Quotes about being (10000 quotes, page 64)

“In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 420.

“Today 'nationalism' is out of fashion among the opinion-formers. Thanks to a superficial misreading of history, it is accused of having been responsible for two world wars and has widely come to be regarded as a political sin of the first magnitude, fortunately found only in such antiquated and obsolete figures as General de Gaulle. In fact the real danger comes from ideologies not nationalism; for while a nation may properly respect the nationhood of others, an ideology knows no frontiers…Once [the Tories] lose their claim to be, in the fullest sense, the 'national party', they are left, as they are in danger of being left today, either as the party of the 'individual' – a noble but to most people an austere and forbidding creed – or else as the party of the middle classes, which condemns them to a permanent minority.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

'A Tract for the Tories', The Spectator (1967), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 8.

War , People , World , History

“This path cannot be followed by human thinking. It is the path that is being formed by the law of nature.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 17, "The Law of Nature," p. 13.
Anecdotes of Oyasama

Law , Nature , Thinking

“It is hardly possible to over-calculate the evils accruing to individuals and to society in general from this custom, gradually increasing, of late and ultra-prudent marriages. Parents bring up their daughters in luxurious homes, expecting and exacting that the home to which they transfer them should be of almost equal ease; forgetting how next to impossible it is for such a home to be offered by any young man of the present generation, who has to work his way like his father before him. Daughters, accustomed to a life of ease and laziness, are early taught to check every tendency towards "a romantic attachment" — the insane folly of loving a man for what he is, rather than for what he has got; of being content to fight the worldly battle hand-in-hand — with a hand that is worth clasping, rather than settle down in comfortable sloth, protected and provided for in all external things. Young men … But words fail to trace the lot of enforced bachelorhood, hardest when its hardship ceases to be consciously felt.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Love , Life , Men , Marriage

“About the accident itself I can say very little. Almost nothing. It involved something falling from the sky. Technology. Parts, bits. That's it, really: all I can divulge. Not much, I know.
It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that—well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been—or, more precisely, being about to be—hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap—the crater—that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 1.

Light , Parting

“Christianity and other faith traditions also teach us that the common good concerns the relational. Not lone egos, nor an anonymous mass. But instead shared bonds that are both convivial and sacrificial. That’s because human beings flourish as persons who freely associate with others in groups, communities and nations.”

Jon Cruddas (1962) British politician

The Common Good in an Age of Austerity Lecture, 9 July 2014 http://joncruddas.org.uk/sites/joncruddas.org.uk/files/ebor%20a.pdf

Faith , Communication , Personality

“I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,
I had been there, in the house of torture,
I have seen people being kicked, men’s bodies scorched,
nails pulled out with pliers.
Armed with flame and cudgels, grinning men in shirt sleeves.
Where I could hear my friends being thrown headlong
down the stairs.
Night was as day, and long shrieks wounded me.
In vain I tried to think of wooded lanes and flowers,
a serene life and human words.
The thought seized up, it was as if a wound were opened up
again and again and endlessly searched.
From the mouth struck, teeth and blood came out,
and lamenting moans from the deep throat.
Away, away from that house, from that street and town,
from anything similar to it.
I must save myself, keep up my mind,
that I should not be led to madness by these memories.
Oh, if we could go back to a void, from which a new order,
a maternal opening could come forth,
if I hear a certain tone of voice even in jest, I shudder.
My unhappiness is that I avoid the sight of suffering,
hospitals and prisons.
I have yearned for high solitudes, lands of still sunshine
and sweet shadows,
but I would always be pursued by the ghosts of human beings.
All of a sudden I feel the need of distraction and play,
to lose myself in the noise of the fairground.
I remain with you, but forgive me
if you see me sometimes act like a madman.
I try to heal myself by myself, as an animal,
trusting that the wounds will close.
I stop to listen to the simple conversations of the women
in the marketplace, with their dialectical lilt.
I rejoice at the footsteps of running children,
their overpowering calls.
Because you do not know the absurdity of my dreams,
the fixed expressions, the incomprehensible gestures.
There is turmoil inside me, which seems to ridicule me.
And I cannot cry out, not to be like them.
Tomorrow I will go towards some music, now I am getting ready.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Life , Women , Men , Children

“Behind the stream of my mind and body, behind the stream of my race and all mankind, behind the stream of plants and animals, I watch with trembling the Invisible, treading on all visible things and ascending.
Behind his heavy and blood-splattered feet I hear all living things being trampled on and crushed.
His face is without laughter, dark and silent, beyond joy and sorrow, beyond hope.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Hope , Laughter , Animals , Joy

“I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I do not expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.”

