Quotes about believer (10000 quotes, page 62)

“You misunderstood my words when I said that Michelangelo was a stupid artist... Because I have drunk from another source and a new and marvelous thirst burns my lips – how can I still believe in such artists?! I know what you are thinking when you ask me: 'isn't David a superman? This is how I used to feel, this is what I used to think. The majority of the world's great spirits thought it so.... but now a new air has entered my soul, a new song has reached my ears and the whole world appears totally changed – the autumn afternoon has arrived, the long shadows, the clear air, the serene sky –, in a word: Zarathustra has arrived, do you understand??.... It is only with Nietzsche that I can say I have begun a real life.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, undated, c. 5 Jan. 1911; from LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 564
1908 - 1920

Life , Stupidity , World , Feeling

“Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World

“Rachel Maddow: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?Rand Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form; I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important about this debate is not written into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or fashion.I do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. But had I been there, there would have been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights. And I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion, because the thing is, is if we want to harbor in on private businesses and their policies, then you have to have the discussion about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do you want to say that because people say abhorrent things — you know, we still have this. We're having all this debate over hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and say abhorrent things? Can you march in a parade and believe in abhorrent things, you know?”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

The Rachel Maddow Show
MSNBC
2010-05-19
Rand Paul on 'Maddow' fallout begins
Maddow Blog
MSNBC
2010-05-20
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/05/20/4313688-rand-paul-on-maddow-fallout-begins
2010-11-17
2010s

Hate , People , School , Way

“These doubts must be met in the following way. You announce that meaning does not exist until you make it, and then you don the mantle of meaning-maker. The minute you do this, all previous belief systems, both those that told you what to believe and those that told you that there was nothing to believe, vanish. You suddenly enact the paradigm shift that I believe we are now ready to embrace: the shift from seeking meaning to making meaning.
You let go of wondering what the universe wants of you, … and you announce that you will make life mean exactly what you intend it to mean. This is an amazing, glorious, and triumphant announcement. The instant you realize that meaning is not provided (as traditional belief systems teach) and that it is not absent (as nihilists feel), a new world of potential opens up for you.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 54

Life , World , Way , Feeling

“Think of past wars and of those that subjected people will have to wage to conquer the right to breathe freely, the wars for markets, the wars to create colonial empires. And in France we unfortunately know only too well that every war, victorious or not, is followed by slavery.
And finally what is even worse than all that has just been enumerated, is the fact that the education we all receive from the State, at school and after, has so warped our minds that the very notion of freedom ends up by being lost, and disguised in servitude.
It is a sad sight to see those who believe themselves to be revolutionaries unleashing their hatred on the anarchist — just because his views on freedom go beyond their petty and narrow concepts of freedom learned in the State school. And meanwhile, this spectacle is a reality. The fact is that the spirit of voluntary servitude was always cleverly cultivated in the minds of the young, and still is, in order to perpetuate the subjection of the individual to the State.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: The State — Its Historic Role (1897), IX

War , People , Education , Sadness

“… it's one thing to believe in something that might be true (like God in general or Christianity specifically) even though neither can be substantiated or tested in any objective way. But it is a whole other matter to willfully deceive others into believing things which are definitely not true -like creationism, especially when we can also prove that those doing this know their assorted arguments are bogus, and know they’re lying to our children, and that they hope to continue doing so under the guise of “education”. Creationism extorts support through peer-pressure, prejudice, and paranoid propaganda, and sells itself with short, simplistic slogans which appeal to those who don’t want to think too much, or are afraid to question their own beliefs. Worst of all, it actually forbids critical inquiry, and promotes anti-intellectualism, and it is based on at least a dozen foundational falsehoods. First and foremost among them is the idea that accepting evolution requires the rejection of theism, if not all other religious or spiritual beliefs as well.”

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

"1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, Youtube (November 11, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God , Children , Education , Hope

“Question: …you believe the Fed shouldn't exist… make the case.
Ron Paul: First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. This station talks about free market capitalism, and you can't have free market capitalism if you have a secret bank creating money and credit out of thin air. They become the central planners, they decide what interest rates should be, what the supply of money should be…
Question: How does the gold standard solves that?
Ron Paul: It maintains a stable currency and a stable value. If the Fed concentrated more on stable money rather than stable prices… They push up new money in stocks and in commodities and in houses, and then they have to come in to rescue the situation. They create the bubbles, then they come in and rescue it, and they do nothing more than try to do price fixing. Capitalism depends, and capital comes from savings, but there's no savings in this country, so this is all artificial. It creates the misdirection and the malinvestment and all the excessive debt, and it always has to have a correction. Since the Fed has been in existence, the dollar has lost about 97% of its value. You're supposed to encourage savings, but if something loses its value, why save dollars? There's no encouragement whatsoever. […] Gold is 6000 years old, and it still maintains its purchasing power. Oil prices really are very stable in terms of Gold. […] Both conservatives and liberals want to enhance big government, and this is a seductive way to tax the middle class.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

CNBC debate with Faiz Shakir, March 20, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k94VWPjUQSM
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , Secret , Way , Question

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Life , Men , People , Truth

“Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and gift alike, he is even now working through you. Let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving love your mission!”

