Quotes about believer
page 37

“Narrater Abu Hurairah. Allah's Apostle said, "Anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should not harm his neighbor, and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should talk what is good or keep quiet.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

[8, 73, 47](Previous Reference for link only. Correct Ref: Bukhari Vol.8 Book78 Hadith6018)
Sunni Hadith

“My journey to veganism began when I was a sophomore in high school. … For a long time before that, I felt a connection to animals and believed it was wrong to eat creatures with personalities, thoughts, and the ability to show love and affection. I grew up on an animal farm … It was in this environment, with direct contact to farm animals, that I decided that eating meat was not in accordance with my values. … There is nothing more effective than tangible results to show people that athletic achievement and substantial muscle growth can be achieved healthfully on a plant-based diet.”

Robert Cheeke (1980) American bodybuilder

"Plant Power: Q & A with Vegan Bodybuilder Robert Cheeke" https://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/plant-power-q-a-with-vegan-bodybuilder-robert-cheeke, interview with Vegetarian Times (May 1, 2013).

Love, People, School, Time

“The main condition is that the spiritual ear should be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will ready to obey that testimony which, I believe, God bears in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

God, Truth, Religion, Way

“Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully he will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop. And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes. Islam, like the other religions, doesn’t solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God, Religion, Justice, Law

“I’d ask you to forego the jingoistic claptrap, but it’s terrifyingly obvious you truly believe it.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 20, “The Otherwhere Marble” (p. 284)

“One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.”

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

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Truth, Nature

“[This is] the basis of the Innocent Woman Defense —the Innocent Woman Principle : Women are believed when they say they are innocent of violence and most easily doubted when they say they are guilty of violence.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 255.

Women

“No one believes for a moment the embargo will prompt the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein.”

Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer

"New millennium, old crime: those sanctions against Iraq," http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/2/2000/617 The Free Press (1 December 2000).

People

“I've rode o'er hot, dry deserts
And over mountains tall
I believed in the bad land sayin'
"A good gun never falls"”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

"Strongest of Oak" (1965)

Mountain

“Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#39
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Fools, Confidence, Teachers, Science

“The answers from Genesis tell us that there was no death, bloodshed, disease, or suffering before sin. All these things are a consequence of sin. That's why Christians can't believe in millions of years for the fossil record - it's a horrible record of death, disease, and suffering, which couldn't have happened in the Garden before Adam fell.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)

Death, Disease, Suffering

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

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

Men, God, Children, World

“What I lack are the skills of painting, the profession which I don't know, and now I see that the French [artists] possess this so extremely strong. I do believe that you can learn it all here. I am in Paris now. When someone is richer than me and he wants me to stay here for a year or half a year (for a few thousand francs) my future will have a lot of more certainty than when I must go back to Holland after eight days... I hope you will be able to fulfill my wish; I also put enough trust in you that you will do this, if you can. Waiting for your letter with a lot of anxiety, I remain”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

G.H. Breitner (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek) version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Wat mij mankeert is de manier van schilderen, 't métier dat ik niet ken, en wat ik nu zie dat de Franschen zoo buitengewoon sterk bezitten. en wat ik wel geloof dat men hier leeren kan. Ik ben nu in Parijs. Wanneer iemand rijker is dan ik mij hier een jaar of een half jaar (voor een paar duizend francs) wil laten blijven, is mijn toekomst vrij wat zekerder, dan dat ik na acht daag weer naar Holland moet terugkeeren.. .Ik hoop dat U in staat zult zijn mijn wensch te verwezentlijken; ik stel ook genoeg vertrouwen in U dat ge dat doen zult als ge kunt. Met de meeste angst Uw brief te wachten, blijf ik' - tt G.H. Breitner. In Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk from Paris, 5 Juin, 1884; as cited in Breitner en Parijs – master-thesis 9928758 https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/8382, by Jacobine Wieringa, Faculty of Humanities Theses, Utrecht, p. 16 before 1890

Hope, Strong, Learning, Waiting

“President Saddam, he always think about America, "They are foolish. They don't understand anything in this world. They never travel. They don't know anything outside the area. Just they believe what the president says. They are the dictatorship, not us." And about George Bush, the father, he always called him stupid.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Latif Yahia, double for Uday Saddam Hussein, in I knew… Saddam (31 July 2007) Al Jazeera English
Attributed

Stupidity, World, Travel, Understanding

“He who believes in goodness has the essence of all faith. He is a man "of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows."”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 287.

Faith, Confidence

“That man is a fool,” Lady Marta said, her dark eyes staring at Baron Hepplethong’s retreating back. “Most men are fools, but he carries it to unnatural extremes. I have the misfortune to be distantly related to him. He believes in the natural superiority of the white race, the noble class, and the male sex. He also feels that people who wear green are morally superior to those who wear red or brown. I do not jest.”

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 141)

Men, People, Fools, Sex

“I believe we can turn around our country’s current, wrong-headed course, if we start basing our actions on ideas, shared values, and a commitment to solve problems without regard for party.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/public_health/mayor_bloomberg_delivers_opening_address_at_ceasefire_bridging_the_political_divide_conference
Partisanship

Idea, Problem, Country

“The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

On trying to understand Soviet policies, as quoted in The Wise Men (1986) by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

Pleasure

“What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof, the true mark of a Christian?”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 9 (p. 70)

Truth, Faith, Way

“The guy has been there. What he tells us is not just what he believes deep down, but what he knows, because he has been through it.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Chris Mullin — reported in John Brennan (May 30, 1999) "Pacers: Timing Is On Our Side", The Record, p. S1.
About

Guy

“But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Three

Life, Pain, Hope, Learning

“Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference…””

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Evil

“Yes, I believe in prayer, as a mystery which can endow one with more power perhaps than any other spiritual mystery, yet a mystery that cannot be exposited to a point where it is not a mystery.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

I Believe in Prayer - - How Prayer helps me The Dial Press 1955
Prose

“We know that the enemies of our civilization and of Arab-Muslim civilization have emerged from what is actually a root cause. The root cause is the political slum of client states from Saudi Arabia through Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere, that has been allowed to dominate the region under U. S. patronage, and uses people and resources as if they were a gas station with a few flyblown attendants. To the extent that this policy, this mentality, has now changed in the administration, to the extent that their review of that is sincere and the conclusions that they draw from it are sincere, I think that should be welcomed. It's a big improvement to be intervening in Iraq against Saddam Hussein instead of in his favor. I think it makes a nice change. It's a regime change for us too. Now I'll state what I think is gonna happen. I've been in London and Washington a lot lately and all I can tell you is that the spokesmen for Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush walk around with a look of extraordinary confidence on their faces, as if they know something that when disclosed, will dissolve the doubts, the informational doubts at any rate, of people who wonder if there is enough evidence. [Mark Danner: It's amazing they've been able to keep it to themselves for so long. ] I simply say, I have two reasons for confidence. I know perfectly well that there are many people who would not be persuaded by this evidence even if it was dumped on their own doorstep, because the same people, many of the same people, didn't believe that it was worth fighting in Afghanistan even though the connection between the Taliban and Al Qaeda was as clear as could possibly be. So I know that. There's a strong faction of the so-called peace movement that is immune to evidence and also incapable of self criticism, of imagining what these countries would be like if the advice of the peaceniks has been followed. I also made some inquiries of my own, and I think I know what some of these disclosures will be. But, as a matter of fact I think we know enough. And what will happen will be this: The President will give an order, there will then occur in Iraq a show of military force like nothing probably the world has ever seen. It will be rapid and accurate and overwhelming enough to deal with an army or a country many times the size of Iraq, even if that country possessed what Iraq does not, armed forces in the command structure willing to obey and be the last to die for the supreme leader. And that will be greeted by the majority of Iraqi people and Kurdish people as a moment of emancipation, which will be a pleasure to see, and then the hard work of the reconstitution of Iraqi society and the repayment of our debt — some part of our debt to them — can begin. And I say, bring it on.”