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

"The Hard Kind of Courage" in Harper's (October 1958) republished as "A Fly in Buttermilk" in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

Hope

“Lucid gems are made of water; just as Crystal, which has been concreted from clear water, not always by a very great cold, as some used to judge, and by very hard frost, but sometimes by a less severe one, the nature of the soil fashioning it, the humour or juices being shut up in definite cavities, in the way in which spars are produced in mines.”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

English translation by Silvanus P. Thompson (1900).
De Magnete (1600)

Way , Fashion , Nature , Water

“In secrecy, bureaucracies grow large, ungainly and unaccountable to those they are meant to serve. When there is no fierce spotlight of public accountability shining, there is no pressure to ensure systems are streamlined or even working. What you find throughout any bureaucracy protected by secrecy is a cesspit of illogic and waste. And because the state keeps rebranding, shifting responsibility from one set of bureaucrats to another, most of the work being done is for the purpose of keeping other bureaucrats in employment rather than satisfying the needs of the public.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 35.
The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy, 1st Edition

“What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life. I do not insist upon the details of the face. I do not care to repeat them with anatomical exactness. Though I happen to have an Italian model whose appearance at first suggests nothing but a purely animal existence, yet I succeed in picking out among the lines of his face those which suggest that deep gravity which persists in every human being.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 413

Life , Feeling , Appearance , Animals

“We are being protected from hysteria. Isn't that what they call it? Maniacs! The world's been in a habitual state of crisis for fifty years. Fifty? What am I saying? It's been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning — but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And why, for the love of God? What is the fundamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother?”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 24
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

Love , God , World

“Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Faith , Religion , Parting

“In a few weeks, or at most a few months, thanks to the skill of the Allied Commanders and the bravery of their men, the objects for which we and they have endured more than four years of sacrifice and suffering have been attained. The lands upon which the enemy had laid his cruel and predatory hand are in course of being evacuated. The exiled peoples are returning in joyous crowds across the war frontiers to their homes. The military power of the enemy is broken. His resources are spent. His armaments are in course of being surrendered. Hope breathes again in the souls of the unhappy peoples whom he has trampled in the mire. The impious spirit that claimed that Might was superior to Right and that there was no law but that of successful violence in the world has been exorcised, let us hope for ever. The conflict for international honour, righteousness, and freedom has been won, and the authors of this vast and wicked conspiracy against the liberties of mankind are fugitives on the face of the earth. My Lords, this is a great hour. It has been a wonderful victory. Are we presumptuous if we see in it the judgment of a Higher Power upon panoplied arrogance and enthroned wrong?”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Men , War , People , World

“Every year at the farm I watch the insect kingdom come into its northern being, flourish in what we have of heat and sun, live out its myriad life, and disappear almost as if it had never been.”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

p. 200 https://books.google.com/books?id=xvoMAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=sun
Northern Farm, 1948

Life , Sun

“We must demand that people also condemn the wild conspiracy theories, the anti-Semitism, and the sectarianism too. Being tough on this is entirely keeping with our values. We should challenge every part of the hateful ideology spread by neo-Nazis.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Hate , People , Parting

“In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software. The density with which they’d been able to pack transistors onto chips still had not been matched by any fabrication plant now in existence. Their devices could hold more data than anything you could buy today. Their ability to communicate through all sorts of wireless schemes was only now being matched.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Intelligence , Communication

“I think there's a time to work, and everyone has to kind of adjust. And then there's a time to relax, and be the mom or take the kids on vacation when you need to wind down. So it's a matter of planning, and being able to map out your year or your week or let's start with the day. It is just being multi-tasking and being available.”

Vanessa L. Williams (1963) American actress, singer and former Miss America

Vanessa Williams: 'Vacation' http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vanessa-williams-vacation/ (April 6, 2004)

Moms , Thinking , Time

“When I first heard the songs of Mario Ruiz Armengol I responded in awe at the totality of their musical expression. Mario's harmonic sense was one that I had never encountered in most Latin music; melodies which in themselves were distinctive and lingered in your mind after only one hearing; profound emotional content without being hyper-romantic in conception. Some of them seemed almost brooding in character, filled with a feeling of melancholia and reflecting the depth of his personality.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

From the liner notes for Cal Tjader Plays the Contemporary Music of Mexico and Brazil (September 1962)

Music , Feeling , Sense , Personality

“These [anti-government] websites are expensive to maintain. We have been told that it costs about RM60,000 to set up the equipment, and around RM30,000 to maintain … I don't rule out the possibility that the websites are being funded by foreign elements, perhaps using students to do the work.”