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

2008, Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2008)

Love , People , Nature , Christ

“I would like to thank a world that never understood or accepted me, family and friends that never believed in me, and a God with one hell of a sense of humor. You have all made me what I am today. Let that weigh heavily on your consciences.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

sleeve notes, The Sickness (2000)

God , World , Family , Hell

“Liberals believe being friendly and fair will make the world better. But our world runs by horrific rules. Fair-play doesn't change the rules. You just accept them.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

at KAPU, Konferenz der Begrenzten, Linz 2016

World , Change

“We have the greatest admiration for this learned doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering; like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, imposing Vauxhall, whose fire-works, cascades and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy and believe in,—but where he finds nothing real but the saltpetre, pasteboard and catgut.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Learning

“Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers. … Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Faith , Effort

“Sometimes there is a tendency to talk about women as though we are a herd…women believe this or women want that. But we very much vote on the issues depending on what's important.”

Elizabeth Cheney (1966) American lawyer

G. Robert Hillman, "New Bush Campaign Aims to Appeal to Women Voters," Dallas Morning News, May 12, 2004.

Women , Dependency

“I believe … that this Government practises a Pacific form of revised apartheid against the Indian community and should be ashamed of calling itself Christian.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts), Speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=245&viewtype=full, 26 August 2004 (excerpts)

Communication

“What I believe is that the age of creative silliness is not past. Virtue, as an economic theorist, does not consist in squeezing the last drop of blood out of assumptions that have come to seem natural because they have been used in a few hundred earlier papers. If a new set of assumptions seems to yield a valuable set of insights, then never mind if they seem strange.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

How I Work (1993)

Age , Nature , Past

“I see that issue as a states rights issue and I defer to what the states believe is the best policy. Personally, I don’t like marijuana and I hate its effects on the human body; but I am also a states rights guy. I trust that Alabama will do the right thing.”

Mo Brooks (1954) American politician

Mo Brooks Interview http://www.alreporter.com/2017/06/28/mo-brooks-interview/ (June 28, 2017)

Hate , Guy , Personality , Marijuana

“I make monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my church can ever be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also, and perhaps against these most of all.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation, p. 82

Life , War , Faith , Lying

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”

Shirley Temple (1928–2014) American actress and diplomat

Quoted in The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews

Christmas

“I believe from history and my own gut, instinct, that if I go ahead and lay it all out here, what we're really facing, you've got courage and you've got will, and you're gonna get angry and stop caring. It begins with not caring about what your slack-jawed knuckle-dragging cowardly pseudo tough-guy football-watching neighbor thinks. Okay? That's where it begins. It begins with not caring what happens to your individual person. And when you have that attitude, when you have that attitude, then the enemy doesn't have anything over you anymore. Stop being gelded domesticated garbage. Stop being weak! And when you see a threat coming down on you, deal with it! Become a human again! Stop being weak! We have a bunch of criminals coming down on us. God, ugh! Murdering scum. I wanna get humanity awake. I wanna get our forces up. And I wanna bring these people to justice. And you know what I mean. You know what I mean! I wanna unleash humanity, not have a bunch of con artist pot-bellied chicken-neck pieces of garbage running our world! More importantly they act like effeminate cowardly chicken necks cuz they want to train you to act like that they want to train you to be weak they want to train you. That's a nasty taste coming up in my mouth. Tastin' those globalists. I can taste their fear and their weakness. I taste metal, I taste blood.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex's Bill Gates Chicken-Neck Bastard 'Rant' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-5WgcMV_o, September 2011.

History , Thinking , Courage , Guy

“The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Interview from primitivism.com http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm
Interviews

People , Problem

“I don't believe that the average fellow has anything like a true line on the value of wrist action in hitting anything—a baseball, a golf ball, a tennis ball or a polo ball. If you watch most of them, you will see they are trying to hit with their bodies, with their shoulders, with their arms—with almost everything except their wrists. I think it comes because most of them are overanxious, all tied up, too tense. They start by gripping too tightly. That kills off the hands and wrists. Their wrists get locked and then they have to swing their shoulders and bodies in. You'd be surprised how far a fellow can hit a ball, using only his wrists. I know I've been caught off guard or out of position on a sharp breaking curve, have had to slap at the ball, using only my wrists and have now and then watched it sail over the fence. The wrist is the mainspring—both wrists in baseball and golf. If you get them to work the rest is fairly easy. If you don't get them to work you are not going to do any good hitting. You can't get any speed in closing a door if the hinges are rusty and won't work. Hack Wilson must have great wrist action, for no short, stocky guy is going to hit that many home runs without a lot of it.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (August 22, 1930), p. 13

