Quotes about being
page 57

Theodosius Dobzhansky photo
Tommy Robinson photo
Masha Gessen photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Edward St. Aubyn photo
Barbara W. Tuchman photo
Ethan Nadelmann photo

“If somehow we could snap our fingers and there would no longer be any drugs in the world whatsoever, would there be no more addiction? Would there be no more suffering? Or is it possible that addiction is not really about drugs, that addiction is really about the relationships that human beings form with one another and all sorts of things? That it's about the difference between establishing good relationships and bad relationships? Who is going to be in control? Who is going to say what this relationship should be between ourselves and these plants and chemicals and substances?… Is this a decision that we just put in the hands of government? Is this a decision we put just in the hands of doctors? Just in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco companies, the alcohol companies and all the other corporations that profit off of the production and sale of these things? The true challenge is how do we learn to live with these substances in such a way that they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible good. What will cause people to wake up and say "Stop?" What will cause people to say, "Enough is enough?"”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

What will cause people to say, "I value my freedom even if that freedom involves a measure of risk?"
Video address, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBW07ITbagc hosted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com by user "droppingknowledge."
The War on Drugs

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Rollo May photo
Bill Evans photo

“They will never forgive us, that we did not accept being slain or gassed a little.”

Zvi Rex (1909)

Source: „Man wird uns nie verzeihen, daß wir uns nicht haben erschlagen oder ein bißchen vergasen lassen.“ Christoph Buchwald: Odysseus hat entweder heimzukommen oder umzukommen. Notizen zur Rezeption Walter Mehrings nach 1950, in the quarterly die horen 1982, p. 15 https://books.google.de/books?id=lgpZAAAAMAAJ&q=1948

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Edvard Munch photo
Kazuo Ishiguro photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Vince Cable photo

“These masters of the universe must be tamed in the interests of the ordinary families whose jobs and livelihoods are being put at risk… The Tories won't say anything about the current crisis as they are completely in the pockets of the hedge funds.”

Vince Cable (1943) British Liberal Democrat politician

Comment's on hedge funds http://blythvalleylibdems.org.uk/news/000037/hbos_brought_to_its_knees_by_hedge_funds_hunting_in_a_pack__cable.html, 17 September 2008.
2008

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“(Sylvia) Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.170

Joseph Goebbels photo

“The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labor (Arbeitertum), to being their historical mission.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Warum sind wir Sozialisten,” Der Angriff editorial, July 16, 1928, reprinted in Der Angriff, Munich 1935, p. 223. David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, W.W. Norton & Company (1997) p. 25
As quoted in "Erkenntnis und Propaganda," Signale der neuen Zeit. 25 ausgewählte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1934), pp. 28-52
The Pharus Hall was a meeting hall the Nazis often used in Berlin.
1920s

Confucius photo
Stella Vine photo

“When Alexander McQueen bought the Kate Moss painting, she was really being persecuted. I can't remember the exact timing, but I think it was before the cocaine, when she was just having a hard time with Peter. I think that was when he bought that. I was really pleased because he was such a huge supporter of her. It was so terrible what was happening to her.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Honigman, Ana Finel. "Stella Vine in conversation with Ana Finel Honigman" http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/07/stella_vine_in_conversation_wi.php, Saatchi Gallery (2007-07-25)
On her Kate Moss painting bought by fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

Dominique Bourg photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Horace Walpole photo

“If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Notes of 1758, published in Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (1822), p. 226; also published as "Memoirs of the Year 1758" in Memoirs of King George II, Vol. III (1985), p. 10

Matt Dillahunty photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Jacques Maritain photo

“Many leaders are in the first instance executives whose primary duty is to direct some enterprise or one of its departments or sub-units…
It remains true that in every leadership situation the leader has to possess enough grasp of the ways and means, the technology and processes by means of which the purposes are being realized, to give wise guidance to the directive effort as a whole…
In general the principle underlying success at the coordinative task has been found to be that every special and different point of view in the group affected by the major executive decisions should be fully represented by its own exponents when decisions are being reached. These special points of view are inevitably created by the differing outlooks which different jobs or functions inevitably foster. The more the leader can know at first hand about the technique employed by all his group, the wiser will be his grasp of all his problems…
But more and more the key to leadership lies in other directions. It lies in ability to make a team out of a group of individual workers, to foster a team spirit, to bring their efforts together into a unified total result, to make them see the significance of the particular task each one is doing in relation to the whole.”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 115; as cited in: William Sykes " Visions Of Hope: Leadership http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2012/08/leadership_2.php." Published on August 12, 2012.

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Mark Satin photo
Peter Medawar photo
Owain Owain photo

“And teachers will be promoted from being the deliverers of facts to being being guides - guiding their peoples through rich and valued experiences offered by the computer.”

Owain Owain (1929–1993) Welsh novelist, short story writer and poet

'Y Cymro' (Welsh weekly newspaper), 23/07/1969

John Wooden photo

“Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court (1997)

Edward St. Aubyn photo
Aliko Dangote photo

“In Africa, as you're being successful and doing things right, you're also creating a lot of enemies.”