Ibrahim Ali (1957) Member of the Dewan Rakyat (parliament)

Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?
If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?
If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?
If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?
If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book The Necessity of Atheism

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)

God , Fear , Knowledge , Universe

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the eye to come back to the United States.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Santorum defends Iraq war
Bucks County Courier Times
2006-10-17
Alison
Hawkes
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-10172006-728120.html

“As much as I loved the ideas, I excelled at experimental failure, I found new ways to make experiments not work. I would mess up PCRs, add the wrong buffers, northerns, westerns, southerns. I would make them not work in quite ingenious ways, and I realized slowly, over the course of those years, that the secret to being a great scientist is to love the manual labor of it.”

Jonah Lehrer (1981) American science writer

Chimeras of Experience: A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer (2009)

Love , Secret , Way , Idea

“Counterpoint texts tend to resemble one another in the underlying principles of voice-leading they espouse and in the kinds of orderings of rules they provide, but no one could accuse the harmony texts of, let us say, Heinrich Schenker and Hugo Riemann, or of Allen Irvine McHose and Walter Piston--or for that matter, of Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, and Roger Sessions--of being mutually compatible, either in premise or in practice.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Is Mode Real", p.18,10.

“For some variation it would be better
to place the donkey seen from behind
[to avoid] all faces looking out of the picture [forward]
And the tree could also have more foliage.
1. Joseph has been portrayed too fat and too recklessly
2. Mary should hold the child more gently
because a vulnerable child can't stand being held so firmly
Joseph is too short fat - his head is growing from his trunk
and both [Joseph & Mary] their heads are too big”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

1640 - 1670

Tree

“As to the word itself, it is generally allowed to be of Greek extraction. But whence the Greek word, enthousiasmos, is derived, none has yet been able to show. Some have endeavoured to derive it from en theoi, in God; because all enthusiasm has reference to him. … It is not improbable, that one reason why this uncouth word has been retained in so many languages was, because men were not better agreed concerning the meaning than concerning the derivation of it. They therefore adopted the Greek word, because they did not understand it: they did not translate it into their own tongues, because they knew not how to translate it; it having been always a word of a loose, uncertain sense, to which no determinate meaning was affixed.
It is not, therefore, at all surprising, that it is so variously taken at this day; different persons understanding it in different senses, quite inconsistent with each other. Some take it in a good sense, for a divine impulse or impression, superior to all the natural faculties, and suspending, for the time, either in whole or in part, both the reason and the outward senses. In this meaning of the word, both the Prophets of old, and the Apostles, were proper enthusiasts; being, at divers times, so filled with the Spirit, and so influenced by Him who dwelt in their hearts, that the exercise of their own reason, their senses, and all their natural faculties, being suspended, they were wholly actuated by the power of God, and “spake” only “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
Others take the word in an indifferent sense, such as is neither morally good nor evil: thus they speak of the enthusiasm of the poets; of Homer and Virgil in particular. And this a late eminent writer extends so far as to assert, there is no man excellent in his profession, whatsoever it be, who has not in his temper a strong tincture of enthusiasm. By enthusiasm these appear to understand, all uncommon vigour of thought, a peculiar fervour of spirit, a vivacity and strength not to be found in common men; elevating the soul to greater and higher things than cool reason could have attained.
But neither of these is the sense wherein the word “enthusiasm” is most usually understood. The generality of men, if no farther agreed, at least agree thus far concerning it, that it is something evil: and this is plainly the sentiment of all those who call the religion of the heart “enthusiasm.” Accordingly, I shall take it in the following pages, as an evil; a misfortune, if not a fault. As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is, undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such a disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of the understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than of folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premisses; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premisses. And so does an enthusiast suppose his premisses true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premisses are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not: and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

Men , God , Religion , Fools

“It's an extremely profitable thing to be 'concerned' about drugs. You don't just have treatment programs, you have law enforcement programs, you have entire industries that could not function but for drugs. Including the prison industry. I think America has gone psychotic … there are human beings—even as we speak—dying, in the kind of shrieking, tormenting pain you couldn't inflict on a P. O. W., because America doesn't want them to be drug addicts.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Pete Humes' interview Punchline in October 2000.

Pain , Law , Thinking

“All the world saw him being killed, all bloodied. Is that democracy? And who did it? Drones, including American ones, delivered a strike on his motorcade. Then commandos, who were not supposed to be there, brought in so-called opposition and militants. And killed him without trial.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On Muammar Gaddafi's Death. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8958294/Vladimir-Putin-calls-John-McCain-nuts-in-outspoken-attack.html
2011 - 2015

World , Democracy

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Way , Feeling , Thinking , Universe

“[on the Gulf War] I was in the unenviable position of being for the war, but against the troops.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Love, Laughter and Truth (2002)

War

“Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.”

John Braine (1922–1986) English novelist

New York Times, 7 October 1962.

