Quotes about being
page 47

Larry Solov photo
Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

“If we insist upon being a law unto ourselves, we make it easier for other nations to do likewise.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

Mihira Bhoja I photo
Sarah Palin photo

“But I didn't believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from trees; I believed we came about through a random process, but were created by God.”

Going Rogue: An American Life (2009), p. 217 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wx00mzMRGH8C&pg=PA217&dq=%22But+I+didn't+believe+in+the+theory%22, quoted in Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign, The New York Times, 2009-11-14 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/15book.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&ref=books,
2014

Cyprian photo

“Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion.”

Cyprian (200–258) Bishop of Carthage and Christian writer

Letter 1 Letter to Donatus, viii
Letters of Cyprian

Logan Pearsall Smith photo
Francis Escudero photo
E.E. Cummings photo

“For me, being a 'lady painter' was never an issue. I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote by John Gruen, in 'The Party's Over Now: Reminiscences of the fifties — New York's artists, writers, musicians, and their friends'; Viking Press, 1972 - ISBN 0-916366-54-5; as cited by by Grace Glueck, in 'New York Times', 2011
1970s - 1980s

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Matt Taibbi photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Ben Carson photo

“Responsible human beings must be concerned about our surroundings and what we will pass on to future generations. However, to use climate change as an excuse not to develop our God-given resources makes little sense.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"CARSON: Expanding our energy resources serves peace" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/25/carson-energys-role-in-the-path-to-peace/, The Washington Times (March 25, 2014)

Thomas Gainsborough photo

“[I] Pray do you remember carrying me to a picture-dealer's somewhere by Hanover Square, [London], and my being struck with the leaving and touch of a little bit of tree[? ]; the whole picture was not above 8 or 10 inches high and about a foot long. I wish if you had time that you'd inquire what it might be purchased for..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 11 May 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 383 (Appendix A - Letter VI)
1755 - 1769

Sun Myung Moon photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“But besides relatedness and influence I should like to see that my colors remain, as much as possible, a 'face' –their own 'face', as it was achieved – uniquely — and I believe consciously - in Pompeian wall-paintings - by admitting coexistence of such polarities as being dependent and independent — being dividual and individual.
Often, with paintings, more attention is drawn to the outer, physical, structure of the color means than to the inner, functional, structure of the color action... Here now follow a few details of the technical manipulation of the colorants which in my painting usually are oil paints and only rarely casein paints.
On a ground of the whitest white available – half or less absorbent – and built up in layers – on the rough side of panels of untempered Masonite – paint is applied with a palette knife directly from the tube to the panel and as thin and even as possible in one primary coat. Consequently there is no under or over painting or modeling or glazing and no added texture – so-called... As a result this kind of painting presents an inlay (intarsia) of primary thin paints films – not layered, laminated, nor mixed wet, half or more dry, paint skins.
Such homogeneous thin and primary films will dry, that is, oxidize, of course, evenly – and so without physical and/or chemical complication – to a healthy, durable paint surface of increasing luminosity.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

4 quotes from: 'The Color in my Painting'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Ellen G. White photo
Ryan Adams photo
Walter Benjamin photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

A Usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/dx5B6E7Px5Y/BqpR-Wun--IJ ( additional archive http://archive.is/nMSX8), from 15 Jan 2006, with Message-Id: YVuyf.2919$2x4.2240@trndny05 , from "penny", contains the full text of the quote, with NO mention of it being a quote, or MLK, or anything of the sort. That strongly suggests it is the original source, which was later mis-attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Misattributed

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Alain Badiou photo
Bret Harte photo

“And he says that the mountains are fairer
For once being held in your thought;”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

East and West Poems, Part I, His Answer to "Her Letter.".

Ben Witherington III photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Hovhannes Bagramyan photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Jean Piaget photo
Francis Escudero photo
Ken Ham photo
Kim Wilde photo
Pat Condell photo

“There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something.”

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

"Name the poison" (22 June 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEsWO4xep44
2011

Richard Feynman photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts. […] There are now twenty-four of these distinct States, none smaller perhaps than your Morea, several larger than all Greece. Each of these has a constitution framed by itself and for itself, but militating in nothing with the powers of the General Government in its appropriate department of war and foreign affairs. These constitutions being in print and in every hand, I shall only make brief observations on them, and on those provisions particularly which have not fulfilled expectations, or which, being varied in different States, leave a choice to be made of that which is best. You will find much good in all of them, and no one which would be approved in all its parts. Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt […].”

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

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)

Aron Ra photo
Alan Charles Kors photo
Camille Paglia photo
Margaret Mead photo

“The older child who has lost or broken some valuable thing will be found when his parents return, not run away, not willing to confess, but in a deep sleep The thief whose case is being tried falls asleep”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 39 as cited in: E. Bruce Goldstein (1994) Psychology. p. 511

Frank Baude photo

“For me snowboarding is basically like being beaten up by a mountain.”