Aliko Dangote (1957) Nigerian billionaire entrepreneur

Bloomberg Businessweek http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-07/africas-richest-man-aliko-dangote-is-just-getting-started

Sachin Tendulkar photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Akira Kurosawa photo
Anaxagoras photo
Nico Perrone photo
Tom Robbins photo
Edith Stein photo
William Hazlitt photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Lord Dunsany photo
David Allen photo

“Being organized simply means that where something is matches what it means to you. No more, no less.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

22 August 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/105536813661298688
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Slavoj Žižek photo
Aron Ra photo

“I mean it; the Bible-god of western monotheism is just like that horrible kid. Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever? Religion doesn’t want to talk about life either. They hate practically everything that goes on in life. They want to talk about death and pretend that THAT is life. And those of us who know life, live life, and love life, they accuse of being dead already. Every aspect of their world-view is upside-down or backwards -as DogmaDebate brilliantly illustrated. What these religionists preach actually diminishes the very meaning of life. Humans tend to value most that which is rare and fleeting. Such is life. The more you have of anything, the less valuable it is. They’re claiming immortality for eternity, rendering the value of life infinitely worthless. They sell their imaginary after-life as if it is sooo much better than this period of discomfort we have to endure before we achieve paradise. Having to toil in this fallen, sin-corrupted, dead-and-damned world. They hate existence itself so much that they actually long for the end-of-days, and only seem to get happy when they think Armageddon is upon us.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Fukkenuckabee http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2012/12/21/fukkenuckabee/ (December 21, 2012)

Warren Farrell photo

“Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being "given up for a younger woman" is for a woman.”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 174.

Nicholas of Cusa photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Brook Taylor photo
Aeschines photo
Ricky Gervais photo

“You have options. You can either continue to be miserable or you can just stop being angry at everyone and accept the way things are. Allow yourself to live.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Ghost Town, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SYnbz7wgU

Edward Carpenter photo

“Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and slowly modified, but always added to and always administered by the ruling class. Today the code of the dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability—and if we ask why this code has to a great extent overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far that in the main it characterises those classes who do not conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because it is the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern literature and the press. It is not necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it is the code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the code of the Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the Democratic code of the future—of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and its distinctive watchword is—property.
The Respectability of today is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-off.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Nigel Cumberland photo

“You might look at someone successful and think they got lucky – a case of being in the right place at the right time perhaps? The truth is, every piece of good fortune is the result of hours, or even years, of hard work and preparation.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Chris Cornell photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it.”

Alternate Translation: Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X, 5

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Newton Lee photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Experience has rude lessons, and we grow
Like what we have been taught too late to know,
And yet we hate ourselves for being so.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1836-1) (Vol.46) Experience
The Monthly Magazine

Aldous Huxley photo
Will Eisner photo
Richard Holt Hutton photo
Primo Levi photo
Stephen King photo
Allen West (politician) photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
John Calvin photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Nicomachus photo
Plutarch photo

“Philip being arbitrator betwixt two wicked persons, he commanded one to fly out of Macedonia and the other to pursue him.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

36 Philip
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Konrad Lorenz photo
Sophia Loren photo
Francis Crick photo
Arun Shourie photo
Max Horkheimer photo
Bill Engvall photo
George Marshall photo

“The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Various sources below attribute this statement or similar ones to Marshall
But a war to prevent a third world war would be the Third World War, and Marshall had reached the conclusion that, "The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it."
As quoted in This is Our World (1956) by Louis Fisher, p. 91
Marshall's motto read: "The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it." It was 1947.
As quoted in The Story of Indonesia (1959) by Louis Fisher, p. 111 http://books.google.de/books?id=AkIeAAAAMAAJ&q=motto+read
Frances Perkins recalled his saying, "The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it."
As quoted in Freedom's Advocate: a twenty-five year chronicle (1965) by Aaron Levenstein, p. 104 http://books.google.de/books?id=plZIAQAAIAAJ&q=perkins
“Its purpose is to avoid war, not to provoke it,” he explained to his goddaughter, Rose Page Wilson. The deterrence factor was vital. “The only way to be sure of winning a third world war is to prevent it,” Marshall warned.
As quoted in General of the Army. George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman by Ed Cray (1990) p. 645 http://books.google.de/books?id=bGgcYteOQxUC&pg=PA645
Unsourced variant: The only way to win a war is to prevent it.
A very similar statement appears in the US Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War) (30 September 1945), p. 41 http://books.google.de/books?id=mnChmcVKoVsC&pg=PA41&dq=lesson:
:: The great lesson to be learned in the battered towns of England and the ruined cities of Germany is that the best way to win a war is to prevent it from occurring.

Pierce Brown photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“It's an open question, the degree to which the cosmos would order itself around you properly if you got yourself together as much as you could get yourself together. We know that things can go very badly wrong if you do things very badly wrong – there's no doubt about that. But the converse is also true. If you start to sort yourself out properly, and if you have beneficial effect on your family, first of all that's going to echo down the generations, but it also spreads out into the community. And we are networked together. We're not associated linearly. We all effect each other. So it's an open question, the degree to which acting out the notion that being is good, and the notion that you can accept its limitations and that you should still strive for virtue. It's an open question as to how profound an effect that would have on the structure of reality if we really chose to act it out. I don't think we know the limits of virtue. I don't think we know what true virtue could bring about if we aimed at it carefully and practically. So the notion that there is something divine about the individual who accepts the conditions of existence and still strives for the good, I think that's an idea that's very much worth paying attention to. And I think the fact that people considered that idea seriously for at least 2000 years indicates that there's at least something to be thought about there.”

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

Other

Michael Vassar photo

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

John Bright photo