Quotes about blind
page 5

“Well, at first I wanted to put blinds on the building [of the outdoor-sculpture Josef Strau did for her recently]. But when I do something I've already done before, I sometimes have a certain feeling of uncertainty. Although I am falling back on something that I know is safe and pretty good. But then it was all too expensive. I had seen glowing green, fresh bamboo at the KaDeWe store. It had attracted my attention and I thought it would be nice to do something with it. Back home, sitting over the photo, drawing some things on it, I remembered this lovely green bamboo again and also that there was this fascist building – or partly fascist building – next to the store, a theater, an ugly building. And then I thought, bamboo is politically correct, that's just the thing. But I also think it's visually beautiful. Simple. The work is called 'Haare wachsen wie sie wollen”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

'Hair grows the way it wants'
2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Love, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“I’ve lost a lot of young, brilliant friends. Andy Wood and Layne [Staley] and Jeff Buckley, who was a good friend, and Kurt [Cobain], and Shannon Hoon [of Blind Melon] was a friend, and Mike Starr [Alice In Chains] was a friend, the list can kind of go on if I sit here and try and remember. And they’re all young and these guys all had limitless potential in their lives in front of them. And I think there’s something so inspiring about that – that is like the miracle of youth. And to see that be the final chapter so young is a really hard thing to swallow every time.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273, Solo career Era

Youth, Guy, Thinking, Time

“I’ve cut way back on animal products (especially dairy), and I try to only eat organic. Because of Alicia [Silverstone], I’m way more conscious of what I put in my mouth and also about how my dollar is spent. Her book The Kind Diet was a real eye-opener for me. … [In the film Vamps] Alicia and I play vampires who abstain from human blood. So we were very kind in that we weren’t killing people and drinking their blood! … All the people in my life joke that I’m vampire in real life. Not because I drink blood or anything but because I prefer to stay indoors with the blinds closed. I’m not really a SUN person. I come out of my coffin (bedroom) when the sun goes down.”

Krysten Ritter (1981) American actress

"I Interviewed Krysten Ritter about Vamps (and Living Kind)" by Alicia Silverstone, TheKindLife.com (30 October 2012) http://thekindlife.com/blog/2012/10/i-interviewed-krysten-ritter-about-vamps-and-living-kind/.

Life, People, Books, Way

“Thou didst depart with a thousand joyful anticipations on a holy expedition, and didst return having achieved a thousand victories… On this journey the army destroyed a thousand idol-temples and thy elephants trampled over more than a hundred strongholds. Thou didst march thy arm to Ujjain; Malwa trembled and fled from thee… On the way to Kalinjar thy pomp obscured the light of day. The lip of infidelity became dry through fear of thee, the eye of plural-worship became blind…”

Ibrahim of Ghazna (1032–1099) sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire

Malwa (Madhya Pradesh) . Khwaja Mas'ud bin Sa'd bin Salman:Diwan-i-Salman in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. IV, pp. 518 ff.

Fear, Way, Light, Victory

“Old age doth in sharp pains abound;
We are belabored by the gout,
Our blindness is a dark profound,
Our deafness each one laughs about.
Then reason's light with falling ray
Doth but a trembling flicker cast.
Honor to age, ye children pay!
Alas! my fifty years are past!”

Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) French poet and chansonnier

Cinquante Ans, C. L. Betts' translation; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 13.

Pain, Children, Age, Light

“I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will.”

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

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.1 (1884 edition) http://books.google.com/books?id=1Z9DGVKfXuQC p. 28 Context: The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

Nature

“The question is not whether something is wrong with subjectivity. We are embedded in it, so we can only deal with it, or be blind and attempt to ignore it.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Source: Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems (2007), p. 29

Question

“This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.”

Ted Hughes book The Hawk in the Rain

"Wind"
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)

Light, Housing, Sea, Madness

“As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward " (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of 'yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 68.

Love, Faith, Quotes, Christ

“If you push it, it feels good; I don’t know what it is. It must have something to do with kinesthesia. I feel now that I am painting I'm not drawing anything, or even representing non-objective art. You know, you can represent abstract art, too, as well as heads figures, nudes. A lot of abstract artists are just representational painters, you know that. And a lot of figurative artists are very abstract. I don't feel as if I'm doing that. I feel more as if I'm shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I've always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me. I always thought I am a very spiritual man, not interested in paint, and now I discover myself to be very physical and very involved with matter. I want to be involved with how heavy things are, a balloon, how light things are, things levitating, pushing forms, make me feel as if my hand is pushing in a head, bulges out here and pushes there.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75

Art, Feeling, Light, Drawing

““One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.” Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!””