Ed Byrne (1972) Irish comedian

Different Class (2009)

John Updike photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Gao Xingjian photo
Jonathan Ive photo

“There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

On the design of the Apple Cinema Display http://www.apple.com/displays/, in an article by Leander Kahney in Wired News magazine (June 2003)

Hélène Binet photo

“On the other end of this process, there are the finished forms which I sometimes portray at night with sporadic illumination. The obscurity isolates them and the light accentuates their volumes. My focus is on creating images of the buildings which have a sense of being unreal and that have a certain autonomy. Small and big parts of the building can now stand on their own and become independent characters.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

In: Hélène Binet’s ‘Forming | Portrait – Architecture of Zaha Hadid’ @ Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery http://sandsof.com/2012/11/24/helene-binets-forming-portrait-architecture-of-zaha-hadid-gabrielle-ammann-gallery/, sandsof.com, 24 November 2012

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“I can see myself before myself—a being through dark scenery.”

“Spring Music,” p. 34
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Conversations with Atoms”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Mary Midgley photo
Leung Chun-ying photo
Bret Harte photo
Robert Crumb photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

for example, the Jews in Poland

page 77 of 6 December 2012 publication by Springer Science & Business Media https://books.google.ca/books?id=nRArBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA77, translation by Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)

page 238 of "Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4EmqLCWUFvEC&pg=PA238 in 1998, page 221 of "Acts of Religion" https://books.google.ca/books?id=c_kgAmFbvP0C&pg=PA221 in 2002, page 235 of "Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine" https://books.google.ca/books?id=CYcOfkrduWYC&pg=PA235 in 2004, page 44 of "Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism" https://books.google.ca/books?id=IYVDMuOFN20C&pg=PA44 in 2005, page 8 of "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" https://books.google.ca/books?id=juCYcPWdqccC&pg=PA8 in 2010, page 155 of "Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture" https://books.google.ca/books?id=YMIsYMw0ES0C&pg=PA155 in 2012, page 75 of "Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4svsCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT75 in 2016 and page 39 of "Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews" https://books.google.ca/books?id=6kk_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA39 in 2017 also quote this.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

“War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, “War is the health of the State.” War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the State to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running.
On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If War is indeed the “health of the State,” then Peace can be nothing less than the “health of the People.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice.
History teaches us that the key elements to prosperity are freedom and peace. You don’t go to war with people you like, or with people you know, or with people with whom you are trading and doing business. Even after our fledgling republic was nearly torn asunder in civil war which literally pitted brother against brother and nearly destroyed the South, our reunited nation and all its people advanced and prospered after peace was restored.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

" Why Peace? Why Not? http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7277," Liberty For All (11 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012).
Republished http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2012/02/15/why-peace-why-not/ by Antiwar.com (16 February 2012).
2012

Murray Bookchin photo

“An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

Ecology and Revolutionary Thought (1965).

Alice A. Bailey photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Felix Adler photo

“As the light of morning strikes now one peak and then another, some being illuminated while others are in the shadow, so the light of the essential moral principle shines now upon one duty and then upon another, while others are in the shadow.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Saddam Hussein photo
Alex Jones photo
Crystal Allen photo
Lucy Aharish photo

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“.. by going on drawing those types of working people, etc., I hope to arrive at the point of being able to do illustration work for papers and books.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to brother Theo, from Brussels, Belgium (January 1881, letter 140); as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 19
being art student in Brussels
1880s, 1881

M. R. James photo

“A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"”

M. R. James (1862–1936) British writer

Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911); cited from Michael Cox (ed.) Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. 337-8.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“I've always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person — starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them — and I've always thought that every minute away from them would be hell — so looking at it that [way] I guess I'm not in love with you.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Letter breaking up with a boyfriend in 1947, as quoted in Jacqueline Kennedy's Old Love Letters Will School You in the Art of Breaking Up" by Laura Beck, in Cosmopolitan (2 September 2015)]

Eduardo Torroja photo
Louis Brandeis photo

“I spoke with him [Brandeis] at length, in German. I saw he's a very great man who can't bear injustice being done to anyone, anywhere…His soul is hewn of the purest marble.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Abraham Isaac Kook, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, Yehuda Mirsky (2014).

Michel Foucault photo
Bill Clinton photo

“It’s a great thing about not being office—you can just say whatever you want.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Bill Clinton on Libya, Peter King, and more http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/03/11/bill-clinton-on-libya-peter-king-and-more.html, March 2011.
2010s

Philo photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Tarō Asō photo

“A neighbor with one billion people equipped with nuclear bombs and has expanded its military outlays by double digits for 17 years in a row, and it is unclear as to what this is being used for. It is beginning to be a considerable threat.”

Tarō Asō (1940) 92nd Prime Minister of Japan

About China, as quoted in "Japan alarmed by Chinese 'threat'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4551642.stm, BBC, 22 December 2005.

Warren Farrell photo

“If my parents had made love a tenth of a second earlier or later, I wouldn’t exist. What an enormous miracle, just being given life.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 163.

John Steinbeck photo
John Cale photo

“I am a ham. I've no business being rock 'n' roll. I've said it over and over again that I'm a classical composer, dishevelling my personality by dabbling in rock 'n' roll.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Warren Farrell photo

“We are the offspring of approval-seekers. We want approval so badly that we vacillate between conforming to get it and standing out (being outstanding) to get it.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 24.

Oliver Goldsmith photo
Brian Leiter photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo