Quotes about being
page 64

“Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

Way, Madness

“The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me… in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VII, 7
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Nature, Solitude, Study, Parting

“We are being colonised without New Zealanders having some say in the numbers of people coming in and where they are coming from. This is a deliberate policy of ethnic engineering and re-population.”

Winston Peters (1945) New Zealand politician

2005 speech on immigration policy, entitled "Securing Our Borders and Protecting Our Identity."

People

“This snake becomes the adversary of Being. There's the snake that bites you in the jungle. Then there's the snake that lives in your enemy. And then there's the snake that lives in your family. And then there's the snake that lives in you. And that snake that's in you, it's a psychological phenomena. It's equivalent to transcendent evil itself, the thing that inhabits every person. It's associated with knowledge of our vulnerability that gives us this constant capacity for evil.”

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

Other

Family, Knowledge, Evil, Personality

“Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state and will choose its own path to peace and security.. . . Such a conversation would be entirely appropriate and entirely possible. I certainly don’t see there being anything particularly tricky here, anything that need or that could cast a shadow over relations between Russia and Ukraine.”

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

About Ukraine seeking membership in Nato, after the Nato–Russia Council was created at the Nato summit in Rome, May 28, 2002. http://www.usubc.org/keyissues/russia_reset040109.php On Ukraine

Peace

“The use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings. Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight. Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

Walerian Krasiński (1795–1855) historian

Introductory dissertation to John Calvin's Treatise on Relics (1854)

God, People, Way, Imagination

“It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There's no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential home builders, beavers, and ants. How do we come into being? What is birth?”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Part One, Chapter XII
Decline and Fall (1928)

Life, Home, Birth, Parting

“… not only that, but it can instruct us as to what may be the limits of desirable knowledge and risks of unbridled curiosity. This world-picture could also show that far from being a series of mindless accidents, history has directions and conceivably end-points.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

The Boyle lecture (2005)

World, History, Knowledge

“I like good horror movies. They can exorcise our demons. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't want to exorcise anything. It wants to tramp crap through our imaginations and wipe its feet on our dreams. I think of filmgoers on a date, seeing this movie and then — what? I guess they'll have to laugh at it, irony being a fashionable response to the experience of being had. … Do yourself a favor. There are a lot of good movies playing right now that can make you feel a little happier, smarter, sexier, funnier, more excited — or more scared, if that's what you want. This is not one of them. Don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-2003 of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (17 October 2003) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Life, Dreams, Feeling, Imagination

“The mind must free itself from all kinds of “schools,” religions, sects, beliefs, etc. All those “cages” are obstacles which render the mind incapable of thinking freely. It is necessary for the mind to become free of the illusions of this world and become a fine and marvelous instrument of the Inner Being.”

Samael Aun Weor (1917–1977) Colombian writer

Zodiacal Course

World, School, Religion, Thinking

“I think the initial reason why I became interested in farming is that I wanted to be outdoors. I've always enjoyed being outdoors. And so, I looked around and when I was at high school, probably 14 or so, my parents through friends arranged for me to be able to go work on farms on the weekend.”

Ian Wilmut (1944) embryologist

Interview at the Academy of Acheivement (23 May 1998) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/wil0int-1.

School, Thinking, Parent

“Thus was born the civil rights movement, an epic struggle that has required much sacrifice and pain, but which has enabled the United States to progress, in just three decades, from being a nation where blacks were forced to ride in the back of the bus, to being a nation where, due to federal cutbacks, there is no bus.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 138

Pain

“As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2005-08-19
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/what_cindy_sheehan_really_wants.html
What Cindy Sheehan Really Wants
Slate
1091-2339
2000s, 2005

Family

“Yet we are natural god-makers, a fact that certainly should be taken into consideration by our psychologies. In fact, our god-making tendencies characterize us. Throughout history, we've consistently formed these mental models of godly beings, who then, through visions and revelations, make their messages clear to the conscious mind, laying down the rules for our civilizations, structuring our institutions and directing our military establishments also, whatever their sophistication, or lack of it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 216

God, History, Nature

“Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

51 Alcibiades
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Life, Fools, Study, Flying

“I don't see anything wrong with being alone, it feels great to me. People make a big thing about personal love. It doesn't have to be such a big thing. The same for living - people make a big thing about that too. But personal living and personal loving are the two things the Eastern-type wise men don't think about.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 3: Senility

Love, Men, People, Feeling

“Everything that makes diversity of kinds, of species, differences, properties… everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an entity, but a condition and circumstance of entity and being, which is one, infinite, immobile, subject, matter, life, death, truth, lies, good and evil.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Variant: Everything that makes diversity of kinds, of species. differences, properties, everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change, is not an entity, but condition and circumstances of entity and being, which is one, infinite, immobile, subject, matter, life, soul, truth and good.