“I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras… I have no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics. I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself. I have made a special investigation of divergent series in general and the results I get are termed by the local mathematicians as "startling"…. Very recently I came across a tract published by you styled Orders of Infinity in page 36 of which I find a statement that no definite expression has been as yet found for the number of prime numbers less than any given number. I have found an expression which very nearly approximates to the real result, the error being negligible. I would request that you go through the enclosed papers. Being poor, if you are convinced that there is anything of value I would like to have my theorems published. I have not given the actual investigations nor the expressons that I get but I have indicated the lines on which I proceed. Being inexperienced I would very highly value any advice you give me. Requesting to be excused for the trouble I give you. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours truly…”

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) Indian mathematician

Letter to G. H. Hardy, (16 January 1913), published in Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary American Mathematical Society (1995) History of Mathematics, Vol. 9

Education , School , Error , Mathematics

“Discrimination still exists. Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened. Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured that there is so much to be gained by reaching out to others; that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

2004 Christmas message http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4125229.stm

People , Feeling

“The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me…”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Journal entry on the writing of her science-fiction novel The Last Man (14 May 1824)

Feeling

“I came up no backstairs…Little did I think to be ever charged in this House with being the tool and abettor of secret influence. The novelty of the imputation only renders it so much the more contemptible. This is the only answer I shall ever deign to make on the subject, and I wish the House to bear it in their mind, and judge of my future conduct by my present declaration: the integrity of my own heart, and the probity of all my public, as well as my private principles, shall always be my sources of action.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (12 January 1784), quoted in Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England. 1783-1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), p. 54.

Secret , Thinking , Future , Heart

“A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes…. The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism… During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

People , Religion , Hope , Way

“That was the nature of chaos; its effects spanned time in ways that were not always immediately discernible, not even by beings outside of time.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 9 “A Stranger is Coming to Makendha” (p. 69)

Way , Nature , Time

“There are so many good reasons not to eat meat, but for me, the well-being of my children is the most important. … I want them to be healthy and also to understand that when they say ‘No!’ to meat, they’re saying ‘No!’ to animal cruelty. We talk about our pets, and I say, ‘You wouldn’t eat Biscuit, would you? Well, then let’s not eat any animal, O. K.? … I don’t think I really realized what I was putting into my body and the actual effects that it was having on me, so now I feel so much healthier, and I have so much more energy, and foods taste better!”

Shanna Moakler (1975) American actress and model

Ad for PETA, as quoted in "Shanna Moakler Makes PETA Ad", LookToTheStars.org (October 10, 2008) https://web.archive.org/web/20081201113815/https://www.looktothestars.org/news/1361-shanna-moakler-makes-peta-ad.

Children , Food , Feeling , Understanding

“C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Allegro CL foreign function interface http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/2ec281a4f469bb35 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles

Support , Memory

“No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 62 http://www.friesian.com/fiction.htm
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

“When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

4 March 1945
The Duty of Delight (2011)

People

“We wish to continue in following up the legacy of the Second Vatican Council whose wise regulations have still to be led to their fulfilment, being careful that a push, generous perhaps, but unduly timed, does not detract from the content and meaning of the council, and on the other hand being careful and reined and timid efforts do not slow up the magnificent drive of renewal and of life.”

Pope John Paul I (1912–1978) 263rd Pope of the Catholic Church

Address to the crowd in St Peter's Square (27 August 1978), as quoted in "Pope John Paul will continue policy of reform" by Peter Nichols, in The Times (28 August 1978), p. 1

Life , Effort , Time

“A horse at the end of the race…A dog when the hunt is over…A bee with its honey stored…And a human being after helping others. They don't make a fuss about it. They just go on to something else, as the vine looks forward to bearing fruit again in season. We should be like that. Acting almost unconsciously.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
V, 6
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

Dogs , Bee , Help , Horse

“It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 140
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Men , Justice

“If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 128.

World , Christ

“Life isn't binary — and neither is politics. If you are adrift in the ocean, your enemy isn’t just sharks; it’s thirst, hunger, drowning, and despair itself. If you face your predicament assuming the only thing you have to worry about is being eaten by a shark, you might fend off the sharks, but you will also probably die. Indeed, by ignoring other threats, you’d probably make yourself more vulnerable to a shark attack.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, War on the Right (2018)

Life , Hunger , Despair

“Do we vividly feel that He is near us as our everlasting Friend, to guide, cheer, and bless our aspirations and our efforts? And in this confidence do we watch, pray, strive, press forward, and seek resolutely for ourselves and fellow-beings the highest end of existence, even the perfection of our immortal souls?”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 277

Feeling , Soul , Confidence , Effort

“This breakdown of social order — rules of dress, sexual controls, speech patterns, family structures — has been seen as a great victory for the individual. On the other hand, it may simply be a reflection of the individual's frustration at being locked up inside a specialization. These acts of personal freedom are irrelevant to the exercise of power. So in lieu of taking a real part in the evolution of society, the individual struggles to appear as if no one has power over his personal evolution. Thus victories won for these individual liberties may actually be an acceptance of defeat by the individual.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Family , Exercises , Freedom , Appearance