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 279).

Children, People, Pleasure, Law

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

People, World, Peace, Food

“Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Chapter I Section I - Of Reforming Mankind from Superstition and Error, and the Good Consequences of it"

Life, God, Exercises, Search

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“Marx, although a man of broad knowledge, had one blind spot: he was ignorant of the true character of economics. He did not realize that economics can only be understood in close relationship to the other humanities (and certain sciences), and therefore should not be studied in vacuo. Ironically, this very weakness was largely instrumental in making Marxism successful. Marxist economics—yet another instance of a false but clear idea—can be explained to the merest child in a matter of minutes. (Conversely, to explain the workings of the free market economy to an adult would take weeks of hard work.) Because it was easily grasped, Marxism flooded the world within a few decades, as had other simplistic ideologies and religions, such as Islam and the Enlightenment; this same sort of simplicity gave rise to the French Revolution and national socialism. Christianity, on the other hand, took three centuries to triumph.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 337

World, Religion, Idea, Knowledge

“According to a stagist conception of progressive history (which is usually blind to its implicit teleology), the work of figures like Foucault, Derrida and other cutting-edge French theorists is often intuitively affiliated with a form of profound and sophisticated critique that presumably far surpasses anything found in the socialist, Marxist or anarchist traditions. It is certainly true and merits emphasis that the Anglophone reception of French theory, as John McCumber has aptly pointed out, had important political implications as a pole of resistance to the false political neutrality, the safe technicalities of logic and language, or the direct ideological conformism operative in the McCarthy-supported traditions of Anglo-American philosophy. However, the theoretical practices of figures who turned their back on what Cornelius Castoriadis called the tradition of radical critique—meaning anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance—surely contributed to the ideological drift away from transformative politics. According to the spy agency itself, post-Marxist French theory directly contributed to the CIA’s cultural program of coaxing the left toward the right, while discrediting anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, thereby creating an intellectual environment in which their imperial projects could be pursued unhindered by serious critical scrutiny from the intelligentsia.”

Gabriel Rockhill (1972) philosopher

"The CIA reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left" (2017)

History, Support, Falseness

“In this I saw matter of mirth and matter of moaning: matter of mirth: for our Lord, our Maker, is so near to us, and in us, and we in Him, by sureness of keeping through His great goodness; matter of moaning: for our ghostly eye is so blind and we be so borne down by weight of our mortal flesh and darkness of sin, that we may not see our Lord God clearly in His fair Blissful Cheer. No; and because of this dimness scarsely we can believe and trust His great love and our sureness of keeping. And therefore it is that I say we may never stint of moaning nor of weeping. This "weeping" meaneth not all in pouring out of tears by our bodily eye, but also hath more ghostly understanding. For the kindly desire of our soul is so great and so unmeasurable, that if there were given us for our solace and for our comfort all the noble things that ever God made in heaven and in earth, and we saw not the fair Blissful Cheer of Himself, yet we should not stint of moaning nor ghostly weeping, that is to say, of painful longing, till when we see verily the fair Blissful Cheer of our Maker. And if we were in all the pain that heart can think and tongue may tell, if we might in that time see His fair Blissful Cheer, all this pain should not aggrieve us.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“We warned that WBC has had lots of experience with Ireland's militant sodomite citizenry, steeped for many decades in ignorant, blind idolatrous Catholicism, belching out their vile fagspeak, slander and blasphemy against God and His word.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

Sermon about Ireland, July 29, 2007. Letter from UK Border Agency: WBC has been banned from the UK http://www.godhatesfags.com/written/fliers/archive/20090224_uk-border-agency.pdf. GodHatesFags.com. February 19, 2009. 2000s, Ireland (2007)

God

“I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

IX, My Picture Left in Scotland, lines 1-5
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Love, Thinking

“Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 30

Thinking

“My troubles started there. It blighted my personality permanently. I have spent all my emotional life searching for my grandfather and in my formative years no one was there to take his place.
It is the custom up there in Fraserburgh that when there is a death in a household they draw the blinds and curtains. When my grandfather died it seemed that these blinds had been drawn across my life… Relatives would pretend that he had gone to a 'better place'. 'Why', I thought, 'should he go to a better place and not take me with him?”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

'So death was a nice thing,' I thought. 'Then why does it make me miserable?'
As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 46, ISBN 1446428737

Life, Death, Search, Drawing

“The problem of the twenty-first century, then, is the problem of the color-blind. This problem is simple: it believes that to redress racism, we need to not consider race in social practice, notably in the sphere of governmental action. The state, we are told, must be above race. … We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium.”

Vijay Prashad (1967) Indian historian and journalist

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2002), p. 38

Justice, Color, Behavior, Problem

“Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes for years and years together,
She ’ll bless you with the sunniest weather,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can’t imagine why or whence;—
Then in a moment—Presto, pass!—
Your joys are withered like the grass;”

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839) British politician, poet

The haunted Tree.

Imagination, Grass, Joy, Weather

“I now understand the need for faith—pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith—as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 1 (p. 90)

Life, Faith, Law, Understanding

“Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything. They can shut down and intimidate prominent ex-Muslims. They’re allowed to engage in the most brazen anti-semitism, even as they run for office in European left-wing political parties. And, of course, politicians and the media routinely turn a blind eye to the kind of sexism and homophobia that would instantly end the career of a non-Muslim conservative — and perhaps get the latter arrested for hate speech when he dared to object.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

The Left chose Islam over Gays http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/06/12/left-chose-islam-gays-now-100-people-killed-maimed-orlando/, Breitbart (12 Jun 2016) 2016

Hate

“Remembrance clamoured in him: 'She was wild and free,
Magnificent in giving; she was blind
To gain or loss, and, loving, loved but me, — but me!”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"Bitterness"
Orchard and Vineyard (1921)

Love, Loss

“The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.
How willful blind is he then, that would stray,
And hath it in his powers, to make his way!
This world death's region is, the other life's:
And here, it should be one of our first strifes,
So to front death, as men might judge us past it.
For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

LXXX, Of Life and Death, lines 1-8
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Life, Death, Men, World

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

1914: "If…we were to go back to…'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' there would be very few [Honourable] Gentlemen in this House who would not…be blind and toothless." — George Perry Graham, during a debate on capital punishment before the Canadian House of Commons. Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, Third Session-Twelfth Parliament, Vol CXIII, p. 496, February 5, 1914. http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC1203_01/508 1950: "An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye … ends in making everybody blind" in The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer (1950), though Fischer did not attribute it to Gandhi and seemed to be giving his own description of Gandhi's philosophy. 1958: "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" in Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King, Jr., 1958. 1982: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" in the 1982 film, Gandhi. In a 1993 biographical article about screenwriter John Briley, Jon Krampner wrote, "…Gandhi never said it. Michigan graduate John Briley put those pithy words in his mouth." From "John Briley '51 - Epic Screenwriter", Michigan Today, March 1993, p. 12. http://michigantoday.umich.edu/93/Mar_and_Oct_93/Mar_93/briley.html 2006: There is a quaternary source in Yale Book of Quotations http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w5-GR-qtgXsC&pg=PA269&dq=whole-world-blind+ (2006), in which editor Fred R. Shapiro states that the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence stated that Gandhi's family believes it authentic, but did not provide any further reference and provided no year, place or body of work. 2006: Discussed in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When, by Ralph Keyes (2006), 1st ed., p. 74. 2010: Research detailed by Garson O'Toole in "An Eye for an Eye Will Make the Whole World Blind" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/27/eye-for-eye-blind/ in Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/. Misattributed

World, Peaceful, Relationship

“Institutional blindness is a major threat to the future of all corporations.”