Life, Death, Truth, Evil

“It's a bit like The Matrix… We provide the land, and the community builds the actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great experiment.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Source: Marco R. della Cava, " Utopia goes digital http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-08-21-virtual-utopia_x.htm," USA TODAY, 8/21/2005

World, Communication, Sense

“Jennifer was great. She is fantastic. Really easy to work with, no drama, really down-to-earth, such a funny girl. Nothing but good things to say about her. She really was great to work with. And it always makes it easier when you’re working with people that you like and you enjoy being around.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

On life on the movie set with actress Jennifer Lawrence. — November 1, 2012, Q&A: Liam Hemsworth on The Hunger Games and Losing Weight for His Role, Krista Smith, November 8, 2011, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Liam-Hunger-Games-Post,

People, Girl

“Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources

Love, Music, Way, Fraud

“Respect for the God-given dignity of every human being, no matter their race, ethnicity or other circumstances of their birth, is the essence of American patriotism. To believe otherwise is to oppose the very idea of America.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Twitter post https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/951892337692684291 (12 January 2018) 2010s, 2018

God, Idea, Birth

“Nowadays, the phenomenon (of division of labor) has developed so generally it is obvious to all. We need have no further illusions about the tendencies of modern industry; it advances steadily towards powerful machines, towards great concentrations of forces and capital, and consequently to the extreme division of labor. Occupations are infinitely separated and specialized, not only inside the factories, but each product is itself a specialty dependent upon others. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill still hoped that agriculture, at least, would be an exception to the rule, and they saw it as the last resort of small-scale industry. Although one must be careful not to generalize unduly in such matters, nevertheless it is hard to deny today that the principal branches of the agricultural industry are steadily being drawn into the general movement. Finally, business itself is ingeniously following and reflecting in all its shadings the infinite diversity of industrial enterprises; and, while this evolution is realizing itself with unpremeditated spontaneity, the economists, examining its causes and appreciating its results, far from condemning or opposing it, uphold it as necessary. They see in it the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 39; Second paragraph

Law, Hope, Business, Dependency

“They [universities] may be said to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity of human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. … they can only be of service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of innovation. … The unavoidable aim of all corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser than themselves.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Corporate Bodies" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Wisdom, Age, Fashion, Knowledge

“My retainers keep me on ice. Dry ice. It slows my metabolism, takes the edge off my appetite, slightly. I lie, bound with heavy chains, between two great slabs of it, naked and sweating, trying to sleep through the torment of a summer's day.

They've given me the local fall-out shelter, the very deepest room they could find, as I requested. Yet my senses move easily through the earth and to the surface, out across the lazy, warm suburbs, restless emissaries skimming the sun-soaked streets. If I could rein them in I would, but the instinct that drives them is a force unto itself, a necessary consequence of what I am and the reason I was brought into being.

Being, I have discovered, has certain disadvantages. I intend seeking compensation, just as soon as the time is right.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Neighbourhood Watch http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/NEIGHBOUR/Neighbour.html Fiction

Lie, Sense, Sleep, Time

“Now at least 'artists have the upper hand' in the town (Vitebsk). They get totally engrossed in their disputes about art (between constructivists and suprematists), I am utterly exhausted and 'dream' of 'abroad'… After all, there is no more suitable place for artists to be (for me, at least) than at the easel, and I dream of being able to devote myself exclusively to my pictures. Of course, little by little one paints something, but it's not the real thing.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Chagall was director of the Art School of Vitebsk, including many conflicts
Quote in his letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 74
1920's

School, Dreams, Art, Painting

“George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

War, Fear, Idea

“The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation, — religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.”