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

"How Should We Use Our Power: A Debate on Iraq" http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/03/03-01hitchensdanner-qa.html with Mark Danner at UC Berkeley (2003-01-28}: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq 2000s, 2003

People, Pleasure, World, Peace

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reuters (31 March 1998)

People, Justice, Dreams

“It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: The End of Our Time (1919), p. 34

Life, Law, Beauty, Nature

“I can't help thinking that the whole of the Vietnam War was the blackest comedy that ever was, because it showed the way you can't teach humanity anything. We'd all learnt in the rest of the world that you can't now go around and put out your hand and, across seas, exercise power; but the poor Americans had not learned that and they tried to do it. The remoteness of Americans from German attack had made them feel confident. They didn't really believe that anything could reach out and kill them. Americans are quite unconscious now that we look on them as just as much beaten as we are. They're quite unconscious of that. They have always talked of Vietnam as if by getting out they were surrendering the prospect of victory, as if they were being noble by renouncing the possibility of victory. But they couldn't have had a victory. They couldn't possibly have won.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 13

War, World, Way, Feeling

“While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over-the-top. I put it on eBay.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2008, 2008 Republican National Convention

“I believe that we are consciousness, consciousness is energy, and energy can never be destroyed. It can be transformed, but it can never be destroyed.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On reincarnation, as quoted in "AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN REDDY" by Gary Barg, TheSilverPages.com, 22 April 2014 http://thesilverpages.com/articles/an-interview-with-helen-reddy

“Thud. My eyes are open. It is four-thirty in the morning, one morning, and my dry eyes click in their sockets, awake before the birds. There is no light. The eye strains for logic, some play of form. I have been dreaming of wind. The tree outside my window stands silent. I listen to the breathing of the man lying beside me. I know where I am. I am awake. I am alive. Am I tethered to earth only by this fragile breath? A strawful of breath at best. Yet this is the breath that patients beg, their hands gripping the edges of mattresses; this is the breath that wrestles trees, that brings down all the leaves in the Third Act. We know where the car is parked. We know, word-for-word, the texts of plays. We have spoken, in proximity to one another, over years, sentences, hundreds of thousands of sentences—bright, grave, fallible, comic, perishable—perhaps eternal? I don’t know. Where does the wind go? When will the light come? We will have hotcakes for breakfast. How can I protect this...? My church teaches me I cannot. And I believe it. I turn the pillow to its cool side. Then rage fills me, against the cubist necessity of having to arrange myself comically against orthodoxy, against having to wonder if I will offend, against theology that devises that my feeling for him, more than for myself, is a vanity. My brown paradox: The church that taught me to understand love, the church that taught me well to believe love breathes—also tells me it is not love I feel, at four in the morning, in the dark, even before the birds cry. Of every hue and caste am I.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Love, Dreams, Cars, Feeling

“The immediate occasion for alarm is the government's announcement that British contractors for supplying armaments to our armed forces must in future share the work with what are called ‘European firms’, meaning factories situated on the mainland of the European continent. I ask one question, to which I believe there is no doubt about the answer. What would have been the fate of Britain in 1940 if production of the Hurricane and the Spitfire had been dependent upon the output of factories in France? That a question so glaringly obvious does not get asked in public or in government illuminates the danger created for this nation by the rolling stream of time which bears away the generation of 1940, the generation, that is to say, of those who experienced as adults Britain's great peril and Britain’s great deliverance. Talk at Bruges or Luxembourg about not surrendering our national sovereignty is all very well. It means less than nothing when the keys to our national defence are being handed over: an island nation which no longer commands the essential means of defending itself by air and sea is no longer sovereign…The safety of this island nation reposes upon two pillars. The first is the impregnability of its homeland to invasion by air or sea. The second is its ability and its will to create over time the military forces by which the last conclusive battle will be decided. Without our own industrial base of military armament production neither of those pillars will stand. No doubt, with the oceans kept open, we can look to buy or borrow from the other continents; but to depend on the continent of Europe for our arms is suicide.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Birmingham branch of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Association (18 February 1989), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), pp. 49-50
1980s

Fate, Question, Suicide, Time

“Some people maintain that what one believes becomes true, but the poor sick person who has hoped in vain would certainly not agree.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

People, Hope, Personality

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

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

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Death, People, World, Way

“Five hundred years ago, when faced with an eclipse, many of us would have believed it was the work of an angry god. But as we've unearthed the language of the Code, we've discovered that the apparent mysteries of our world can be understood without invoking the supernatural. And this for me is what's so remarkable. That despite the incredible complexity of the world we live in, it can all, ultimately, be explained by numbers. Just like the orbit of the planets, life too follows a pattern. And it can all be reduced to cause and effect. In the end, even the flip of a coin is determined by how fast it's spinning and how long it takes to hit the ground. The ultimate symbol of chance isn't random at all. It only appears that way. When we don't understand the Code, the only way we can make sense of our world is to make up stories. But the truth is far more extraordinary. Everything has mathematics at its heart. When everything is stripped away all that remains is the Code.”

Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics

Conclusion in BBC's The Code, episode 3.

Life, God, Truth, World

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children, People, Truth, Lie

“Youth rebellion is a world wide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don't believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

"The Coming of the Purple Better One"
Exterminator! A Novel (1971)

People, Youth, World, History

“The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. I take a very different view. I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud of than which we should be ashamed.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture

History

“My fellow Americans, I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that America remains the great idea that inspires the world. It's a privilege to be born here. It's an honor to become a citizen here. It's a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here. Our president, George W. Bush, has worked hard to protect and preserve the American dream for all of us. And that's why I say, send him back to Washington for four more years!”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

2000s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (31 August 2004)

World, Family, Dreams, Idea

“Warlocks and witches debate to determine how to make their broomsticks fly again. But how shall they ever come together in strength? Even if your ideas had any truth, they’re so frequently, by their very character, at odds. Each claims to hold the key to the only wisdom. That’s where natural philosophers, who do not impose what they need to believe (or at least not so readily!) upon the world, but analyze what they see, have the strong advantage.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 310)

Wisdom, Truth, World, Idea

“…I don't like to make judgments about what people like sexually. Some people like one sex, or the other, or they like fat people, or they like to be tied up, whatever. That's fine. Whatever people like is fine by me. I think that's important, too, because in this country a lot of people want to make laws about that and I'm very much against that. Making certain kinds of sex illegal… To me that's immoral, to illegalize things that people want to do. Same with religious things. I think people should be able to believe whatever they want to believe. I think that when governments try to get involved with that sort of stuff, you're really destroying people's souls. I don't make statements like that in my songs because that's not what I want. I don't want to make a political statement.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Interview by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, ca. 1992 ( link http://adaweb.com/~purple/kingm.html) Quotes from interviews

People, Law, Sex, Soul

“Believe it or not, bananas do contain a small quantity of Musa Sapientum bananadine, which is a mild, short-lasting psychedelic.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

The fictitious bananadine recipe, from chapter one, "Drugs".
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

“I listened to a panel of judges and I'll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by, um, certainly one judge — but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court, in terms of respect for the court, they'd do what they should be doing. I mean it's so sad, they should be, you know, when you read something so simple, and so beautifully written, and so perfectly written — other than the one statement, of course, having to do with "he" or "she" — but when you read something so perfectly written, and so clear to anybody, and then you have lawyers and you watched, I watched last night in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read, and I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased, and we haven't had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right.”

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

2010s, 2017, February

Sadness, Justice, Decision, Reading

“I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the CROSS, the CROSS — God's hammer, God's fire.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Love, God, World, Parting

“We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights & Civil Liberties, 1990-1991 https://web.archive.org/web/20180917224837/https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom_in_the_World_1990-1991_complete_book.pdf (1991), New York: Freedom House, p. 16 1990s

“When we speak of Empire, it is in no spirit of flag-wagging…we feel that in this great inheritance of ours, separated as it is by the seas, we have yet one home and one people…great as the material benefits are, we do not look primarily to them. I think deep down in all our hearts we look to the Empire as the means by which we may hope to see that increase of our race which we believe to be of such inestimable benefit to the world at large; the spread abroad of people to whom freedom and justice are as the breath of their nostrils, of people distinguished, as we would fain hope and believe, above all things, by an abiding sense of duty. If ever the day should come when an appeal to that sense of duty falls on deaf ears among our own kin, that day indeed would be the end of our country and of our Empire, to which you and I have dedicated our very lives.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 71-72.
1924

People, World, Justice, Hope

“The means determine the goal. If lies and violence are the means, the results cannot be good…. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [i. e. since the 1917 Balfour Declaration without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people…. I believe that it will be possible for us to hold Palestine and continue to grow for a long time. This will be done first with British aid and then later with the help of our own bayonets -- shamefully called Haganah [defense] -- clearly because we have no faith in our own policy. But by that time we will not be able to do without the bayonets. The means will have determined the goal. Jewish Palestine will no longer have anything of that Zion for which I once put myself on the line.”