Patrick Dixon book Futurewise

Futurewise (1998)

Future

“This is the moment when it becomes clear that the images of madness are nothing but dream and error, and that if the unfortunate sufferer who is blinded by them invokes them, it is the better to disappear with them into the annihilation for which they are destined.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
History of Madness (1961)

Dreams, Error, Suffering, Madness

“Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order…”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

One Human Minute (1986)

War, World, Faith, Religion

“When I was in the hospital, I was very suicidal in a kind of blind way, I was starving to death and just 'cause I didn't want to turn out like my family showed me, you know, that's all I ever saw of people, was my own family. I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone. Oh, God. So I didn't want to live.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Death, God, People, Family

“If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power. For there is neither greater honor, nor greater obedience, to be given to kings or princes, than God hath commanded to be given unto father and mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast: think ye, Madam, that the children do any wrong? It is even so, Madam, with princes that would murder the children of God that are subjects unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a very mad frenzy, and therefore, to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison, till they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

John Knox interview with Queen Mary I, History of the Reformation in Scotland http://www.reformation.org/john-knox-interview.html. (Edited by William Croft Dickinson, D.Lit.). Philosophical Library, New York, 1950

God, Children, Thinking, Madness

“Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses—Cupid paid:
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lips, the rose
Growing one's cheek (but none knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes—
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this for thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Poem: Cupid and Campaspe.

Love, Kiss

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Civil Rights Address

Justice, Law, Color, Communication

“As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

Fear, Thinking

“Let the apologists for communists acknowledge the dead, bury the dead, and atone for the dead. Otherwise, let them be forgiven only when they have put out their eyes and wandered blind, away from Thebes.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Dead

“My brother works for a forestry commission. He writes only in green ink to persuade his bosses to make it a standard ecological colour for all forestry business. I asked him what colour ink he would use if he gave up eating whale meat and worked for a whaling company. He said whales were colour blind.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

One of the calligraphers
The Pillow Book

Business

“Well, no cannon ball did fly, no rifles cut us down.
No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground.
No powder flash blinded the eye.
No deathly thunder sounded.
But just as sure as the hand of God,
They brought death to my hometown.
They brought death to my hometown.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Death to My Hometown"
Song lyrics, Wrecking Ball (2012)

Death, God, Flying

“I should be blind if I did not perceive that some power as strong as the universe is parting us. What this power is, what it is called, I do not know. I know only that if I knelt down, beat my head on the floor, prayed, and cried out for mercy, I might move a mountain sooner than move that power. As nothing now could part me from Aniela but death, she must die. This may be very logical, but I do not consent to part from her.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

20 November
Without Dogma (1891)

Death, Mountain, Strong, Universe

“Oh but if Zeus's lightning blinded us those days,
it's Zeus who drives us, hurls us on today!”

Homér Iliad

XV. 724–725 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.
Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

People, Beauty, Thinking

“We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. … If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia which was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_368 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement The 1930s

Loss, Country

“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.”

Lee Iacocca book Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (2007), Scribner,

Cars, Madness

“Scottish literature begins effectively with Archdeacon Barbour's Bruce some sixty years after Bannockburn, and to the Bruce and Blind Harry's Wallace (so staunch is the Scot, and such an antiquary in grain) must be attributed much of the colouring and subsequent tone of Scottish sentiment. The Bruce is the better poem, simple, truthful, noble, stirring, a proper start for the literature of a fighting people.”

John Barbour (1316–1395) Scottish poet

George Gordon The Discipline of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946) p. 88.
Criticism

People, Truth, Literature, Fight

“You carry the weapon. That's how they don't see it coming. You're the one. They talk about 'color blind or blind to your color.' You said it yourself. You don't send the Black Liberation Army into Wall Street to conduct an action. You don't send the American Indian Movement into downtown Seattle to conduct an action. Who do you send? You. With your beard shaved, your hair cut close and wearing a banker's suit. There's probably a whole lot more to it, you know that, but there is where you start. Who carries the front-end? Why is it always people of color carrying the weight on this, when people who are much more proximate in terms of acceptability to the centers of power, professing solidarity and principled nonviolence on the one hand, and critiquing the practice of those who are carrying the weight on the other. Why is that?”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

Discussion at the Seattle Independent Media Center http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=7592&nav=&, August 10, 2003

People, Color

“The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 9, st. 1. Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Flowers

“We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short you come from nothing and are going to nowhere.”