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

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Life, Education, Religion, Evil

“Being controversial in politics is inevitable. If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything. In the world today, there are not many good choices — only choices between the half-good and the less half-good.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Cited in Nick Thimmesch's "An interview with Nixon: 'Defeated, but not finished'" (Chicago Tribune (11 December 1978)
1970s

World

“I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Salon interview (2001)

People, Imagination, Courage

“After my nirvana, how will people who eat the flesh of beings deserve to be called disciples of Śākyamuni? You should understand that these people who eat flesh may gain some modicum of mental awakening while practicing samādhi, but they are all great rākṣasas who in the end must fall into the sea of death and rebirth. They are not disciples of the Buddha. Such people kill and devour each other, feeding on each other in an endless cycle. How could they possibly get out of the three realms? When you teach people in the world to practice samādhi, teach them to renounce all killing.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Part VII, Chapter 2: On Killing
Mahayana, Śūraṅgama Sūtra

Death, People, World, Understanding

“It is not possible, I think, to rise from the perusal of the arguments of Clark and Spinoza without a deep conviction of the futility of all endeavors to establish, entirely à priori, the existence of an Infinite Being, His attributes, and His relation to the universe. The fundamental principle of all such speculations, viz. that whatever we can clearly conceive, must exist, fails to accomplish its end, even when its truth is admitted. For how shall the finite comprehend the infinite? Yet must the possibility of such conception be granted, and in something more than the sense of a mere withdrawal of the limits of phænomal existence, before any solid ground can be established for the knowledge, à priori, of things infinite and eternal.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) Ch. 13. Clarke and Spinoza, pp. 216-217. https://books.google.com/books?id=DqwAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA216 A - F

Truth, Knowledge, Thinking, Sense

“Edvin is one of those persons who write to survive as writers and people; for them being a human and writer is the same thing.”

Edvin Kanka Cudic (1988) Human rights defender

Miloš Urošević, as quoted in May '92 (2012) p.19
About

People, Personality

“Even the blandest (or bluffest) “scholarly work” fears getting into trouble: less with the adversaries whose particular attacks it keeps busy anticipating than through what, but for the spectacle of this very activity, might be perceived as an overall lack of authorization. It is as though, unless the work at once assumed its most densely professional form, it would somehow get unplugged from whatever power station (the academy, the specialization) enables it to speak. Nothing expresses—or allays—this separation anxiety better than the protocol requiring an introduction to “situate” the work within its institutional and discursive matrix. The same nervous ritual that attests a positive dread of being asocial — of failing to furnish the proper authorities with one’s papers, and vice versa — places these possibilities at an infinite remove from a writing whose thorough assimilation, courted from the start, makes it too readable to need to be read much further.”

D. A. Miller (1948) American literary critic

The Novel and the Police (1988), p. vii

Fear, Business, Reading

“The uncomfortable truth is that we, we men, are and have been the ones causing, needing, participating in, wars and conflicts. We - not women - are the cause of most of the suffering, death, destruction, hate, violence, brutality, and killing, that has occurred and which is still occurring, thousand year upon thousand year; just as we are the ones who seek to be - or who often need to be - prideful and 'in control'; and the ones who through greed or alleged need or because of some ideation have saught to exploit not only other human beings but the Earth itself. We are also masters of deception; of the lie. Cunning with our excuses, cunning in persuasion, and skilled at inciting hatred and violence. And yet we men have also shown ourselves to be, over thousands of years, valourous; capable of noble, selfless, deeds. Capable of doing what is fair and restraining ourselves from doing what is unethical. Capable of a great and a gentle love. This paradoxy continues to perplex me.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Such Respectful Wordful Offerings: Selected Essays Of David Myatt. CreateSpace, 2017, ISBN 9781978374355

Love, Death, Women, Men

“The case of methodology is analogous though less clear. Nobody would object to the subject of methodology being science, or some pseudo science. On closer inspection, however, this agreement is no more than a verbal coincidence. It rests on what is meant by science, as reported as a subject of methodology. In fact the subject methodologists call science is more often than not different from what scientists call science. Methodologists are inclined to consider a science as a linguistic system whereas the scientist would only admit that his science has a language, not that it is a language.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Realistic models in probability (1968), p. 1

Science

“Fir: it contains a great deal of air and fire with very little moisture and the earthy, so that, as its natural properties are of the lighter class, it is not heavy. Hence, its consistence being naturally stiff, it does not easily bend under the load, and keeps its straightness when used in the framework. But it contains so much heat that it generates and encourages decay, which spoils it; and it also kindles fire quickly because of the air in its body, which is so open that it takes in fire and so gives out a great flame.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 6

