest hits have been mechanical gadgets!’ There was a shark in Jaws that crashed the box-office, there was this peculiar animal in ET and there was that robot in Star Wars. I saw it millions of times. And everytime I see ET I find it’s a lovable person. So maybe you don’t need an actor, it’s going to be a computer! Look, one of the poignant scenes in 2001 Space Odyssey was the death of the computer. The computer on board is programmed to take the spaceship to a particular planet and also manage everything, right to the food of the astronauts. Then they realize that this very same computer is actually programmed to sabotage the mission. So this astronaut unscrews the computer. It dies with the voice going fainter ‘Don’t kill … me … don’t … kill me’. If just mechanical gadgets are going to be moving us to tears, then Paul Newman is right. What is the need for actors?”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Death , War , Food , History

“If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of the blessings of modern democracy? If you were in America and did not give any interview, even then they would invent one? The press is a public institution; formerly, it was something dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct measure of the futility of human life…. It is the same with all other modern things… the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag down everything to the level of the crowd…. They succeed only if they can pamper the common man's tastes…. It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its level….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

June 1, 1926
India's Rebirth

Life , Disappointment , Democracy , Question

“Faith, then, generically, is confidence in a personal being. Specifically, religious faith is confidence in God, in every respect and office in which He reveals Himself. As that love of which God is the object, is religious love, so that confidence in Him as a Father, a Moral Governor, a Redeemer, a Sanctifier, in all the modes of His manifestation, by which we believe whatever He says because He says it, and commit ourselves and all our interests cheerfully and entirely into His hands, is, religious faith.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 238.

Love , God , Faith , Confidence

“Islam is a very powerful but still an undirected force in politics. As a possible factor in international politics, the present prognosis is not very favorable. There have been many attempts at a pan-Islamic policy, none of which has made much progress. One reason for their lack of success is that those who have made the attempt have been so unconvincing. This still leaves the possibility of a more convincing leadership, and there is ample evidence in virtually all Muslim countries of the deep yearning for such a leadership and a readiness to respond to it. The lack of an educated modern leadership has so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibited religious movements from being serious contenders for power. But it is already very effective as a limiting factor and may yet become a powerful domestic political force if the right kind of leadership emerges.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Education , Success , Country

“Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Change , Sincerity

“If you're trying to get a lot of money and attention and cars and just stuff like that, being in a band is a really bad way to do it, because it takes a lot of work, it's constant work, it's very grueling, and you don't really have time to spend money. So that would probably not even make my top 10 list of ways to make a lot of money, because records aren't selling anymore. The richest musician in America still doesn't even come close to a mid-level athlete.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

Money , Cars , Way , Time

“I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Communication , Freedom , Tea

“Air, fire, water and the earth evolve out of the spiritual and material staminibus in periodic cycles of time. Diverse connections of water, air, and light precede the emergence of the seed of the simplest plant, for instance moss. Many plants had to come into being, then die away before an animal emerged. Insects, birds, water animals, and night animals preceded the present animal forms; until finally the crown of earthly organization appeared—the human being, microcosm. He is the son of all the elements and beings, Nature’s most carefully chosen conception and the blossom of creation. He must be the youngest child of Nature; many evolutions and revolutions must have preceded his formation.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Book 1, as cited in Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice), "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Nature , Bird , Light , Water

“When I was a kid back in Kentucky, we went to this church where my uncle preached. It was kind of a weird Baptist, full-on kind of place. People kept running up to the pulpit and grabbing his ankles and being saved. Lots of crying. Even then, at six or seven, I questioned how pure the emotion could be if it were on such display.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Kevin Sessums, "Johnny Be Good," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/vanifair.htm Vanity Fair (February 1997)

People , Question , Cry

“I shouldn't be surprised if it hailed a good deal tomorrow", Eeyore was saying. "Blizzards and what-not. Being fine today doesn't mean anything. It has no sig - what's that word? Well, it has none of that. It's just a small piece of weather.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

Weather

“The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development, which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 203

Animals , Dependency , Training

“Philosophy asks the question of reality as a whole; it asks the question of the structure of being. And it answers in terms of categories, structural laws, and universal concepts.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Systematic Theology (1951–63)

Law , Question , Reality , Universe

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 1

World

“The difference in sex does not hinder the ability of being strong on the levels of thinking, giving, having a strong willpower and the ability to take the right decision and the right position after studying all options, once the circumstances that favor creativity and rational thinking are available.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The Woman's Personality and Role in Life http://english.bayynat.org.lb/WomenFamily/role.htm.

