Quotes about blind
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“Islam is not a secularist ideology, nor a scholastic theology, nor a blind imitation to any saint or a person, rather its a religion of divine revelation, which has been descended down directly from 'Lawhe Mahfuz" (Divine reserved board). Islam is not which comes out the human rationalism. Many things of Islam might not be agreeable with your rationality, but you have to make unconditional submission to it. This is Islam, the religion of total submission.”

Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib (1948) Bangladeshi academic

A speech in Engineers institution auditorium, Dhaka, 2010, (English Translation).[citation needed]
From Speeches

Religion, Personality

“Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

England to Ireland, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Hate, Children

“Where were all these blind people? Why didn’t we see them walking on our roads? I decided I must be the one to make a difference.”

Tiffany Brar (1988) Indian Social Activist

As quoted in They Say the Blind Should Not Lead the Blind. She Proves Them Wrong. https://www.thebetterindia.com/40485/tiffany-brar-working-for-blind/ (December 22, 2015) by Ranjini Sivaswamy, The Better India.

People

“Early on, presenter Mark Evans observes that a snake is essentially just "one massive tube with a head at the end", which, coincidentally, is also how he might describe his genitals to an audience of blind women in a hypothetical situation I've just invented in which hen nights for the visually impaired are held in special strip clubs where naked men describe their bodies in time to disco music. For what it's worth, I don't know what I'm going on about, either”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Discussing Inside Nature's Giants 12 jUNE 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jun/12/charlie-brooker-screen-burn <br class="br">Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Women, Men, Music, Time

“Barely a hundred and fifty years had passed since Galileo's experiment at Pisa had ushered in the new order of things; a mere instant as compared with the previous life of the race. Yet, this brief span had witnessed a complete shift in the outlook of the intellectual leaders of humanity: from blind adherence to authority and dogma towards a healthy habit of facing facts and an enlightened faith in the efficacy of reason. Few doubted that this buoyancy and self-reliance of the leaders would eventually reach the masses, thus causing a profound metamorphosis in the attitude of the common man towards his own life and the destinies of his race.
…Led by thinkers, and under the banners of liberty, happiness, and truth, humanity was to emerge into a Golden Age, free from oppression and strife. Alas! The French Revolution… resembled more a convention of inquisitors and hangmen than it did an assembly of enlightened emancipators. …After twenty years of adventure, the humanitarian aspirations bequeathed by the Encyclopedists, tattered and trampled first by a bloody republic, then by a still bloodier empire, were finally declared dead by the Holy Alliance.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

Life, Happiness, Truth, Age

“For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace.
And this was a beginning of teaching which I saw in the same time, whereby I might come to know in what manner He beholdeth us in our sin.”

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

Summations, Chapter 51
Context: The Lord that sat stately in rest and in peace, I understood that He is God. The Servant that stood afore the Lord, I understood that it was shewed for Adam: that is to say, one man was shewed, that time, and his falling, to make it thereby understood how God beholdeth All-Man and his falling. For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace.
And this was a beginning of teaching which I saw in the same time, whereby I might come to know in what manner He beholdeth us in our sin. And then I saw that only Pain blameth and punisheth, and our courteous Lord comforteth and sorroweth; and ever He is to the soul in glad Cheer, loving, and longing to bring us to His bliss.

Love, God, Peace, Understanding

“Buddhism does not demand blind faith from its adherents. Here mere belief is dethroned and is substituted by confidence based on knowledge, which, in Pali, is known as Saddha. The confidence placed by a follower on the Buddha is like that of a sick person in a noted physician, or a student in his teacher.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Faith, Confidence, Knowledge, Teachers

“It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus, Act I, l. 304
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“Economic theory, since the time of the Physiocrats, has endeavored to get rid of the human will and to explain economic phenomena in terms of physical and hedonic forces. The human will had been the main reliance of the Mercantilists and of the economic theory of the Church fathers. But the will was arbitrary, capricious and contrary to natural laws. There were two stages of these physical theories which attempted to get away from the will:-the natural rights arld physical equilibrium stage of foreordained evolution of Quesnay, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and the natural selection stage of blind evolution that followed Darwin, whose distinguished exponent in economics is Veblen. The theorists of each stage attempted to get rid of the human will and to explain economic phenomena as the working out of natural forces, either foreordained or blind. It was a concept of society as the natural growth of a mechanistic equilibrium.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 376

Law, Nature, Time

“I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Grimes
Decline and Fall (1928)

“Then there were motorcycles. I learned to ride one in Tallahassee when I was about 14 or 15. … I got to know the town pretty well, and soon I felt confident about riding round. Tallahassee was full of hills, and I loved racing up and down 'em, sometimes trailing my friend or riding next to him, so I could hear the sound of the exhaust and make sure to follow closely and yet not too closely.
I know it sounds strange — a blind teenager buzzin' round on a motorcycle — but I liked that; that was me. I had always been nervy, and I always had a lot of faith in my ability not to break my neck.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

Summers in Tallahassee, p. 48
Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978)

Love, Faith, Confidence, Learning

“For in a world so mutable and blind
it's often constancy to change one's mind.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Chè nel mondo mutabile e leggiero,
Costanza è spesso il variar pensiero.
Canto V, stanza 3 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

World, Change

“Papa always explained to me that there is no such thing as a kids’ game. That there are only games with which kids are learning the facts of life, but it’s the parents that are so tapados—so blind and constipated that they can’t see what these games are really all about.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Life, Game, Parent, Learning

““The Void Which Binds is touched by all of us who have wept with happiness, bidden a lover good-bye, been exalted with orgasm, stood over the grave of a loved one, or watched our baby open his or her eyes for the first time.”
Aenea is looking at me as she speaks, and I feel the gooseflesh rise along my arms.
“The Void Which Binds is always under and above the surface of our thoughts and senses,” she continues, invisible but as present as the breathing of our beloved next to us in the night. Its actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit.””