Nature

“Being in Germany in the 1940s brought back recollections of my first visit long before as a Boy Scout, when I had had my first encounter with German appreciation of dueling. As as child I had been cut severely on the left cheek when thrown through the windshield of my father's car in a head-on collision, and a prominent scar remained. Traveling in Germany as a youth, I was perplexed when college students would tip their beanie hats as they passed until at last I discerned that they mistook the scar on my cheek for a dueling scar.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

A Soldier Reports (1976)

Youth, Cars, Travel, Boy

“Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 40 (pp. 596-597)

War, World, Beauty, Help

“Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

God, Beauty

“The right to be secure in your home so long as you are doing no harm to others is a founding principle of this country and that includes being secure from unwarranted invasion, search or seizure by government agents or bureaucrats.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Home, Search, Country

“Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are non-conforming victims of prejudice and public excitement…No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution — of whatever race, creed, or persuasion.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940).

Law, Suffering

“Being Henry Fonda's daughter got me started. But it didn't keep me working.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Jane Would Have Been a Star Even as a Smith. Associated Press/Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 30 June 1963 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=230eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OcoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3114,5294465&dq=the-institution-of-marriage-is-obsolete+fonda&hl=en

Daughters

“She [Mabel Manderson] uttered a little laugh of impatience. 'So you think he has been talking me round. No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it. Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, Mr Trent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was foolishness in you to have a certain suspicion of me after seeing me and being in my atmosphere, as you said.' Trent started in his chair. She glanced at him and went on: 'Now, I and my atmosphere are much obliged to you, but we must stand up for the rights of other atmospheres. I know a great deal more about Mr Marlowe's atmosphere than you know about mine even now. I saw him constantly for several years. I don't pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr Trent.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XIII: "Eruption"

Idea, Thinking, Sincerity

“The distinction between central and peripheral claims is applicable to many aspects of human sexuality. Consider, for instance, the emotion of jealousy. Evolutionary psychologists place a strong emphasis on sex differences in this domain. The standard claim is that men are more worried by a partner’s sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity, whereas women are more worried by a partner’s emotional infidelity… [However] the overwhelming trend is that most men and most women are extremely upset by both sexual and emotional infidelity. This suggests that the central EP claim regarding jealousy should be “Human beings evolved to experience jealousy in romantic relationships” rather than “Men and women evolved different patterns of jealousy.” The latter statement is true but should be considered a qualification to the former: a peripheral rather than a central claim. To stress the sex difference alone would be like observing that male elephants are bigger than females while steadfastly neglecting to mention that all adult elephants are large compared to most terrestrial animals. It would almost certainly foster an inaccurate view.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

(pp. 266-267)
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)

Women, Men, Jealousy, Sex

“To all our Lieutenants, Castellains, Captains, Condottieri, Officers, Soldiers and Subjects, to whom these presents may be known, we commit and command that to our Most Excellent and Most Beloved Private Architect and General Engineer Leonardo Vinci, bearer of the same, and who has our Commission to survey the holds and fortresses of our States, in order that according to their exigencies and his judgment we may equip them, they are to give free pass, exempt from all public toll to himself and his company, and friendly reception; and to allow him to see, measure and estimate all he may wish. And to this effect they shall order men on his requisition and lend him all the help, assistance and favours he may request, it being our wish that for all works to be done in our Dominions any engineer be compelled to consult him and to conform to his opinion; and to this may none presume to act in opposition, if it be his pleasure not to incur our indignation.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Vellum folded as letter describing Leonardo da Vinci as Borgia's Military Engineer, bears the seal of Cesare as Duke and the seal of Alessandro Borgia on the back (July 1502). (The vellum was recently made available to the public by the Duchess Josephine Melzi d'Eril Barbo) Source: http://www.oldandsold.com/articles11/italy-35.shtml

Men, Pleasure, Help

“There's something deeper than making money off stuff. Being part of creating stuff for the universe is awesome.”

Ilya Zhitomirskiy (1989–2011) software developer

As quoted in Obituary by RayClaire at Glint (16 November 2011) http://r-c-d.diaryland.com/111117_11.html

Money, Universe, Parting

“All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree — not of a cloud.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume V, Preface (1860).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

Life, Tree, Change

“He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny… I was bewildered… a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word… I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen (1895–1989) Norwegian writer

On Dwight Eisenhower, volume III
Memoirs

Life, Death, Boy

“A human being is seldom bothered with insufficient data; often the less he has the more willing he is to give a firm opinion; and man prefers some answer, even a wrong one, to the requirement that he dig deeper and find out the facts.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 49.