Guy , Home , Thinking , Speed

“There can be no question but that Christianity was originally a Jewish promotion, and it is noteworthy that the Christians who try to make their cult respectable in the Third Century claim that they repudiate the Jews. One of the earliest to do this was Tertullian, a Carthaginian shyster, whose Apologeticum, a defense of Christianity, was written at the very beginning of the Third Century. He asserts that Christianity is not a conspiracy of revolutionaries and degenerates, as was commonly believed, and claims that it is an association of loving brothers who have preserved the faith that the Jews forsook – which has been the common story ever since. Our holy men salvage Tertullian by claiming that he was "orthodox" in his early writings, but then, alas! became a Montanist heretic, poor fellow. Tertullian is the author of the famous dictum that he believes the impossible because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum), so he is naturally dear to the heart of the pious. How much Jerome and other saints have tampered with the facts to make Tertullian seem "orthodox" in his early works has been most fully shown by Timothy Barnes in his Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), but even he spends a hundred pages pawing over chronological difficulties that can be reconciled by what seems to me the simple and obvious solution: Tertullian, who was evidently a pettifogging lawyer before he got into the Gospel-business, had sense enough to eliminate from his brief for the Christians facts that would have displeased the pagans whom he was trying to convince that Christians represented no threat to civilized society; he accordingly concealed in his apologetic works the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sect to which he had been originally "converted," but he naturally expounded those doctrines in writings intended, not for the eyes of wicked pagans, but for other brands of Christians, whom he wished to convert to his own sect, which was that of Montanus, a very Holy Prophet (divinely inspired, of course) who was a Phrygian, not a Jew, and who had learned from chats with God that since the Jews had muffed their big opportunity at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus, when he returned next year or the year after that, was going to set up his New Jerusalem in Phrygia after he had raised hell with the pagans and tormented and butchered them in all of the delightful ways so lovingly described in the Apocalypse, the Hymn of Hate that still soothes the souls of "fundamentalist" Christians today. If, in his Apologeticum and similar works, Tertullian had told the stupid pagans that they were going to be tortured and exterminated in a year or two, they might have doubted that Christians were the innocent little lambs that Tertullian claimed they were.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

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

Love , Men , God , Hate

“In dreams you are so 'dumb' that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so 'irrational' as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so 'unrealistic' that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited. In dreams you are so 'insane' you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 758, Page 25
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

Dreams , Travel , Feeling , Imagination

“To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tie-me-up-tie-me-down-1990 of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (25 May 1990)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Life , People , Way

“Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values. Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto. Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.105)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

Law , History , Freedom , Universe

“I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Arguing for woman suffrage at an anniversary celebration of the Equal Rights Association (12 May 1869); as quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 2 (1882) by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

Country

“That's why I can dream dreams that God Himself never dreamed. I'm that kind of person. I can believe the things even God can't believe. I can do things even God can't. That's why God hated me more than Satan hated me.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Father's Words in Washington D.C. http://www.unification.net/2003/20030517_1.html (2003-05-17)

God , Hate , Dreams , Personality

“A fateful thing has been happening. The East is waking up from its slumber. The wisdom of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism is becoming available to the world. Already, it is having a transforming effect on the minds of the people, particularly in countries where there is freedom to seek and express. Dogmas are under a cloud; claims on behalf of Last Prophethood and Only Sonship, hitherto enforced through great intellectual conditioning, brow-beating, and the big stick, are becoming unacceptable. Religions of proxy are in retreat. More and more men and women now seek authentic experience. Borrowed creed will not do. Men and women are ceasing to be obedient believers and are becoming seekers. They no longer want to be anybody’s sheep, now that they know they can be their own shepherds. An external authority, even when it is called God in certain scriptures, threatening and promising alternately, is increasingly making less and less impression; people now realize that Godhead is their own true, secret status and they seek it in the depth of their own being. All this is in keeping with the wisdom of the East.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Introduction to Mohammed and the Rise of Islam by D.S. Margoliouth, Voice of India reprint, New Delhi, 1985, pp. xvii-xviii. 10Ibid., pp. xix-xx.