Randy Alcorn (1954) American Protestant author

Quoted in Dinesh D'Souza, What's so Great About Christianity (Regnery, 2007), p. 15

Death, Nature, Universe, Chance

“The idol, Jwalamukhi, much worshipped by the infidels, was situated on the road to Nagarkot Some of the infidels have reported that Sultan Firoz went specially to see this idol and held a golden umbrella over it. But the author was informed by his respected father, who was in the Sultans retinue, that the infidels slandered the Sultan, who was a religious, God-fearing man, who, during the whole forty years of his reign, paid strict obedience to the law, and that such an action was impossible. The fact is, that when he went to see the idol, all the rais, ranas and zamindars who accompanied him were summoned into his presence, when he addressed them, saying, O fools and weak-minded, how can ye pray to and worship this stone, for our holy law tells us that those who oppose the decrees of our religion, will go to hell? The Sultan held the idol in the deepest detestation, but the infidels, in the blindness of their delusion, have made this false statement against him. Other infidels have said that Sultan Muhammad Shah bin Tughlik Shah held an umbrella over the same idol, but this is also a lie; and good Muhammadans should pay no heed to such statements. These two Sultans were sovereigns especially chosen by the Almighty from among the faithful, and in the whole course of their reigns, wherever they took an idol temple they broke and destroyed it; how, then, can such assertions be true? The infidels must certainly have lied!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) . Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 318 ff

God, Lie, Fear, Faith

“The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.”

Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Girl, Flowers, Drawing

“Any prairie farm can have a library of prairie plants, for they are drought-proof and fire-proof, and are content with any roadside, rocky knoll, or sandy hillside not needed for cow or plow. Unlike books, which divulge their meaning only when you dig for it, the prairie plants yearly repeat their story, in technicolor, from the first pale blooms of pasque in April to the wine-red plumes of bluestem in the fall. All but the blind may read, and gather from the reading new lessons in the meaning of America.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

" Roadside Prairies http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&entity=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile.p0123&id=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile&isize=XL" [1941]; Published in For the Health of the Land, J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle (eds.), 1999, p. 138. 1940s

Books, Wine, Reading

“Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here (1935)

Men, History, Sport, Light

“Oh, I see,' said Jenny. 'But you're just getting these men [New Age gurus] to help you all feel better. I thought when you talked about helping people you meant other people. You know, like the blind.'
'Isn't everybody blind, in one way or another?' asked Wendy.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

Source: Difficulties with Girls (1988), Ch. 11, p. 158

Men, People, Age, Way

“Militant Muslims want Islam and sharia law to dominate the West. Their goal is to subvert the U. S. Constitution and our way of life to the will of Allah. The word Islam means submission. What members of the American Left seem blind to is the fact that in countries where Islam dominates, their progressive ideas would be crushed and many of them would be thrown in jail simply because of their lifestyle choices. Yet, the American Left continues to serve as apologist-in-chief for fundamentalist Islam. Why? Because deep down American Leftists are terrified of Islamic fundamentali”

Chuck Hustmyre (1963) American journalist

2000s, 2009, The Left's love affair with Islam (2009)

Life, Law, Way, Idea

“Death is hard to keep in mind when there is work to be done. … Work does not by its nature permit us to do anything other than take it too seriously. It must destroy our sense of perspective, and we should be grateful to it for precisely this reason, for allowing us to mingle ourselves promiscuously with events, for letting us wear thoughts of our own death and the destruction of our enterprises with beautiful lightness, as mere intellectual propositions. … We function of the basis of a necessary myopia. Therein is the sheer energy of existence, a blind will no less impressive than that which we find in a moth arduously crossing a window ledge, … refusing to contemplate the broader scheme in which he will be dead by nightfall. The arguments for our triviality and vulnerability are too obvious, too well known and tedious to rehearse. What is interesting is that we may take it upon ourselves to approach tasks with utter determination and gravity even when their wider non-sense is clear. The impulse to exaggerate the significance of what we are doing, far from being an intellectual error, is really life itself coursing through us.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 324.