“I’m vegan in my fashion and vegetarian in my food. I don’t buy any leather goods or anything made from animal products – no down, nothing. It’s something people should be mindful of. … I think because I came to live in L. A. the transition was simple because vegetarianism is so common there. And I didn’t feel like I was missing that much by being a vegetarian. … I had a moment about 9 years ago. It was so odd. I was talking to my then-boyfriend and he was talking about a fishing trip and how he’d never had the experience of ‘killing’ his food. Even though I had fished my whole life, something just snapped in me and I said, I’m not eating this anymore. … Being vegan is more challenging, especially when it comes to going out to eat. But I found Chicago has great vegetarian and vegan restaurants. … Healthwise, I notice when I wasn’t eating meat anymore I felt so much lighter.”

Torrey DeVitto (1984) actress, model, violinist

"‘Chicago Med’ star Torrey DeVitto takes holistic approach to health, life" https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/chicago-med-star-torrey-devitto-takes-holistic-approach-to-health-life/, interview with Chicago Sun-Times (24 January 2018).

Life, People, Food, Feeling

“According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i. e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness… We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 4

Business, Knowledge, Science

“The trisection of an angle was effected by means of a curve discovered by Hippias of Elis, the sophist, a contemporary of Hippocrates as well as of Democritus and Socrates. The curve was called the quadratrix because it also served (in the hands, as we are told, of Dinostratus, brother of Menæchmus, and of Nicomedes) for squaring the circle. It was theoretically constructed as the locus of the point of intersection of two straight lines moving at uniform speeds and in the same time, one motion being angular and the other rectilinear.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

Time, Speed

“Operational research OR is regarded by many as being in crisis. If OR is taken to be ‘classical OR’, this is indisputable … If, however, the definition of OR is widened to embrace other systems-based methodologies for problem solving, then a diversity of approaches may herald not crisis, but increased competence and effectiveness in a variety of different problem contexts.”

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

As cited in Jackson (2007, p. 15)
Towards a System of Systems Methodologies (1984)

Problem

“People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species — and they are right! We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture. … We have language, the primary medium of culture… In a few short millennia — a mere instant in biological time — we have already used our new exploration vehicles to transform not only our planet but the very process of design development that created us.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

People, Communication, Time

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Women, Children, World, Family

“The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 274.

Fashion, Time, Sun

“This is one of the mutterings which they are muttering today: "The social well-being of the people, the upward movement of the non-propertied or labour classes to material welfare, is continually being obstructed by conceptions of political subserviency and passive obedience to despotic authority, which is directly traceable to Christian doctrine."”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. xvii

People

“Gary [Cooper] turned out to be the surprise of my young life. He was so convincing with his stuttering, stammering awkward little boy manners. When the action called for Dr. Wassell to kiss me, I got all set for a bashful boy kiss. Well, it was like holding a hand grenade and not being able to get rid of it! I was left breathless.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

Life, Boy, Kiss

“I was raised Vegan since birth. … I remember watching undercover investigation videos and reading the pamphlets that were mailed to the house when we were kids—I felt deeply for the animals at an early age. I remember how the other parents of my childhood friends would either get upset or interested when their kids would come home after sleepovers at my house—I felt it was my duty to show my friends what was happening to animals. … Veganism is the ultimate form of compassion. … I never considered my being Vegan was for health reasons—it was always for the love and respect I had for animals. And because of that love and respect I have for non-human animals my compassion flows over to all living beings, of all types. … I am encouraged by compassionate souls and the love I see in the eyes of those I've committed my life to stand up for.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson: Vegan Olympic Ski Racer" http://www.vivalavegan.net/articles/561-interview-with-seba-johnson-vegan-olympic-ski-racer.html, Viva La Vegan! (August 2013).

Love, Life, Health, Age

“Every bit of theorizing I’ve ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.”