“Eissler's rage knew no bounds. He did not like being harrassed by other analysts. "Just today Masud Khan called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives. The board members, all of them, or at least most of them, are asking for the same."”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: Final Analysis (1990), p. 194

Rage

“An examination of our terms, such as competition, rivalry, emulation, etc., reveals that the traditional perspective remains inscribed in the language. Competitors are fundamentally those who run or walk together, rivals who dwell on opposite banks of the same river, etc…The modern view of competition and conflict is the unusual and exceptional view, and our incomprehension is perhaps more problematic than the phenomenon of primitive prohibition. Primitive societies have never shared our conception of violence. For us, violence has a conceptual autonomy, a specificity that is utterly unknown to primitive societies. We tend to focus on the individual act, whereas primitive societies attach only limited importance to it and have essentially pragmatic reasons for refusing to isolate such an act from its context. This context is one of violence. What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there, if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is in fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection it had not previously possessed. At the level of the blood feud, in fact, there is always only one act, murder, which is performed in the same way for the same reasons in vengeful imitation of the preceding murder. And this imitation propagates itself by degrees. It becomes a duty for distant relatives who had nothing to do with the original act, if in fact an original act can be identified; it surpasses limits in space and time and leaves destruction everywhere in its wake; it moves from generation to generation. In such cases, in its perfection and paroxysm mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance, in which human beings are constrained to the monotonous repetition of homicide. Vengeance turns them into doubles.”

René Girard book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Source: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), p. 11-12.

Way , Distant , Time , Perfection

“I don’t feel powerful at all. I am still under this kind of detention, and you know, this is kind of a bail. Even yesterday I realized while trying to take care of the baby, [at] the park, [I had] been secretly followed and it’s quite fragile. Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

Feeling , Baby

“I recall to mind on this occasion, said His Highness, "the words which I spoke nearly 21 years ago when I opened the Representative Assembly in person for the first time after I assumed the reins of Government. The hopes I then expressed of the value of the yearly gatherings of the Assembly in contributing to the well-being and contentment of my subjects have been amply fulfilled. The Legislative Council, too, which came into existence in 1907.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

At the Inauguration of the Reformed Legislative Council and the Representative Assembly on the 17th March 1924 Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 330-32 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

Hope , Time , Personality

“There are no withdrawal symptoms yet (post retirement in 1992). I'm enjoying the feeling of being faltu.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Feeling

“It is important for Pollock that Muslims not be blamed for the decline of Sanskrit. He writes that any theory 'can be dismissed at once' if it 'traces the decline of Sanskrit culture to the coming of Muslim power'… Trying to prove the timing of Sanskrit's decline prior to the Turkish invasions enables him to absolve these invasions of any blame… I get the impression that Pollock does not want to dwell on whether Muslim invasions had debilitated the Hindu political and intellectual institutions in the first place… Throughout Pollock's analysis, hardly any Muslim ruler gets blamed for the destruction of Indian culture. He simply avoids discussing the issue of Muslim invasions and their destructive influence on Hindu institutions… The impact of various invasions in Kashmir was so enormous that it cannot be ignored in any historical analysis… The contradiction between his two accounts, published separately, is serious: Muslim invasions created a traumatic enough shockwave to cause Hindu kings to mobilize the 'cult of Rama' and therefore the Hindus funded the production of extensive Ramayana texts for this agenda. And yet, the death of Sanskrit taking place at the same time had little relation to the arrival of Muslims. When Hindus are to be blamed for their alleged hatred towards Muslims, the Muslims are shown to have an important presence; but when Muslims are to be protected from being assigned any responsibility for destruction, they are mysteriously made to disappear from the scene.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

Death , Time

“Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female and by claiming as his own all female characteristics - emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc. - and projecting onto women all male traits - vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female - public relations. He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 2 (hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Life , Women , Men , Courage

“I think that if men treat animals badly, they will almost certainly treat human beings badly in due course.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Interview with Rynn Berry

Men , Thinking , Animals

“The mosaic form of the TV image demands participation and involvement in depth, of the whole being, as does the sense of touch.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Understanding Media (1964), p. 334

Sense

“My serve used to be a weakness and I don't think it's a weakness anymore. I'm trying to come a lot more to the net and trying to be more offensive — not in terms of hitting the ball harder, which I think is quite hard for me to hit it any harder than I do — but in terms of building the point and coming to the net and being offensive at the net. A lot of the top girls barely do (come to net) except like Mauresmo or Henin does it a little bit, but a lot of girls don't do it.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Tennis Week "The Tennis Week Interview: Sania Mirza"

Girl , Thinking

“The number of different optical phenomena has become in our time so great that caution must be taken so as to avoid being deceived, and also to refer the phenomena to the simple laws.”

Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) German optical physicist

In The Wave Theory, Light and Spectra. Prismatic and Diffraction Spectra. Memoirs by Joseph Von Fraunhofer (1981), p. 14 ISBN 0-405-13867-9

Law , Time

“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

[2008-08-29, Palin Speaks to Newsmax About McCain, Abortion, Mike, Coppock, Newsmax, http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/sarah-palin-vp/2008/08/29/id/325086, 2008-09-10, http://web.archive.org/web/20080910011750/http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/sarah_palin_vp/2008/08/29/126139.html]
Posed question: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
2014

Change

“Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 314

Universe

“Pure mathematics proves itself a royal science both through its content and form, which contains within itself the cause of its being and its methods of proof. For in complete independence mathematics creates for itself the object of which it treats, its magnitudes and laws, its formulas and symbols.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 94.

Law , Mathematics , Science

“A far greater glory is it to the wise to die for freedom, the love of which stands in very truth implanted in the soul like nothing else, not as a casual adjunct but an essential part of its unity, and cannot be amputated without the whole system being destroyed as a result.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

75.
Every Good Man is Free

Love , Truth , Soul , Freedom

“Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention (5 June 1788).
1780s

Men , People , Age , Loss

“You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg

Business

“As far as “plot” goes, as I get older I more and more suspect that “plot” is really being used, in the many incarnations of this argument, as a placeholder for a whole cloud of qualities found (or not found) in certain narratives, some of which actually constitute “plot” and many of which do not. What first led me to suspect this is the fact that many of the sternest exponents of “I want novels to have plots, dammit” are also demonstrably fans of, for instance, quite a few Robert A. Heinlein novels whose plots can barely be detected even by advanced scientific equipment. (Not just later Heinlein, either; go back and look at Beyond This Horizon). As it happens, I like some of those books, too, and what I learn from them, and from thousands of other books, is that what matters isn’t the presence of a carefully-engineered, structurally sound “plot.” What matters is whether a book entrances us into reading it or forces us to decode it — and “plot” is just one of several methods of getting us into the reading trance. It’s a good method. It’s not the only one.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (1959) American science fiction editor, fanzine publisher, essayist, reviewer, anthologist, and teacher

"Oh No Lev Grossman No", in Making Light (30 August 2009)

Books , Learning , Reading

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Life , Death , Pain , Family

“One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M. Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxi-xxii

Men , People , World , Hope

“We know we’ve come to a crossroads when German childhood is being held up as an idealized model for Americans.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

Childhood

“For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely “What basic character do beings manifest?” or “How may the being of beings be characterized?” but “What is this ‘being’ itself?” The decisive question is that of “the meaning of being,” not merely that of the being of beings.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 18

Question , Decision

“It's been on my mind – what would something be like if it were unbalanced? It's been a vexing question for a long time. But it took the experience of working with radical kinds of symmetry, not just a rectangle, but a diamond shape, as well as extreme extensions of shapes, before I finally came to the idea of everything being unbalanced, nothing vertical, nothing horizontal, nothing parallel. I came to the fact that unbalancing has its own order. In a peculiar way, it can still end up feeling symmetrical. I don't know but what the very nature of our response to art is experienced symmetrically.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Art , Way , Feeling , Idea

“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

The Guardian (13 February 1992)

People , Music , Idea

“We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Way , Water , Change , Future

“Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

As quoted in Faith in Freedom : Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004) by Thomas Stephen Szasz, p. 10. Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88), 3:490

Education , Knowledge

“Most of our contemporaries think that, at bottom, being a philosopher and adopting an idealist method are one and the same thing.”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Methodical Realism

Thinking

“Who is, in the classical conception, the subject that comprehends the ontological condition of truth and untruth? It is the master of pure contemplation (theoria), and the master of a practice guided by theoria, i. e., the philosopher-statesman. To be sure, the truth which he knows and expounds is potentially accessible to everyone. Led by the philosopher, the slave in Plato’s Meno is capable of grasping the truth of a geometrical axiom, i. e., a truth beyond change and corruption. But since truth is a state of Being as well as of thought, and since the latter is the expression and manifestation of the former, access to truth remains mere potentiality as long as it is not living in and with the truth. And this mode of existence is closed to the slave — and to anyone who has to spend his life procuring the necessities of life. Consequently, if men no longer had to spend their lives in the realm of necessity, truth and a true human existence would be in a strict and real sense universal. Philosophy envisages the equality of man but, at the same time, it submits to the factual denial of equality. For in the given reality, procurement of the necessities is the life-long job of the majority, and the necessities have to be procured and served so that truth (which is freedom from material necessities) can be. Here, the historical barrier arrests and distorts the quest for truth; the societal division of labor obtains the dignity of an ontological condition. If truth presupposes freedom from toil, and if this freedom is, in the social reality, the prerogative of a minority, then the reality allows such a truth only in approximation and for a privileged group. This state of affairs contradicts the universal character of truth, which defines and “prescribes” not only a theoretical goal, but the best life of man qua man, with respect to the essence of man. For philosophy, the contradiction is insoluble, or else it does not appear as a contradiction because it is the structure of the slave or serf society which this philosophy does not transcend. Thus it leaves history behind, unmastered, and elevates truth safely above the historical reality. There, truth is reserved intact, not as an achievement of heaven or in heaven, but as an achievement of thought — intact because its very notion expresses the insight that those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 128-130