Life, Death, Beauty, Error

“The sky drips its spectral
And Gods, like men, to soot revert.
Gone is the mild, the serene air.
The golden years are come too late.
Pursue not wisdom or virtue here,
But what blind motion, what dim last
Regret of men who slew their past
Raised up this bribe against their fate.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

On a Replica of the Parthenon

Wisdom, Men, God, Fate

“In India also, for century, education imparted through the medium of a foreign language has unduly dominated its academic life and it has now produced a class of men who are unconsciously so denationalised that any far reaching proposal for the recognition of the Indian languages as the vehicle of teaching and examination up to the highest University stage is either ridiculed as impossible or branded as reactionary. But I plead earnestly for the acceptance of this fundamental principle not on account of any blind adherence to things that I claim as my own but out of a firm conviction that the fullest development of the mind of a learner is possible only by this natural approach and also that by this process alone can there be a great revival of the glory and richness of the Indian languages.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Agra University Convocation on 23rd November 1940.

Life, Men, Education, Nature

“Freedom is a heady thing. To an Iraqi, it is like being awakened from a 30- year nightmare by a blinding blaze of bright white light. When a young man steals a television set from the Ministry of Education, he thinks he is striking a blow against the Ba'ath Party. He has not yet become aware that he is in fact stealing it from a building that now belongs to him and is about to start serving his needs, and not those of his tormentors.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Thank you, America", New York Post (April 15, 2003)

Education, Thinking, Freedom, Light

“Faith can no more be described to a thoroughly rational mind than the idea of colors can be conveyed to a blind man.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Five, Christian sources, p. 82

Faith, Color, Idea

“Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 99.
The Guardian (1713)

Friendship, Justice

“The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and hymn-singing evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected … This was so among the Christians of the first centuries who accepted Christ teachings, if not quite in its true form, at least not yet in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of whole nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's teaching. And this Church Christianity … did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity — the direct relationship of each individual to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all people, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having founded a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, but not only of these divinities themselves but of their images, it made blind faith in its ordinances an essential point of its teachings.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of the Romans such as Julian and others, it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints, and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Love, Life, God, People

“The blind man carries a star on his shoulders.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El hombre ciego lleva una estrella sobre sus hombros,
Voces (1943)

Star

“The fictitious deities of all races in all worlds once more crowded themselves upon me, symbols of majesty and tenderness, of ruthless power, of blind creativity, and of all-seeing wisdom. And though these images were but the fantasies of created minds, it seemed to me that one and all did indeed embody some true feature of the Star Maker’s impact upon the creatures.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 161)

Wisdom, World, Star

“According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty.”

Alexander Nehamas (1946) Professor of philosophy

Foreword to Alain Renaut, The Era of the Individual (1999), p. xi.

Nature

“Pretense cannot sustain blind power.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Reality http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reality-168/ From the poems written in English

“The protracted struggle which dragged on in Egypt was not a conflict of visions, but the conflict between a vision of freedom, the "eternal" Platonic Idea of Freedom, and a blind clinging to power ready to use all means possible- terror, food deprivation, exhaustion, bribery- to crush the will to freedom.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Source: Less Than Nothing (2012), Chapter One (The Drink Before), Vacillating The Semblances

Food, Idea, Freedom

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World, Faith, Way, Optimism

“Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

"On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in * Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
1954
91
Philosophical Library
New York.

“It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy the mind.”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"The Blindmen and the Elephant", a poem based on ancient parables of blind men and an elephant.

Men, Learning

“Like the majority of deaf people, I don't like blind people much.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

People

“I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation!"”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Collected Writings, vol. XI, p. 466 (October, 1889) http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v11/y1889_065.htm

Faith, Personality

“The grey road whereupon we trod became as holy ground:
The eve was all one voice that breathed its message with no sound:
And burning multitudes pour through my heart, too bright, too blind,
Too swift and hurried in their flight to leave their tale behind.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Heart