George Perle (1915–2009) American composer

Kozinn, Allan (January 24, 2009). "George Perle, a Composer and Theorist, Dies at 93" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/arts/music/24perle.html, New York Times. See: Alban Berg The Listening Composer

“Query: How to contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting room; by remaining on one's balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by travelling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by queueing at the box-office of theatres and then not booking a seat.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Books, Way, Travel, Time

“We say, 'We think you are a talented, functioning person, and we are hiring you because of your abilities, and whatever you come up with, we're going to take.' If we make a mistake, it will be in picking the wrong person. What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money in order to have the power to be free. So the danger is — in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do everything possible to avoid that pitfall. But if we fail, it's another saga in the history of man…”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

On how American Zoetrope functions
1970s, Interview with Judy Stone (1971)

Money, People, World, Way

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

Love, World, Way, Feeling

“It’s not just how they feel about it, but what it feels like to wear. It’s not a comfortable process to go through, on a daily basis, and actors will often complain about how I torture them and stuff. I don’t want to torture them - though in some cases I do [laughs] - but I also want to know if they’re just being a baby or if they’re being realistic about it. So I’ll try it on to see which is the most uncomfortable, or what might become annoying after a number of days. So at least I know what it’s like on the other side, so I can sympathise with them, or tell them they’re full of crap, or whatever. Because I’ve worn it, and I know it’s not that bad.”

Rick Baker (1950) American special makeup effects artist

Rick Baker interview: Men In Black 3, werewolves and Videodrome http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/23258/rick-baker-interview-men-in-black-3-werewolves-and-videodrome (November 5, 2012)

Feeling, Baby

“It didn’t matter that they were terrible at being parents; they were also very rich, which meant they could pay other people to love Alec.”

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 4, “Smart Alec” (p. 55)

Love, People, Parent

“Born and nurtured when the human being first asked questions about the reason for things and their purpose, philosophy shows in different modes and forms that the desire for truth is part of human nature itself.”

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

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

Truth, Question, Nature, Parting

“You cannot deliver what you promise to the people, you cannot solve the problem of the country if you're being controlled by the politburo and appointed senators.”

Thaksin Shinawatra (1949) Thai politician

Interview with World Policy http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2016/04/21/interview-thaksin-shinawatra-thailand

People, Problem, Country

“More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Source: The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. (2009), p. 10

World, Way, Wealth

“Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

“Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Lifestyle (2012) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sBsG9V1oVdMC,

Youth, Religion, Soul, Science

“Being Gentlemen and very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously to use when they pleased Elements and Principles as terms equivalent: and to understand both by the one and the other, those primitive and simple bodies of which the mixt ones are said to be composed, and into which they are ultimately resolved.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Physiological Considerations Part of the First Dialogue (16)
The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Love, Understanding

“The fact is I give people what they need and deserve to hear - exactly what they don't get from politicians - and that is The Truth. Our country is a mess right now and we don't have time to pretend otherwise. We don't have time to waste on being politically correct.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 8

People, Truth, Time, Country

“In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Reported in Proceedings in honor of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and distinguished alumni at the meeting of the Council, Harvard Law School Association in Cambridge, April 30, 1960.
Other writings

Disappointment

“I have never knew what it was to sacrifice my own judgment to gratify any party and I have no doubt of the time being close at hand when I will be rewarded for letting my tongue speak what my heart thinks. I have suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

Comments on his final election defeat (11 August 1835) Ch. 2; in Dr. Swan's Prescriptions for Job-Itis (2003) by Dennis Swanberg and Criswell Freeman, p. 45, part of this seems to have become paraphrased as "Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks." No earlier publication of this version has been located.
Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1836)

Thinking, Suffering, Time, Heart

“She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Life, Marriage, World, Girl

“Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

On Tranquility of the Mind

“My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly, I don't care.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Faith, Guy, Time

“What deserves to be called mysticism—not in the vague sense of the history and philosophy of religion, but rather in the Catholic-ecclesial sense—occurs when God's Word is heard, not only with exegetical and theological understanding, but with the whole heart, the whole being, when one is steadfast before the self-disclosure of the heart of God despite fire and night.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (1968)

God, Religion, History, Understanding

“Goebbels is and always has been surrounded by mistrust and deep dissimulation. It was this mistrust that accounted for his being set down as a Bolshevist in disguise, though he cares no more for Socialism and Communism than for patriotism and nationalism. Germany? The testing ground for revolution. Socialism? Nothing but a means to an end a means to revolution, but never the goal of one.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 47

Communication

“Margarete saw, and disapproved, and understood. It was perfectly natural that Youth, being given a new and revolutionary truth, should embrace it too eagerly, should defend it too loudly, should proclaim it in the extremest terms and without regard for the sensibilities of others. Natural, too, that Age, vested as it was in things as they had always been, should reject the truth as unsettling and dangerous. In the ace of such strong emotions, the only sane thing to do therefore was to embrace the truth circumspectly, to hide one’s new allegiance from one’s elders.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 10, “The Sermon” (pp. 165-166)

Truth, Youth, Age, Nature

“The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Life, Death

“The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

10 Questions for Guillermo del Toro, Time Magazine, 9/5/2011. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2090370,00.html

“Her face kept changing and that bothered me as well. Why were human beings so unstable? The door and the curtains and the supply cabinet didn't continually change their appearance.”