Hans Kohn (1891–1971) American historian

Hans Kohn (1929), "Kohn’s letter of farewell to Zionism," as quoted in: Anthony G. Bing. Israeli Pacifist, The Life of Joseph Abileah, 1990.

People, Faith, Time, Help

“There are two important truths to understand here. First: God will not 'torture' anyone. He will give them 'justice'. A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it 'justice'. Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are children of Satan, and it's his will we gladly run to do. Isn't it true that we love the darkness and hate the light”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

see John 3:19
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love, God, Hate, Children

“Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemeteries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear in pieces the living, but to dig up and devour the dead.”

Brian McNaughton (1935–2004) US author

Attributed to McNaughton online, this actually is a quote from an English edition of The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford, as translated by Samuel Henley.
Misattributed

People, Sense, Tear, Dead

“I believe that every person is a new person in every waking morning. She will always have the chance in her remaining three years in office. The best legacy she can ever give is first, a clean and honest election wherein the people can freely choose and elect their leaders. Secondly, she should not think about nor wait for our people's sympathy and trust. Instead, she should let her performance speak for her. This might be her chance to win it all back. If not today, maybe in due time.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Tony Lopez, "The natural successor to President Arroyo?", BizNews Asia, 11-18 June 2007, p. 25, ISSN 1655-7263.
2007

People, Thinking, Chance, Time

“I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Checking for Errors Before Run Time http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/41997404227dcc12 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, C++

Fear

“We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Ce qui nous fait croire si facilement que les autres ont des défauts, c'est la facilité que l'on a de croire ce qu'on souhaite.
Variant translation: What makes us believe so easily that others have faults is the ease with which we believe what we hope for.
Maxim 25 from the Manuscrit de Liancourt.
Later Additions to the Maxims

“A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

The Paradox Of Life
Grooks

Life, Box

“We shall now conclude our remarks on the opinions entertained before the Christian era… the observation of the present course of nature presented too many proofs of alterations continually in progress on the earth to allow philosophers to believe that nature was in a state of rest or that the surface had remained and would continue to remain unaltered.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 22
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Nature

“We believe, and I think properly, that when the men who met in 1787 to make our Constitution they made the best political document ever made; but, remember, they did so very largely because they were great compromisers.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

Testimony before the United States Congress, Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, hearing on the Establishment of a Commission on Ethics in Government (1951).
Extra-judicial writings

Men, Thinking

“The believer is no burden to his God, and even if you should be carrying whole mountains of care and solicitude, they will not make you more burdensome or your case more difficult to the Creator of the ends of the earth. He fainteth not, neither is weary.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 596.

God, Mountain

“[A certain Italian judge] declared in an interview that at night he has no need of sleeping pills since, with regards to the Law, his conscience is at peace. We believe him without further ado. But if he asked himself the same question with regards to Justice, I ask myself if his sleep would be equally untroubled. And we are after all aware that he'll never ask himself this question, and on the contrary it would seem to him totally odd. Because, for an Italian judge, the Law and Justice have nothing to do with each other.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Il testimone, p. 386.
2000s - 2010s

Peace, Justice, Law, Question

“Everything happens for a reason. I really believe it. Just then I needed change and I needed to get away from Sweden for a while. I must say that I am grateful that it happened, because otherwise, had I not [moved to New York City] I would have not been married to this amazing man.”

Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland (1982) Swedish princess

royalcorrespondent.com interview http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/07/15/we-really-are-a-team-says-princess-madeleine-in-a-new-interview/

Change

“A man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Un homme se définit aussi bien par ses comédies que par ses élans sincères.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9FgoAQAAIAAJ&q=%22un+homme+se+d%C3%A9finit+aussi+bien+par+ses+com%C3%A9dies+que+par+ses+%C3%A9lans+sinc%C3%A8res%22&pg=PA25#v=onepage
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

Sincerity

“Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Qui ne voudrait pas rester persuadé que ces femmes sont vertueuses?Ne sont-elles pas la fleur du pays?Ne sont-elles pas toutes verdissantes, ravissantes, étourdissantes de beauté, de jeunesse, de vie et d'amour?Croire à leur vertu est une espèce de religion sociale; car elles sont l'ornement du monde et font la gloire de la France.
Part I, Meditation II: Marriage Statistics.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Love, Life, Youth, World

“Wisdom: The first error is that of the southern people, and it consists in holding that these eastern and western places are real places. … give no quarter to that thought, whether it threatens you with fear, or tempts you with hopes. For this is Superstition and all who believe it will come in the end to the swamps to the south and the jungles to the far south. Part of the same error is to think that the Landlord is a real man:”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 117
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Wisdom, People, Fear, Hope

“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.”