Life , Men , Truth , History

“Being born on the banks of the Bosphorus, I'm Byzantine by nationality, but French by education, German by training, Spanish by choice, Catalan at heart, fron the Canary Isles sometimes, and now becoming someone from Barranquilla by adoption and affection.”

Alberto Assa (1909–1996) Colombian eductor and translator

Por haber nacido a orillas del Bósforo, soy bizantino de nación, pero francés de educación, alemán de formación, español de vocación, catalán de corazón, canario de añoración, y ahora barranquillero de adopción y afición.
Document from the University of Cartagena, p. 23 Found as PDF online http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22Por+haber+nacido+a+orillas+del+B%C3%B3sforo%2C+soy+bizantino%22&rlz=1R2SKPT_enGB432&oq=%22Por+haber+nacido+a+orillas+del+B%C3%B3sforo%2C+soy+bizantino%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=hp.3...1875.4703.0.5000.3.3.0.0.0.0.203.453.0j2j1.3.0...0.0.XWR5R0Td2Ow

Education , Heart , Training

“Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"Recipe to prevent the cold of January from utterly destroying life" (30 January 1841), quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 97.

Suffering

“What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal?”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Of Freethinkers (1)
Les Caractères (1688)

Soul , Idea , Parting , Perfection

“This is the nature of human energy; individuals generate it, and control it. Each person is self-controlling, and therefore responsible for his acts. Every human being, by his nature, is free.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943), p. xii.

Nature , Personality

“Let us suppose that a man believes in eternal life on Christ’s word. In that case he believes without any fuss about being profound and searching and philosophical and racking his brains.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 103

Life , Search , Christ

“A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Quoted by Frederic Prokosch in Voices: A Memoir (1983)

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

People , Way , Feeling , Question

“The first one hundred and fifty year old human being could be alive as a baby today.”

Patrick Dixon book Futurewise

Futurewise (1998)

Baby

“If you ask most teachers of science what their main goal is, they will probably say: for my students to understand the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, biology, or whatever other field is being studied. The critical words here are ‘understand’ and ‘concept’, and both of these terms assume a fundamentally psychological approach to learning… If we see the goals of science education in terms of what students will be able to do, and how they will be able to make sense of the world, rather than in terms of our speculations about what may be going on in their brains, then we need to see scientific learning as the acquisition of cultural tools and practices, as learning to participate in very specific and often specialized forms of human activity”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Jay L. Lemke, " Teaching all the languages of science: Words, symbols, images, and actions http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/papers/barcelon.htm." Conference on Science Education in Barcelona. 1998.

World , Education , Understanding , Sense

“The producer and director were developing my story to a mega series. They had shot around 100 episodes after which the ban was imposed. The Muslim fanatics in Bengal, supported by the ruling Trinamool Congress played havoc when the serial was to be aired. The chief minister was instrumental in imposing the ban. It is interesting to see that the same person (Mamata Bangerjee) is now advocating for freedom of expression and calling it super emergency,” “This is sheer double standard….. If some people do not like a representation of art, there are other ways to counter it. I never support violent attack on artistic freedom. I also do not support the trend of issuing fatwa. But, there are politicians, who support or protest on the basis of religion. Why are rules being tweaked for one particular community in Bengal? Why did Mamata Banerjee’s government never allow me to work there, allow my books to be published? Freedom of expression, the most important character of a democracy, is always under attack for vested political interest. Nobody criticises things neutrally,”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

Taslima Nasrin about Mamata, Economic Times https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/didi-tweet-on-padmavati-fuels-taslima-nasreen-fury-over-bengal-gag-on-tv-serial/articleshow/61762771.cms

People , Books , Religion , Art

“We are able to speak for ourselves through our music rather than being defined and put into the spotlight in a very male kind of groomed way for an obviously predominantly male audience.”

Shingai Shoniwa (1981) British musician

On being compared to compared to Karen O and Billie Holiday. http://venuszine.com/stories/music/4102.php

Music , Way

“Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

In: A message of Lord Menuhin http://www.menuhin-foundation.com/, International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation.