Wisdom , Women , Men , God

“I believe that historical analogies are always wrong. This a long discussion, but, to me, the most dangerous thing about Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich is not the fact that Munich happened and it led to further Nazi aggression and so on and so forth, but that the example of Munich has been used to support thousands upon thousands of bad policies and inappropriate decisions. LeMay called JFK’s recommendation for a “quarantine” (that is, a blockade) in the Cuban Missile Crisis “worse than Munich”. Would nuclear war have been a better alternative? But nuclear war was averted by Kennedy’s policies. And thirty years later the Soviet Union collapsed without the need for nuclear war. Was LeMay right? I don’t think so. But again, the example of Munich was invoked to justify the invasion of Iraq. Appeasing Saddam, appeasing Hitler. The use of the Munich analogy does not clarify, it obscures. History is like the weather. Themes do repeat themselves, but never in the same way. And analogies became rhetorical flourishes and sad ex post facto justifications rather than explanations. In the end, they explain nothing.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: It Becomes a Self-fulfilling Thing http://errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0406.html

War , Sadness , Way , History

“The Day of Resurrection is a day on which the sun riseth and setteth like unto any other day. How oft hath the Day of Resurrection dawned, and the people of the land where it occurred did not learn of the event. Had they heard, they would not have believed, and thus they were not told!”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VIII, 9
The Persian Bayán

People , Learning , Sun

“I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, and what I am going to emphasize is only an intellectual thing. I don't want to talk about everything at the same time. Let's take a small piece, an intellectual thing.No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

Truth , Way , Question , Freedom

“I do not defend Conchis’ decision at the execution, but I defend the reality of the dilemma. God and freedom are totally anti-pathetic concepts; and men believe in their imaginary gods most often because they are afraid to believe in the other thing. I am old enough to realise now that they do sometimes with good reason. True freedom lies between each two, never in one alone, and therefore is never absolute freedom.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

Men , God , Reality , Decision

“There's a very specific formula for creating a monster. It starts with chronic, unrelenting abuse. There's got to be societal notification and then passing on. The child eventually believes that what's being done is societally sanctioned. And after a while, empathy – which we have to learn, we're not born with it – cracks and dies. He feels only his own pain. There's your predatory sociopath." That's why Vachss posed for a recent publicity photo cradling his pit bull puppy. "You know what pit bulls are capable of, right?" he asks, referring to the animal's notorious killer reputation. "But they're also capable of being the most wonderful, sweet pets in the world, depending on how you raise them. That's all our children."”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Unleashing the Criminal Mind," San Francisco Examiner, July 12, 1990.

Pain , Children , World , Feeling

“Is this thing even worth reviewing? Right off the bat, I'm glad to see that my initial reactions to this thing were accurate. Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is.”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

Apple iPad Hands-On First Impressions http://winsupersite.com/article/product-review/apple-ipad-hands-on-first-impressions in Paul Thurrott's Supersite For Windows (6 October 2010)

Way , Game

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Preface
Taken Care Of (1965)

Truth

“I’ve always liked gossip, gossip is fun, but whether you believe it or not is something else, and yet the web seems to want to believe. The web doesn’t distinguish between what’s playful and serious. And the speed! What is happening in the web, and all the tweeters tweeting, they become neurons. They are the neurons of the global village. Village is the right word because the village is where the gossip is taking place, it doesn’t take place in the cities. A piece of information comes into that little neuron – whoop – and they’ve immediately got to pass it across the synaptic gap…”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

As quoted in the article 'Terry Gilliam interview for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'’ http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/joshua-jackson-on-marrying-diane-kruger-never-say-never-2012246 in The Telegraph (9 October 2009)

Speed

“Therefore our Constitution will always be the measure of our national morality; and if we were all sorry, it would still be true. I am not sorry, for it founds the government in the character of the people, and hence everything in the future depends upon the popular faith in the original principles of the government. If the people of this country do believe with the fathers that there are self-evident, original, and indefeasible human rights, then slavery will surely, quietly, and legally be terminated, under the Constitution of the United States. If they do not believe that there are such rights, then slavery will, just as surely, quietly, and legally, be established under the Constitution, which, as the paramount law of the land, will legalize it in New York as well as in Alabama, leaving the policy of adopting it to be decided by individual judgment.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People , Faith , Law , Future

“The danger does not lie with individuals, however criminal they may be. Far more, it lies in the ignorance of our entire society, which confirms these people in the lies that they were obliged to believe in childhood. Teachers, attorneys, doctors, social workers, priests, and other respected representatives of society protect parents from the mistreated child's every accusation and see to it that the truth about child abuse remains concealed. Even the child protection agencies insist that this crime, and this crime alone, should go unpunished.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

People , Truth , Lie , Parent

“One clashes with stupidity of all kinds. And then how much money must be spent in advance! The way in which artists are treated is really scandalous. I am compelled to give a third of my receipts to the manager of the theatre and a fifth to the hospitals. Devil take them! As long as these abuses exist, I shall always ask whether music is or is not an art that may be freely exercised. Believe me, there is nothing to be done for artists in times like these.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

24th November, 1814
Source: Johann Wenzel Tomaschek, "A Talk with Beethoven", The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 33, Beethoven Supplement (Dec. 15, 1892)