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

Statement upon joining the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club (1950)
1950s

“It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.”

Doris Lessing book The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983), p. 94, Flamingo edition

“As to the navy, it is said the several commanding officers grounded on the beef-bones thrown overboard from their flag-ships, but this I do not believe.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 38

“Your Honor, I think I can shorten this testimony. The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur at the Bible, but I will answer his question. I will answer it all at once, and I have no objection in the world. I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in a God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee to slur at it, and while it will require time, I am willing to take it.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Scopes Trial (1925), Day 7

God, World, Question, Thinking

“We too know the Jesus that the minister referred to. We have had an experience with him and we believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal..”

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

Stride Toward Freedom (1958); also quoted in The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982), by Stephen B. Oates, pp. 81-82
1950s
Variant: We believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.

God, Religion, Evil, Christ

“A Sense of oneness, a sense of indianess requires to be created among our youth to halt the mad rush towards an imported five star video culture. We believe that through dedication and perseverance we will realize national unity and create a new India of our dreams. In Delhi, I gave you a slogan: ”Unite and win, today we are achieving unity, tomorrow we will achieve victory", Vandematram.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Indore, 6 - 8 January 1984
Quotes from ataljee.org

Youth, Dreams, Star, Sense

“After sleeping late on Sunday, I was back at my desk that afternoon. I had two prime considerations. First, I wanted to be certain that the tapes were not a trap for the committee or that there was a significant bit of missing information that we lacked; experience taught me that matters of this importance do not usually fall into your lap without more complications that are immediately apparent. Second, if our information was legitimate, I wanted to be sure the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action. Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee. Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home. Buzhardt was the only White House staff member with whom I had had any substantial contact. He had been unassuming and straightforward in his dealings with me. He never tried to enlist me in any White House strategy, to suggest that I relay confidential information, or to so any of the things that were probably assumed by many of the so-called sophisticates in Washington.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 86
At That Point in Time, Warning the White House about the Watergate tapes

Home, Sleep, Housing

“Monsieur, sit down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble your faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Chapter XXXVI: The Apple of Discord

God, Faith, Heart, Christ

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People, Education, Art, Feeling

“Bush said, in a big memorial service the other day, we've come to mourn and grieve and try to make some kind of sense out of this senseless tragedy that makes no sense. Well, wrong, President Bush. It makes perfect sense, to those who believe the Bible. [The victims of the massacre] died for America's sins and persecuting Westboro Baptist Church.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, Virginia Tech Massacre: God's Wrath (2007)

Sense, Memory, Perfection

“My appointees to the [Texas] board of pardons and paroles reflect my no-nonsense approach to crime and punishment. They believe people who commit crimes against innocent Texans should pay the consequences; they believe sentences imposed by juries should be carried out.”

George W. Bush book A Charge to Keep

1990s Source: "George W. Bush on Crime" http://www.issues2000.org/2004/George_W__Bush_Crime.htm, OnTheIssues, attributed to "A Charge to Keep", p.151-152. Dec 9, 1999.

People

“The foundational morality of the civilized world is best summarized in the Ten Commandments. Moral relativism and secular humanism are slippery slopes. The terminal moraine at the base of these slopes is a rubble pile consisting of either despotism and pillage, or anarchy and the depths of depravity. I believe that it takes both faith and friends to survive perilous times.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009), p. 13

World, Faith, Time

“Love me or leave me, baby. Don't lead me on, with loving like yours? Believe me, I'm better off. I"m better off alone.”