Love , Life , Death , Beauty

“If the people vote for my party and parliament elects me as prime minister, it would be an honour for me to take up that role and General Musharraf would be there as president, so I think that a good working relationship between him and me would be a necessity for Pakistan. … I would have the choice of either respecting the will of the people and making it a success or being short-sighted and putting my personal feelings about past events ahead of the national interest, and what I want more than anything is for Pakistan to prosper as we make a transition to democracy”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

People , Feeling , Democracy , Thinking

“Watching this video is like being bukkaked with stupid.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Stupidity

“The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it. It doesn't matter how many differences there may be, Habermas pointed out, everyone shares some principles. No culture tolerates the exploitation of human beings. No religion permits the murder of innocent people. No civilisation accepts violence or terror.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

[...]
"Peace is not a natural state of man, as the great pacifist Gandhi told us. But man can create it. If we have broken down walls that seemed unbreakable, we will not passively agree that more profound differences should their place."
5th Dec. 2005
Sources: Transcripción completa del discurso en la web de la ONU http://www.spainun.org/pages/viewfull.cfm?ElementID=2229&print=1. Many extracts taken from the press, e.g. Cadena Ser http://www.cadenaser.com/espana/articulo/alegato-terrorismo-primera-reunion-alianza/csrcsrpor/20051127csrcsrnac_1/Tes.
As President, 2005

People , Religion , Dependency

“In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.”

Roy Hattersley (1932) British Labour Party politician, published author and journalist

Evening Standard, 9 May 1989

“I have an action pending before the Legate [Titian's friend, Giovanni della Casa ] here against the brothers of [the church] San Spirito of whom I hear they mean to tire me out by delays. Their purpose is to obtain a commission or brief, by which my cause shall be transferred to another judge, who is their friend. I beg your Reverend Lordship, in remembrance of my services and in view of the importance of the case to give Monsignor Guiddicioni to understand that he may not pass anything contrary to me, but trust to the goodness and sufficiency of Monsignor the Legate [Titian's friend] so that the brothers shall not have it in their power to ill-use me and create delays contrary to duty and justice; the matter being public at Venice where everyone knows that these brethren are old and certain debtors to me for my works.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote in Titian's letter to Cardinale Farnese, Venice, 11 Dec. 1544, taken from the original in Ronchini's Relazioni, u. s., note to p. 6
The canon of the church San Spirito had refused the commissioned paintings, Titian was painting there. So he claims in this letter countenance and protection by the cardinal
1541-1576

Justice , Understanding

“Churches which emphasise ecstatic possession by the spirit, which foster prophecy and spiritual healing and exorcism have been seen as continuations of African belief and practice. Yet these very features, which are taken as being most African, are in reality the most Christian aspect of such churches. They spring directly from increasingly strong tendencies in world Christianity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They spring in fact either from anti-establishment Christian Pentecostalism, as it developed in Europe and North America, or from evangelical revivalist tendencies within the major mission churches themselves. Few independent church leaders have claimed to be continuing African traditions.”

Terence Ranger (1929–2015) British historian

Religion, Development and African Christian Identity, page 31.

World , Spring , Reality , Strong

“Pitsand used in masonry dries quickly, the stucco coating is permanent, and the walls can support vaultings. I am speaking of sand fresh from the sandpits. For if it lies unused too long after being taken out, it is disintegrated by exposure to sun, moon, or hoar frost, and becomes earthy. So when mixed in masonry, it has no binding power on the rubble, which consequently settles and down comes the load which the walls can no longer support.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IV, Sec. 3

Support , Sun

“What renders a problem definite, and what leaves it indefinite, may best be understood from mathematics. The very important idea of solving a problem within limits of error is an element of rational culture, coming from the same source. The art of totalizing fluctuations by curves is capable of being carried, in conception, far beyond the mathematical domain, 65 where it is first learned. The distinction between laws and coefficients applies in every department of causation. The theory of Probable Evidence is the mathematical contribution to Logic, and is of paramount importance.”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Source: Education as a Science, 1898, pp. 151-152.

Law , Art , Error , Mathematics

“I liked being the screwer rather than the screwee.”

George Alec Effinger book A Fire in the Sun

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 280).

“(On the effects of Magic Mushrooms): “Your mind completely opens up to the true nature of our existence, which is that we are not bodies, that we are pure, loving spirit created by God. That God is love and there is nothing but love, being all-encompassing, has no opposite. You are completely forgiven on all things, there’s nothing you’ve ever done that has ever swayed God’s pure and un-conditional love for you. And you realize that eternity and peace and heaven is our inheritance, all of us are going to make it there.””

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Love , God , Peace , Nature

“The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Joy , Personality

Quotes about being page 64

Quotes about being
page 64