Money , Stupidity , Art , Music

“We believe that this administration represents Israel inside America. Take the sensitive ministries such as the Ministry of Exterior and the Ministry of Defense and the CIA, you will find that the Jews have the upper hand in them. They make use of America to further their plans for the world, especially the Islamic world. American presence in the Gulf provides support to the Jews and protects their rear. And while millions of Americans are homeless and destitute and live in abject poverty, their government is busy occupying our land and building new settlements and helping Israel build new settlements in the point of departure for our Prophet's midnight journey to the seven heavens. America throws her own sons in the land of the two Holy Mosques for the sake of protecting Jewish interests.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, ABC interview (1998)

World , Departure , Business , Support

“We are not a Party of unbridled, brutal capitalism, and never have been. Although we believe in personal responsibility and personal initiative in business, we are not the political children of the "laissez-faire" school. We opposed them decade after decade.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

The New Conservatism (Conservative Political Centre, 1955), pp. 11-12

Children , School , Business , Personality

“I don't know yet whether I fully believe in fate, but certain things do happen in a man's life that he cannot explain.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 23

Life , Fate

“People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters,” Ty said.
“So it is like believing in God.”
“Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

Epilogue
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

God , People , Motivation

“How you deal with it I must and will leave to you, not out of despair or resignation but in deference to my conscience, that broken clock which I believe is now chiming one of its occasional right hours. I will not question your reasons. It is enough for you to tell me that you wish to keep this distance between us, and it will always be enough. Know that a single word will bring me running, but unless and until it pleases you to give it, I will expect nothing, force nothing, and contrive nothing contrary to your wishes.
I desire you as deeply as I ever have, but I understand that the fervor of a desire is irrelevant to its justice. I want your heart on merit, in mutual trust, or not at all, because I cannot bear to see you made uneasy by me. Not for all the world would I do so again, and I leave it to you to tell me how to proceed, if and when you can, if and when you will.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 10 “The Five-Year Game: Final Approaches” section 11 (p. 605)

World , Justice , Understanding , Question

“So here’s a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse, that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nassariyeh — the latter a city which briefly rose in successful revolt against Saddam in 1991 — why should Saddam’s forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Anglo-American Lies Exposed http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles191.htm, March 24, 2003
2003

Question , Success , Fight

“These choices by small countries are vital for them, but may be more momentous than commonly understood for others as well, including the major powers, who presumptuously believe they are in control of events.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 3, Central Europe, p. 70.

Country

“Conservatives believe in individual freedom and responsibility. Liberals believe in sacrificing individual freedom for socially desirable outcomes. Liberals believe that one of government's primary roles is social engineering.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

Rocky Mountain News column, 2000

Freedom

“By-the-by, this doctrine of perpetual transmigration would be a curious plea to urge for the non-fulfilment of former engagements; seven years is I believe the term allotted for the entire change. Now, might not a man encumbered with debt plead at the expiration of the period in the Courts of Westminster, that he was not the person who actually contracted those debts? Or might not an inconstant couple sue for a divorce, on the plea that neither were the individuals who originally married?”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Change , Personality

“There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players.”

Stephen Potter (1900–1969) British writer

The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (1947) pp. 82-83

Light

“The foremost, or indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Four, Chapter IV.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four

Love , Men , Communication , Science

“Enlightenment … asks, innocently and subversively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to convince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter. With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church’s claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God’s power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verification. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 24

God

“[The Liberal party is a] moderate Democrat, a type of Clinton-pragmatic Democrat. It's moved in the last few years very much to the right on fiscal and economic concerns, but still believes in government intrusion in the economy where possible, and does, in its majority, believe in fairly liberal social values.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

“I'm always making the mistake of believing what I see with my own eyes.”

Dana Stabenow (1952) American writer

A Cold Day for Murder

“Plato (427-347 B. C.) in his philosophical writings, stressed the inner psychological reality in contrast to the reality of the external world. He believed that the human soul consists of three parts. 1) The rational soul, which resided in the brain. 2) The anima soul, controlling emotions and passions, was located in the chest. 3) The vegetative soul, controlling physiological needs, was located in the abdomen, When dreams occurred in sleep, the irrational soul reasserted themselves.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology, (1990), p. 23

World , Dreams , Soul , Reality

“It does seem quite ironic to me that the very people who have made no attempt to think for themselves, are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their "ideas". But some Muslims go further than this and claim that they're being victimized in British society. But I don't really believe that's true. I do think a lot of people are getting fed up of hearing about Muslims all the time, and wish that Muslims would just shut up and get on with their lives, instead of constantly belly-aching about nothing, but that's not the same as being victimized. But because we live in a liberal democracy and therefore have certain double standards to maintain, any criticism of Islam or of Muslims always draws the immediate accusation of Islamophobia, a dishonest word which seeks to portray legitimate comment as some kind of hate crime.”