Sex , Thinking , Decision , Study

“Whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. VI, l. 603.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Hope , Home , Effort , Heart

“The Buddhist view is more congruent with evolution than are other views. You can actually have beginning-less-ness and still have creation of a particular universe … The part that doesn't jibe for me is the whole notion that consciousness is this separate thing that goes in and out of sentient beings.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Science and Spirit interview (2004)

Universe , Parting

“Rat and behavioral psychology … mirror the actual inhumanity of reality. Rat psychology is human psychology where a total society has trained human beings to be creatures of stimulus and response, i. e. rats. “Insofar as the hardening of society has reduced men more and more to objects,” wrote Adorno, “methods which convey this are no sacrilege. … The method serves freedom in that it wordlessly testifies to the prevailing unfreedom.” Or, as Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in another context: “The usual objection that empirical social research is too mechanical, too crude, and too unspiritual [ungeistig] shifts the responsibility from that which science is investigating to science itself.” … The idealistic misconception of … behavioral methods … shifts the evil from the social conditions that coerce men and women into standardized roles onto the social science that is merely registering these conditions.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 69

Women , Men , Behavior , Reality

“The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Variant: The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on the earth.

Life , Time

“The body of Christ was born to resist in love all that is the enemy of love. This cannot happen, however, until human beings are themselves freed from the illusions that afflict us—that is, until we are "undone."”

Robin Meyers (1952)

Source: Spiritual Defiance (2015), p. 7

Love , Affliction , Christ

“Fear ye God that ye may not identify yourselves with aught but the truth, inasmuch as ye have been exalted in the Bayán for being recognized as the bearers of the name of Him Who is the eternal Truth.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 4
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , Truth , Fear

“Basilicas should be constructed on a site adjoining the forum and in the warmest possible quarter, so that in winter business men may gather in them without being troubled by the weather.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter I, Sec. 4

Men , Business , Winter , Weather

“Everywhere — all over Africa and South America … you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There's a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they're terrifying, because they are the death of the soul … This is the prison this planet is being turned into.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Interview (30 October 1982) in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)

Death , People , Soul , Spring

“Rick Warren: The issue to me, I'm not opposed to that as much as I'm opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.
Steven Waldman: Do you think, though, that they are equivalent to having gays getting married?
Rick Warren: Oh, I do.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Response to the question: "What about partnership benefits in terms of insurance or hospital visitation?", as quoted in "Rick Warren’s Controversial Comments on Gay Marriage" by Steven Waldman at Beliefnet (17 December 2008) http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/12/rick-warrens-controversial-com.html

Marriage , Guy , Thinking , Sister

“By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine.”

Saki The Chronicles of Clovis

"The Chaplet"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Wine

“I had the pleasure to acknowledge yours of the first of Au gust by a courier, who left this city a few hours after I received it. I hope this will find you well and happy in London. The young gentleman whom I mentioned to you as being about to come hither is arrived, so that we must wait for another conveyance for the packet. In the mean time be so kind as to let me know your address in London. Mine is Rue de la Planche, No. 488.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

1790s, First Letter to Thomas Pinckney (1792)

Pleasure , Hope , Time , Waiting

“Anjali: Oh, wow. I am tripping out that I actually get to work here! Being constantly surrounded by books! Bringing ideas, poems, and manifestoes to the world! How can you stand it?!
Jezanna: That reminds me, Lois. The lube shipment just came in.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#252, "The Trouble with Sidney" (1996), collected in Hot, Throbbing DTWOF (1997).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Books , World , Idea

“I lost all connection with the outside world and was immersed in a world of darkness. I was scared that my existence would fade silently. No one knew where I was, and no one would ever know. I was just like a small soybean—once fallen to the ground, it rolls into a crack in the corner. Being unable to make any sounds, it will forever be forgotten.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Wong, Veronica, and Gisela Sommer. “ Ai Weiwei Describes Mental Torment in Captivity http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/ai-weiwei-describes-mental-torment-in-captivity-59915.html.” Epoch Times, August 3, 2011.
2010-, 2011