“Arms trade. If there was a legitimate trade, they'd sell those things - guns and bombs - in a supermarket. It would be like a cosmetics demonstration, and you'd have a little bit of shopping music in the background. And so, here's our arms trade demonstrator. 'Hello, and welcome to our new "Twilight of the World" range - our stunning new collection for nuclear winter. Now, for those persistent racial problems, why not try our new ethnic cleanser, "Pogrom"? Apply vigorously to the affected area, and then wipe off the face of the earth. For persistent outbreaks, to eliminate those last spots of resistance, why not try our new "I Can't Believe It's Not a Kalashnikov"? Go on, leaders, treat yourself. Tell yourself "I want it, I need it, I'll have it". Now, for those particularly sensitive areas, why not try our new range, "U. N."? It's entirely cosmetic; it does nothing. Apply half-heartedly with our new hand-wringing cream. Now, people often come up to me and say "Can you save my face?" Well, I can. So for those secret little deals - those secret little Iraqi liaisons - why not try "Embargo", the mark of the middleman? Now, for a touch of mystery, why not visit the "Missing Body Shop"? Collect your free nail remover and watch your problems disappear. Now, you're probably sitting there thinking "Oh, I'm such a hideous old blood-soaked dictator of a thing; nobody will deal with me". How wrong you are! We are sole suppliers to the US government of "Turn-a-Blind-Eye Liner" - use always in conjunction with "Oil of Kuwaiti", a touch of "Massacre" and blusher. Oh, you won't need that. I'm Marlene from the House of Charnel. Thank you for your time and patience. And for that finishing touch - for those romantic evenings when you really want to take the enemy out - why not try our stunning new nerve gas, "Paralyse" by Calvin Klein.' (Linda Live 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

People, Secret, World, Music

“Shah Alam II once remarked: "In reality, various kinds of unbecoming things do happen in my reign, and the people of God loudly say: In the reign of this blind king we suffer from atrocities'. How then do I desrve to be called a king".”

Shah Alam II (1728–1806) 16th Mughal Emperor

Quote

God, People, Reality, Suffering

“More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.”

William Wulf (1939) American computer scientist

"A Case Against the GOTO," Proceedings of the 25th National ACM Conference, August 1972, pp. 791-97.

Stupidity

“Our focus on discrimination against women during the past 30 years has blinded us to opportunities for women.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xxiv.

Women, Past

“People who love in glass houses should pull down the blinds.”

Addison Mizner (1872–1933) American architect

The Cynic's Calendar

Love, People, Housing

“At the beginning God said: “Let there be light,” and light was, and light is, and light shall be. So Christianity is rolling on, and it is going to warm all nations, and all nations are to bask in its light. Men may shut the window-blinds so they cannot see it, or they may smoke the pipe of speculation until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the Lord God is a sun!”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 254.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894

Men, God, Light, Sun

“The minister, who would be most like the Master, must go and, like Him, lay the warm, kindly hand on the leper, the diseased, the wretched. He must touch the blind eyes with something from himself. The tears must be in his own eyes over the dead who are to be raised to spiritual life. Jesus is our great exemplar.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 413.

Life, Disease, Tear, Dead

“If a pitcher who wishes to retire a batter (motivation) throws a burning fastball (action) directly into the wind (environmental influence), then the observer should conclude that the pitcher has a particularly strong arm (ability). If a batter tries to hit that ball (motivation) but fails (action), then the observer should conclude that the batter lacked coordination (ability) or was blinded by the sun”

Daniel T. Gilbert (1957) American psychologist

environmental influence
Source: "Ordinary personology." 1998, p. 96; as cited in Malle (2011, 75)

Motivation, Strong, Sun

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)

Men, Education, Justice, Color

“Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria, the Centre of science and learning in the ancient world. Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else, whom he called barbarians and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. He thought it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples. But Eratosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism, he believed there was good and bad in every nation.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

25 Min 10 Sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

People, World, Learning, Science

“Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle … At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.… The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair.… It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

"How I Became a Socialist", New York Call (3 November 1912)

War, Error, Time, Fight

“For most of her existence, Molly had not shied from a truth that most people understood but diligently suppressed: that every moment of every day, depending on the faith we embrace, each of us continues to live either by the merciful sufferance of God or at the whim of blind chance and indifferent nature.”

Dean Koontz book The Taking

Part 1, Chapter 2
The Taking (2004)

God, People, Truth, Faith

“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991): "Obligation to the State" http://www.ecn.cz/temelin/textonly/state_zin.htm

Love, World, Justice, Democracy

“So why has that officer, like his colleagues, locked up so many young men of color? Why does he have that life-shaping experience? Is it because he is a racist? Why are so many black men in jail? Is it because cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries are racist? Because they are turning a blind eye to white robbers and drug dealers? The answer is a fourth hard truth, I don't think so. If it were so, that would be easier to address. We would just need to change the way we hire, train, and measure law enforcement and that would substantially fix it. We would then go get those white criminals we have been ignoring. But the truth is significantly harder than that.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Life, Men, Truth, Law