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

"The trouble with Islam" (16 March 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhN6CG1zCRc
2007

Hate , People , Democracy , Idea

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Life , People , World , Way

“A genuine taradiddle of the gross and palpable kind never fails for want of vouchers. Hundreds know it to be true—hundreds more were all but eye-witnesses of the fact related—some actually were; all can attest it on their personal responsibility. Upon that point everybody has a reputation for veracity to stake—though the same stake had been forfeited fifty times; and everybody can contribute to the original story an unquestionable incident of his own coinage "to make assurance doubly sure." So it goes round, until the first projector hardly recognizes his own lie; and ends by believing ten times more absurdity than he had palmed upon others.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That what Everybody Says must be True".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Lie , Time , Personality

“The purpose of my Bill is simply to remove the legal nicety which, at the moment, allows the hunting and killing of deer with dogs, which I believe to be a wanton cruelty. The Bill would not prohibit the culling of deer to restrict the deer population and so to protect the deer's habitat, and it would not prohibit the shooting of deer, but it would prohibit the extremely cruel practice of hunting deer with dogs…This Bill is yet another step forward in making this country's legislation on animals slightly more humane and slightly more civilised. I believe that it has overwhelming support throughout the country. Hunting with dogs and the vile killing for bloodlust in the name of sport should not be allowed in this country. The House must represent the views of the vast majority of people throughout the country and pass this legislation to remove this so-called sport, which I believe to be an obscenity, from legal sanction in this country and to abolish it so that we may have fair legislation that guarantees the safety of animals and prohibits and outlaws the cruelty to animals that is part of so-called sport.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jun/19/abolition-of-deer-hunting in the House of Commons (19 June 1990).
1990s

People , Dogs , Support , Sport

“Neoconservatives believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support. …"[W]ar" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

From the essay "After Neoconservatism" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html in the New York Times Magazine, February 19, 2006.
2000s

War , World , History , Support

“I don't believe there is any finer mission on earth than just to make people laugh.”

Roscoe Arbuckle (1887–1933) American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter

Interview (1916) http://www.2020site.org/fattyarbuckle/fatty.html

People

“Dr. Roboy, in Litvak’s measured view, had a vice common to believers: He was all strategy and no tactics. He was prone to move for the sake of moving, too focused on the goal to bother with the intervening sequence.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 39

“I find that I have great faith in human nature. I believe that people are good. I believe they are to be trusted. So far as I know, no one has ever betrayed my faith, in any way. If they ever have, I've been spared the knowledge of it.
If I couldn't have faith in human nature, I wouldn't want to live. It is the one thing that could destroy for me the joy of living.
I've come to believe that life, under almost any conditions, is worth while.
I found that out when I had my accident some years ago, and was in the hospital.
I thought, for a couple of weeks, that I would be blind for life. I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life , People , Faith , Way

“Now, I know there are still a few who insist that climate change is one big hoax, even a political conspiracy. My friends, these people are so out of touch with science that they believe rising sea levels don’t matter, because, in their view, the extra water is just going to spill out over the sides of a flat Earth.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

John Kerry, December 9, 2015, Paris. Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/9/it_is_not_enough_despite_promise

People , Water , Science , Change

“Neo-Darwinists ask us to believe in things not seen. We’re not supposed to have an established religion in America, but we do, and it’s called Darwinism.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Citizen Link: Friday Five: Actor Ben Stein, Citizen Link: Friday Five: Actor Ben Stein, 4 April 2008, 2008-04-18, http://web.archive.org/web/20080408021259/http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007058.cfm, 2008-04-08 http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007058.cfm,

Religion

“I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself "libertarian."… But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible… The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an article http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian published by Cato Unbound (April 13, 2009)

Death , Women , Faith , Democracy

“As a newly elected UKIP MEP, I had mixed feelings about my first visit to the European Parliament in Brussels. After all, I am visiting a parliament which I believe shouldn’t exist; however, I should, and will be there to act as the eyes and ears of the British people.”

Louise Bours (1968) British politician

People , Feeling

“If there is a God and you believe in him, you know the best is yet to come.”

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

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 148

God

“Soon I must vote for Oscars and BAFTAs, so I've been having marathon screening sessions. Top of my list so far is ROOM, which is brilliant in every way. The boy actor, Jacob Tremblay, is astounding. But most of all, it's a film that never stoops to the rigged mini-plots so often used to generate viewer excitement: it goes its own way, always surprising, always utterly believable. The writer of both the novel and the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, has produced a perfect work. People seem surprised that a first-time screenwriter can be so good, but the truth is screenwriting's not hard, it's having something strong and real and true to write about that's hard. Emma Donoghue is original and wise: that's rare.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

William Nicholson, "Oscar voting" http://www.williamnicholson.com/blog/2016/1/3/oscar-voting-2 (January 3, 2016)
About

People , Truth , Way , Boy

“I believe that communities which lack the feminine influence are apt to fall into abstraction and the madness of systems which, being false, require violence to put into practice. We have, alas, seen too many examples of this. A masculine civilization like that of ancient Greece perishes through politics, metaphysics, and vanity. Women alone can give these doctrinary drones a sense of the real and simple values of the hive. No true civilization is possible without the collaboration of the two sexes, but there can be no real collaboration unless the differences between the sexes are accepted and a mutual respect established.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Women , Sex , Communication , Sense

“I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March.”