John Twelve Hawks book Spark

Spark (2014)

Appearance, Change

“It's not just jobs that are being lost to other countries. We are seeing whole industries vanish overseas.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 85

Country

“When I draw, 1 am as pre-occupied before a gas-jet as before a human being.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

Lane, The Paintings of Albert Marquet p. 188; as quoted in 'Appendix' of Albert Marquet and the Fauve movement, 1898-1908, Norris Judd, published 1976, - translation Norris Judd - Thesis (A.B.)--Sweet Briar College, p. 116

Drawing

“Avian flu, which has already killed 50 people, is only a mutation away from being transmissible from person to person. We have no immunity, no vaccines, and no cure. It is imperative that we strengthen our domestic vaccine supply, expand legal protections, encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors, and advance research and development. These initiatives will help protect us from a deadly viral outbreak that experts warn could come to our shores any day.”

Bill Frist (1952) physician, businessman, and politician

On the potential for a flu pandemic.
The Associated Press, April 12, 2005.

People, Help, Personality

“Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.”

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

"Emancipation — Black and White" (1865)
1860s

Wisdom, Girl

“Whereas we are tremendously proud of the accomplishments of the White Race throughout the span of history and civilization, we are not particularly proud of the cowardly and idiotic position the present generation has allowed itself to degenerate into. Nevertheless, the White Race is Nature's Elite, the highest living creature it has produced in all the eons of time. We CREATORS, being members of this Elite, are supremely interested in the welfare and the future for the White Race. We are interested in saving the White Race not so much for what it is today, but what its brilliant future potential can be if it will proceed on a deliberate program of up-breeding itself and improving its world. Our program and our creed are designed to promote those best interests of the White Race so that it can achieve the tremendous potential that is its true destiny. Therefore the heart of our creed is this: What is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; what is the bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

White Man's Bible (1983)
White Man's Bible (1983)

World, History, Nature, Time

“There’s an interesting debate that circulates so often, with one side arguing that actors are not activists, Hollywood does not get to be the arbiter of what is right and wrong. And the other side, which is if you have a platform and you don’t use it for good, then what is the point?. No, I’m not a politician, and no, I’m not a news source, but yes, I have people that are following me and I have a voice, and as long as I am doing my best to speak the truth, I’m fine with being on the right side of history! What I’m saying is, you are a part of history; you matter.”

Zoey Deutch (1994) American actress

Interview with Tidal Magazine, Issue 7 http://www.tidal-mag.com/magazine/girl-on-the-verge

People, Truth, History, Parting

“Immediately and definitively [after starting a painting] I determine the effect of sunlight, day and shadow, without being concerned with any detail. This enable me to see in the started painting the whole of it, which my mind already saw before I begun to work - I see it appearing on the panel or canvas rather soon and can consider in this way the harmony of the composed objects and colors.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik bepaal dadelijk en voor vast [nadat ik een schilderij begin] het effect van zonlicht, dag en schaduw, zonder mij met eenige uitvoerigheid op te houden. Hierdoor ben ik in staat gesteld, om in mijne aangelegde schilderij een geheel, dat mijn geest reeds vóór dat ik begon te arbeiden zag, binnen korten tijd op het paneel of doek te zien, en over de harmonie de zamengestelde voorwerpen en kleuren te kunnen oordelen..
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 99:

Color, Way, Appearance, Painting

“The claim that women have a stronger average parental urge than men is sometimes viewed as a sexist generalization. But it’s only sexist if we take a dim view of the trait in question: the parental urge. One could turn the accusation on its head: Those who view the evolutionist’s claim (that women are more parental than men) as sexist are actually being sexist themselves, because they’re taking a negative view of a trait that’s usually found more strongly in females than males. They are therefore prizing prototypically masculine traits more highly than prototypically feminine ones.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 230

Women, Men, Question, Parent