“When I paint an abstract picture (the problem is very much the same in other cases), I neither know in advance what it is meant to look like nor, during the painting process, what I am aiming at and what to do about getting there. Painting is consequently an almost blind, desperate effort, like that of a person abandoned, helpless, in totally incomprehensible surroundings – like that of a person who possesses a given set of tools, materials and abilities and has the urgent desire to build something useful which is not allowed to be a house or a chair or anything else that has a name; who therefore hacks away in the vague hope that by working in a proper, professional way he will ultimately turn out something proper and meaningful.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1985; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Abstract paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/abstract-paintings-7 1980's

Hope, Way, Problem, Effort

“I came to understand why animals have horns. It was the incomprehensibility that could not be contained within their lives, a wild and obsessive caprice, their ill-judged and blind obstinacy. Some idée fixe—grown beyond the borders of their being and high above their heads, suddenly brought into the light—had solidified into palpable, hard matter. There, it had assumed its wild, incalculable, and incredible shape, twisted into a fantastical arabesque, invisible to their eyes, but dreadful nonetheless, the unknown numeral under whose menace they lived. I understood why those animals were disposed to ill-judged and wild panic, to startled frenzy. Herded into their mania, they could not extricate themselves from the knot of those horns, and so, lowering their heads, they looked out sadly and wildly from between them as if trying to find a pathway through their branches.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Brilliant Epoch” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/epoch1.htm His father, Living things

Understanding, Light, Animals

“I call on you not to hate, because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Saddam Hussein Farewell Letter http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16368242/ (MSNBC online) Statement in a farewell letter written to the Iraqi people, written Nov. 5, 2006, released Dec. 27, 2006.

Hate, Thinking, Personality

“For the task assigned them
Men aren't smart enough or sly
Any rogue can blind them
With a clever lie.”

Bertolt Brecht The Threepenny Opera

Polly Peachum, in "The Song of the Futility of All Human Endeavor"; Act 3, scene 1, p. 75
The Threepenny Opera (1928)

Men, Lie

“Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

Truth, Beauty, Light

“It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 3

World, Faith, Thinking, Science

“Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Citizen of the World

The Citizen of the World (1760–1761), Letter VII.

Men, Travel, Home, Imagination

“It was senseless, as— I held my breath, feeling myself shiver with fear— as Billy's blindness was senseless.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Reuven Malter when thinking about the death of Pres. Roosevelt
The Chosen (1967)

Fear, Feeling

“Paul Krugman is a very smart and very annoying person. Over the past few years he's been hammering away at political and economic advocates for austerity policies with unmitigated glee and derision. He does so with a brio and condescension that some people can find off-putting -- but that doesn't mean that he's wrong. … Look, I think Paul Krugman has a few policy blind spots. His method of argumentation alienates as many people as it attracts. But he's not wrong when he's talking about austerity. In his response, Michael Kinsley has managed to embody the conventional wisdom in Washington -- and in doing so, embody every policy caricature of Paul Krugman's worldview.”

Daniel Drezner (1968) American journalist

The worst piece of conventional wisdom you will read this year http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/16/the_worst_piece_of_conventional_wisdom_you_will_read_this_year (MAY 16, 2013)

Wisdom, People, Thinking, Past

“Though we, by the wrath and the contrariness that is in us, be now in tribulation, distress, and woe, as falleth to our blindness and frailty, yet are we securely safe by the merciful keeping of God, that we perish not. But we are not blissfully safe, in having of our endless joy, till we be all in peace and in love: that is to say, full pleased with God and with all His works, and with all His judgments, and loving and peaceable with our self and with our even-Christians and with all that God loveth, as love beseemeth. And this doeth God’s Goodness in us.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 49

Love, God, Peace, Joy

“Whoever, Lady, sees plain and clear
the lovely essence of your fair eyes
and doesn't from seeing them go blind
hasn't paid your looks their due.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Quem vê, Senhora, claro e manifesto
o lindo ser de vossos olhos belos,
se não perder a vista só em vê-los,
já não paga o que deve a vosso gesto.
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Quem vê, Senhora, claro e manifesto

Love

“To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Across the Plains

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.

Fate, Family, Hope, Soul

Quotes about blind page 5

Quotes about blind
page 5