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

Letter to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph (7 February 1809) on the termination of the American embargo.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

War , People

“The man who comes home exhausted because he has been taught to believe without question that his male identity is based on nine-to-five loyalty and the giving of his best energies to the corporation has made a decision about his sexuality. He sacrifices his corpus to the corporation. His chosen method of expending energy and structuring time disallows afternoon dalliance with his wife or lover.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 101

Home , Lovers , Question , Decision

“Einstein believed that religion and science could coexist without being at odds with one another, in spite of the religious zealots and the gung-ho atheists being constantly at war with each other.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

War , Religion , Science

“Do away with the miracles, and the superhuman character of Christ is destroyed. He becomes what he really was—a man. Do away with the wonders, and the teachings of Christ cease to be authoritative. They are then worth the reason, the truth that is in them, and nothing more. Do away with the miracles, and then we can measure the utterances of Christ with the standard of our reason. We are no longer intellectual serfs, believing what is unreasonable in obedience to the command of a supposed god.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)

God , Truth , Christ

“Johnson was a dirty fighter. Any campaign with him in it would involve a lot of innuendo and lies. Johnson was a wheeler-dealer. Neither he nor anyone else could change that. That's what he was. And Johnson was a treacherous boot. He'd slap you on the back today and stab you in the back tomorrow. Moreover, LBJ was dull. He was a lousy public speaker. The man didn't believe half of what he said. He was a hypocrite, and it came through in the hollowness of his speech. LBJ made me sick.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Goldwater (1988)

Change

“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose… that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death , Intelligence , Science

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

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

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html]
1880s, 1887

Beauty , Thinking , Painting

“I say that such qualities were never more needed in the word. Let us hold on to what we are; let us not try to be like anybody else…With our pertinacity, our love of freedom, our love of ordered freedom, our respect for law, our respect for the individual and our power of combining in service; indeed, in our strength and in our weakness, I believe, from my heart, that our people are fitted to pass through whatever trials may be before us, and to emerge—if they are true to their own best traditions—a greater people in the future than they have been in the past.”

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

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 14.
1933

Love , People , Law , Freedom

“It merely confirmed in him his long-held belief that you should never believe anything anyone said without first checking it. Suspect everybody, had been for many years, if not his whole life, one of his first axioms.”

Agatha Christie book Third Girl

Third Girl (1966)

Life

“He said he did not believe the Home Office was "intrinsically dysfunctional… but I do believe from time to time it is dysfunctional in the sense it doesn't work."”

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan (1947) British politician

BBC News 23 May 2006

Home , Sense , Time

“I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.”

John Ruskin book The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter III: The Lamp of Power, section 13.

“They use [the term Isolationist] all the time, and they do that to be very negative. There are a few people in the country who say, "Well, that's good. I sort of like that term." I don't particularly like the term because I do not think I am an isolationist at all. Because along with the advice of not getting involved in entangling alliances and into the internal affairs of other countries, the Founders said – and it's permissible under the Constitution – to be friends with people, trade with people, communicate with them, and get along with them – but stay out of the military alliances. The irony is they accuse us, who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home, of being isolationist. Yet if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find that we are more isolated than ever before. So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists is really diplomatic isolationism. They are not willing to talk to Syria. They are not willing to talk to Iran. They are not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge. We have literally isolated ourselves. We have less friends and more enemies than ever before. So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges. They are the true isolationists, I believe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Scott Horton, April 4, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=10798
2000s, 2006-2009

People , Way , Home , Communication

“Sinuhe, my friend, we have been born into strange times. Everything is melting - changing its shape - like clay on a potter's wheel. Dress is changing, words, customs are changing, and people no longer believe in the gods - though they may fear them. Sinuhe, my friend, perhaps we were born to see the sunset of the world, for the world is already old, and twelve hundred years have passed since the building of the pyramids. When I think of this, I want to bury my head in my hands and cry like a child.”

Mika Waltari book The Egyptian

The Egyptian

God , People , World , Fear

“They are songs which can be sung in a Christian context, but they all had to mean something to me because I was often on the edge of not believing. The songs certainly have not made my fortune, but I am still grateful for the royalties when they come in.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

On the songs One More Step, Lord of the Dance, and When I needed a neighbour which a survey of schools in the UK found to be the first, fifth, and sixth most sung of songs under copyright used in school assemblies.
The Times [London] (29 August 1996)

“Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Q&A at the Kossuth Club, in Budapest, Hungary, May 16, 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20071029232518/http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/10/chomsky_on_911.html.
Quotes 2000s, 2004

People , Thinking , Time , Personality

“Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers, it is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as "inherent buildability and I believe it is central to what I do.”