Michelle Branch (1983) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

" Love Me Like That http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/michellebranch/lovemelikethat.html" 2000s, Hotel Paper (2003)

Love, Baby

“From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 3

Men, Universe, Loss, Sun

“The Vietnam War is behind us but not entirely forgotten. Like our Civil War, Vietnam holds a fascination for many Americans, and I suspect that this will grow rather than diminish as research continues and new works are published about the war. For the older military professionals who served during the Vietnam War and for the still older career military men who were perplexed by it, my advice is to look at Vietnam in a broader historical perspective. For the young military professional who did not serve in Vietnam, my advice is to learn all you can about the war and try to understand it. Finally for those military men now serving at the top military positions, as well as those who will rise to those positions later, my advice is to do all you can to improve the civilian-military interface in the highest councils of our government. This is the best way I know to better the chances that our civilian leaders truly understand the risks, costs, and probable outcomes of military actions before they take the nation to war. The United States cannot afford to put itself again at such enormous strategic disadvantage as we found ourselves in in Vietnam. How deep Vietnam has stamped its imprint on American history has yet to be determined. In any event, I am optimistic enough to believe that we Americans can and will learn and profit from our experience.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Closing words, p. 209-210
The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984)

Men, War, Way, History

“You never know how things are gonna turn out, though, and that's the truth. You aim for one place, sure as an arrow, but before you hit the mark, the wind gets you. I don't believe I ever met one person who became what they wanted to be when they were your age.”

Robert McCammon book Boy's Life

Cory's dad to Cory; Book One, Ch. 1.
Boy's Life (1991)

Truth, Age, Personality

“I suppose I remain.... a believer in Art for Art's sake rather than in Art for the sake of religion, of social justice or of national glory. Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself..”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 107

Religion, Justice, Art

“Interviewer: You describe seemingly fantastic events in such minute detail that it gives them their own reality. Is this something you have picked up from journalism?
García Márquez: That's a journalistic trick which you can also apply to literature. If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people will probably believe you.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 324

People, Literature, Reality, Flying

“It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.”

Bill Sali (1954) American politician

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20061108/pl_cq_politics/repelectbillsaliridaho

“I don't think there was any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was.”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel — 1988: David Irving http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/35irving.html.

Thinking

“I ordered Major [transport company] tomorrow afternoon 2 o'clock to pack the paintings, I am still completely in all the paintings - as nightmares they are flying around me, now you know as of old how that is, but tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock I am free. I believe there are nice things among them, the drawing has become a little too fat, but there is much good in it, and it is very well-finished. I send to Peacock. The forest with wood hackers, which was hanging above the door of my studio, then the sheep [small composition-sketch of a sheep herd with shepherd] and... I believe you know them all, 7 pieces together, afterwards I have to start working for Arnold & Tripp [art-sellers in Paris], I let those guys wait and that's not right to do..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 (version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Morgen middag 2 uur heb ik Majoor [transportbedrijf] besteld om de schilderijen in te pakken ik ben nu nog geheel in alle die schilderijen als nacht merries zijn ze om me heen nu je weet wel van ouds, hoe of dat is maar morgen om 2 uur ben ik vrij. Ik geloof dat er aardige dingen bij zijn, de teekening is wel wat dik geworden, doch veel goeds er in, en erg af ik verzend aan Peacock Het bosch met hout hakkers, dat boven de deur van mijn atelier hing dan de schapen [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met herder] en [klein compositieschetsje schapen op bospad] en [klein compositieschetsje met schaapskudde] en [klein compositieschetsje koe?] en [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met vliegdennen] en de teekening (schapen uit het bosch komende) ik geloof dat je ze allen kent, 7 stuks te zamen, ik moet daarna ook voor Arnold & Tripp [kunsthandelaars in Parijs] aan de gang, die luitjes laat ik maar wachten en dat mag niet.. In a letter of Mauve from Laren, 27 June 1887 original text of the letter in RKD Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/10, The Hague 1880's

Art, Guy, Waiting, Drawing

“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Life, Time

“The realization that systems are integrated wholes that cannot be understood by analysis was even more shocking in physics than in biology. Ever since Newton, physicists had believed that all physical phenomena could be reduced to the properties of hard and solid material particles. In the 1920s, however, quantum theory forced them to accept the fact that the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve at the subatomic level into wavelike patterns of probabilities. These patterns, moreover, do not represent probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of interconnections. The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only as interconnections, or correlations, among various processes of observation and measurement. In other words, subatomic particles are not “things” but interconnections among things, and these, in turn, are interconnections among other things, and so on. In quantum theory we never end up with any “things”; we always deal with interconnections.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 30.