World

“As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one.”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 46

Time

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“The development of Christianity in all the sects of the Western world during the past two centuries has been the progressive elimination from all of them of the elements of our natively Aryan morality that were superimposed on the doctrine before and during the Middle Ages to make it acceptable to our race and so a religion that could not be exported as a whole to other races. With the progressive weakening of our racial instincts, all the cults have been restored to conformity with the "primitive" Christianity of the holy book, i. e., to the undiluted poison of the Jewish originals. I should, perhaps, have made it more explicit in my little book that the effective power of the alien cult is by no means confined to sects that affirm a belief in supernatural beings. As I have stressed in other writings, when the Christian myths became unbelievable, they left in the minds of even intelligent and educated men a residue, the detritus of the rejected mythology, in the form of superstitions about "all mankind," "human rights," and similar figments of the imagination that had gained currency only on the assumption that they had been decreed by an omnipotent deity, so that in practical terms we must regard as basically Christian and religious such irrational cults as Communism and the tangle of fancies that is called "Liberalism" and is the most widely accepted faith among our people today.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , People , Books , Age

“We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, the site of our biologic origins. Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 11

Fate , Time

“There remains the problem of Goebbels' reputation. He wore the title of Big Liar (bestowed by Anglo-Saxon propaganda) and yet he never stopped battling for propaganda to be as accurate as possible. He preferred being cynical and brutal to being caught in a lie. He used to say: "Everybody must know what the situation is." He was always the first to announce disastrous events or difficult situations, without hiding anything. The result was a general belief between 1939 and 1942 that German communiqués not only were more concise, clearer and less cluttered, but were more truthful than Allied communiqués (American and neutral opinion) — and, furthermore, that the Germans published all the news two or three days before the Allies. All this is so true that pinning the title of Big Liar on Goebbels must be considered quite a propaganda success.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

"The Characteristics of Propaganda" in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion : New and Classic Essays (2006) edited by Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, p. 48, note 47

Truth , Lie , Problem , Success

“Fijians generally perceive Indians as mean and stingy, crafty and demanding to the extent of being considered greedy, inconsiderate and grasping, uncooperative, egotistic, and calculating.”

Asesela Ravuvu (1931–2008) He loved nature and the outdoors. He 3 main principles in life were love all, hardwork and honesty.

Façade of Democracy (1991)

“INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"Sonnet to a Clam".

Life , Men , Confidence , Happiness

“That’s the trouble with people like them, I suppose; whenever you think you’re detecting the first signs of them starting to behave responsibly, it’s just them being even more devious and underhand than usual.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 8 “Killing Time” section V (p. 261).

People , Thinking

“When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004

Education , Art , Soul , History

“The physical basis for international cooperation is being more firmly established each decade. Space is being bridged and time eliminated by modern inventions.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

Time

“For a start, let's look at the Grotto itself. By and large these are extremely aptly named, 'Grot' meaning rubbish and 'Oh' being exclamation of disappointed surprise.”

Peter Corey (1946) British writer

Coping With series, Coping With Christmas (1999)

Disappointment

“Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Excerpt from Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II, To the Reader (Prefatory Remarks).
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Life , Pain , Age , Fear

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Life , People , Books , Fashion

“I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

Life , Men , Art , History

“I recognize nothing that is not material. In physics, chemistry and biology I see only mechanics. The Universe is nothing but an infinite and complex mechanism. Its complexity is so great that it borders on willfulness, suddenness, and randomness; it gives the illusion of free will possessed by conscious beings.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

The Cosmic Philosophy, 1931

Universe

“The Capitalist system with its exploitation of those who are economically weak, with its robbery of the workers labour power, with its unethical way of appraising human beings by the number of things and the amount of money he possesses, instead of by their internal value and their achievements, must be replaced by a new and just economic system, in a word by German Socialism.”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

Tradition & Revolution: Collected Writings of Troy Southgate, editors: Patrick Boch, Jacob Christiansen and John B. Morgan, UK, Arktos Media (2010) p. 66.

Money , Way