Moshe Safdie (1938) Israeli-Canadian architect

from lecture Megascale, Order and Complexity held in Emmertal, Germany on July 27, 2008

Money , Beauty

“Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't say you're attacking them to excuse your own infractions. Yes, I've heard that plea…. To word it differently, 'You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don't believe in it, then you must live up to it!”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

People , Thinking

“[Speaking to a crowd regarding the sale of tribal land to the US Government] My friends, you have all heard what my father-in-law says, but I do not think he is right. He believes what the white people tell him; but this is only another trick of the whites to take our land away from us, and they have played these tricks before. We do not want to trust the white people. They come to use with sweet talk, but they do not mean it. We will not sign any more papers for these white men.”

Hollow Horn Bear (1850–1913) 19th century Lakota chief and policeman

[Standing Bear, Luther, My People the Sioux, November 1, 2006, University of Nebraska Press, 9780803293328, 211-12, https://books.google.com/books?id=ltSXg-abnU4C, 1 March 2018]

Men , People , Law , Thinking

“I truly do believe, if all of us do all that we can, that we will once again, in our time, restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law, I just know in my heart of hearts that this will be the generation that restores life in America.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Excerpt from a speech addressed to a pro-life group in Nashville, Tennessee — https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pence-says-making-abortion-illegal-saves-lives-history-proves-ncna853031 (February 27, 2018)
Vice President of the United States (2017-Present)

Life , Law , Time , Heart

“You should never send an expert to a movie about his specialty. Boxers hate boxing movies. Space buffs said 'Apollo 13' showed the wrong side of the moon. The British believe Mel Gibson's scholarship was faulty in 'Braveheart' merely because some of the key characters hadn't been born at the time of the story. 'Hackers' is, I have no doubt, deeply dubious in the computer science department. While it is no doubt true that in real life no hacker could do what the characters in this movie do, it is no doubt equally true that what hackers can do would not make a very entertaining movie.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hackers-1995 of Hackers (15 September 1995)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Life , Hate , Science , Time

“I believe in God. When everything collapses, we grip the last hold, we look from the secure haven how the godless society of the old, holy Europe falls apart. May the game begin.”

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

Ich glaube an Gott. Wenn alles stürzt, fassen wir die letzte Planke und schauen vom sicheren Port, wie die entgötterte Gesellschaft des alten, heiligen Europa zusammenstürzt. Möge das Spiel beginnen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

God , Game

“Tertiary syphilis, as my readers will not need reminding perhaps, comes, when it comes at all, about ten years after the initial infection. About two thirds of syphilitics miss it, especially if they are women or coloured. It is believed, though without solid evidence, that it attacks the sedentary more than the active. This means that writers and composers, granted that primary lesion, are prone to it.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Women

“If something just plain didn’t make sense to Alvin, he didn’t believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

Quotes , Sense

“Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe in?
An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic God locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world, entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God, a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence. And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above.
Which of those Gods is the most important? According to an integral view, all of them, because each "higher" stage actually builds upon and includes the lower, so the lower stages are more fundamental and the higher stages are more significant, but leave out any one of them and you're in trouble. You are, that is, less than integral, less than comprehensive, less than inclusive in your understanding of God.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Which Level of God Do You Believe In? (2004)

God , People , World , Understanding

“Those who believe that the laws of nature are the creations of a beneficent and all-wise Intelligence will see in this exception to the general law in the case of freezing water a striking evidence of design. But those who have no such belief will say it is a most fortunate though fortuitous circumstance (a saying they will have to make, regarding thousands of other things in nature), and go on floundering in the interminable sea of "I don't know."”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. 196
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Law , Intelligence , Nature , Water

“I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it."”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

On the creation of the hydrogen bomb, in "Infamy and honor at the Atomic Café : Edward Teller has no regrets about his contentious career" by Gary Stix in Scientific American (October 1999), p. 42-43.

People , Way , Idea , Parting

“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

“Some economists believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated by bad monetary policy and lack of American leadership. Britain was too weak to maintain an open international economy, and the United States was not living up to its new responsibilities.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 7, Globalization and Interdependence, p. 218.

“If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it's great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn't exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

New York Times, 2001 http://www.animalrights.net/quotes.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/233771_robert23.html.
2001

Pleasure , Dogs , Girl , Kiss

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (3 July 1776); because of the official adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence two days later, the fourth of July rather than the second, became known as the U.S. Independence Day
1770s

God , History , Game , Sport

Quotes about believer page 62

Quotes about believer
page 62