“I am a Republican because I believe in the constitution, strength in national defense, limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility as the concrete foundation for American government. They reinforce the resolve that the United States is the greatest country in the world and we can all be eternally grateful to our founding fathers for the beautiful legacy they left us today.”

Martha Raye (1916–1994) American comic actress and singer

Quoted in Jane Maddern Pittrone: Take It from the Big Mouth: The Life of Martha Raye, p. 220

World, Beauty, Freedom, Personality

“Please let your 'hot-blooded iconoclasm' slumber a bit longer, and for a while permit me simply to be your Madonna. It's meant to be for your own good, do you believe that? Keep your mind on art, our gracious muse, dear. Let us both plan to paint all this week. And then early Saturday I shall come to you.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her husband Otto Modersohn, after 12 September 1900; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 200
1900 - 1905

Art, Painting

“Hinduism always used violence as creed. For Hinduism, for Hindu dharma, resolving of a conflict is only by killing. There is no other discourse. Debate is not there. You have to kill the enemy. Whereas Buddha believed in discourse and resolving the conflict. So in a system where you have the two streams of thought, debate and discourse, human rights and anti-human rights, even the left has to take that historical tradition and examine its potential and use it for its propaganda systems. It is in this context that I have been saying that there is no use if you simply borrow concepts from the West. Christianity has a different ethic; it was an ethic of sacrifice. Christ's crucifixion is a symbol of sacrifice, it is not a killing symbol. The lamb is a productive symbol.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

"The State of Dalit Mobilization : An Interview with Kancha Ilaiah" in Ghadar Vol. 1, No. 3 (26 November 1997).

“Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2

Freedom, Cry

“The scientist who considers himself absolutely "objective" and believes that he can free himself from the compulsion of the "merely" subjective should try — only in imagination of course — to kill in succession a lettuce, a fly, a frog, a guineapig, a cat, a dog, and finally a chimpanzee. He will then be aware how increasingly difficult murder becomes as the victim's level of organisation rises. The degree of inhibition against killing each one of these beings is a very precise measure for the considerably different values that we cannot help attributing to lower and higher forms of life. To any man who finds it equally easy to chop up a live dog and a live lettuce I would recommend suicide at his earliest convenience!”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

Life, Dogs, Imagination, Cats

“I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

20 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Disease, Waiting

“The ultimate laziness is not using Perl. That saves you so much work you wouldn't believe it if you had never tried it.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Lisp as glue language? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/711dfe3ce115d552 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Perl

“Hayek was in many respects a philosophical idealist, in that he believed that ideas rule the world. It was the idea of constructivism, he thought, that has such destructive consequences. If he could combat this idea, then much good would result.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

World, Idea

“Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory…Everything is forgotten, even great love.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Love, Suffering, Memory

“Out whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretense of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

World, Heart, Christ, Despair

“Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase “missional church” lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 155

Future

“Florida weather is like living with a schizophreniac. Its mood is a fractured thing; it believes in real and unreal circumstances equally; and you're never quite sure if it'll come through with its share of the rent.”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060119

Mood, Weather

“In the United States you're not allowed to talk about class differences. In fact, only two groups are allowed to be class-conscious in the United States. One of them is the business community, which is rabidly class-conscious. When you read their literature, it's all full of the danger of the masses and their rising power and how we have to defeat them. It's kind of vulgar, inverted Marxism. The other group is the high planning sectors of the government. They talk the same way — how we have to worry about the rising aspirations of the common man and the impoverished masses who are seeking to improve standards and harming the business climate. So they can be class-conscious. They have a job to do. But it's extremely important to make other people, the rest of the population, believe that there is no such thing as class. We're all just equal, we're all Americans, we live in harmony, we all work together, everything is great.”

Noam Chomsky book The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many

"The Unmentionable Five-Letter Word" in How the World Works, p. 120
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, 1993

People, Way, Communication, Literature

“The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XVII: "Galapagos Archipelago" (second edition, 1845), entry for 8 October 1835, pages 377-378 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=390&itemID=F14&viewtype=image

World, Feeling, History, Nature

“Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.
Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today.”

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

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life, God, Age, World