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 400)

Love, Happiness, Religion, Feeling

“... you would be well advised to practice extreme discrimination on what filters through to that area of the brain that requires belief. Some or the more lucid, literate and better educated folks will tell you that they have conquered that base, primal nature of humanity and will inform that their brains do not require the gullible mechanism of blind acceptance called belief and their brains function far more clearly and with greater cogence. Just remember, Santa Claus is waiting.”

Kenny Young (1950) American songwriter

In reference to the subject of Alien Abductions in an e-mail from Young to Feeney on Wed, January 1, 2003. [citation needed]

Education, Nature, Waiting

“I'd rather be blind if I have to watch us fade.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

I Don't Want to Be the One
Resurrection (2014)

“So, blind to Someone
I must be.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

All But Blind.

“You are blinded and you serve the God of the Jews, who is not the God of love but the God of hatred. Why don't you listen to Christ Himself, who said to the Jews: "Ye are of your father the devil!"”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Ihr seid verblendet und dient dem Gott der Juden, der nicht der Gott der Liebe, sondern der Gott des Hasses ist. Warum hört Ihr nicht auf Christus, der zu den Juden sagte : "Ihr seid Kinder des Teufels!"
04/21/1932, speech in Nuremberg, Herkulessaal ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Love, God, Christ

“Even before computers existed, we already knew that natural selection can, -and often will- produce results which look like trial-and-error experiments, including elements of seemingly-intentional fine tuning. But for all the implications of apparent design, there is never any indication of any intended goal or final product, nor any hint of infallibility on the part of the designer. In fact, so many errors of so many types are known that even if there was an unnatural architect using miraculous means instead of natural ones, then it seems that entity must either be blind and barely competent, or there are whole teams of designers working on separate lines competing against each other.”

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

"7th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Q2Db17v5U, Youtube (February 27, 2008) <br class="br">Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Error, Nature, Parting

“If this is right, I'd rather be wrong. If this is sight, I'd rather be blind.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Morning View (2001)

“[Henry] Kissinger has always been a paradox for me. I was profoundly impressed by his book about European politics in the first half of the last century. One of his main theses was that peace agreements are valueless if a major party to the conflict is left out and sees in the agreement a threat to its basic interests. If ever this rule were true – as it surely is – this is the case with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict. It is also true for the Soviet Union. Yet once he became the political genius of the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger behaved as if he had never read his own book – the classic example of power blinding the intellectual. He tried to make peace of some kind without the Palestinians, treating the rulers of the various Arab countries as so many Metternichs and Castlereaghs, trying to push the Soviets out of the Middle East altogether. I strongly suspected him of obstructing any real move towards peace, favoring the salami approach of little pieces of peace, so as to keep everybody screaming for American support and dependent on American protection. This was the famous step-by-step approach.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) – Page 144

Books, Peace, Support, Reading

“How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of color! … Man's highly developed color sense is a biological luxury—inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. … Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

describing his experiment with mescaline, pp. 26-27
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Color, Sense, Time, Animals

“So hurry up and run to the one that you love.
And blind him with your kindness.
And he'll make war, oh war,
On who you were before.
And he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Love, War, Heart

“Liberty is on the march, and this year promises to be a great year in European history. Our Government is blind enough, and the Parliamentary majorities are more regarded than opinion out of doors. We must have another League of some kind, and our aristocracy must be made to submit again.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Jonathan Priestman (26 March 1848) on the Revolutions of 1848, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 183.
1840s

History

“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Nature, Perfection

“The traditional picture of the blind old singer of Chios is largely made up of memories that go back to the time when a poet was a vates— a priestly and God-inspired seer. His blindness is merely the outward sign of the inward light that fills his being and enables him to see things others cannot see. This bodily infirmity expresses— as does the lameness of the divine smith Hephaestus—a second idea that was current in primitive times, that a maker of poems, ornaments and other products of handicraft can only come from the ranks of those who are unfit for war and foray. But apart from this feature, the legendary ‘Homer’ is an almost perfect example of the mythical poet who was still half-divine, a wonder-worker and a prophet. We find the clearest embodiment of this idea in Orpheus, the primeval singer who had his harp from Apollo and instruction in the art of song from the Muse herself; with his music he could move not merely men and beasts but even rocks and could reclaim Eurydice from the bonds of death.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome

Death, Men, God, War

“…Hades had opened its gates and vomited forth the basest, most despicable, most horrible demons. In the course of my life I had seen something of untrammeled human insights of horror of panic. I had taken part in a dozen battles in the First World War, had experienced barrages, gassings, going over the top. I had witnessed the turmoil of the postwar era, the crushing uprisings, street battles, meeting hall brawls. I was present among the bystanders during the Hitler Putsch in 1923 in Munich. I saw the early period of Nazi rule in Berlin. But none of this was comparable to those days in Vienna. What was unleashed upon Vienna had nothing to do with [the] seizure of power in Germany. …What was unleashed upon Vienna was a torrent of envy, jealousy, bitterness, blind, malignant craving for revenge. All better instincts were silenced… only the torpid masses had been unchained. …It was the witch's Sabbath of the mob. All that makes for human dignity was buried.”

Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977) German writer and playwright

As quoted & translated by Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006) referencing Als Wärs ein Stück von Mir (1966) see also, A Part of Myself: Portrait of an Epoch Tr. Richard and Clara Winston (1984)

Life, War, World, Jealousy

“Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

XI.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)

“Oh, the twenties and the thirties were not otherwise designed
Than other times when blind men into ditches led the blind,
When the rich mouse ate the cheese and the poor mouse got the rind,
And man, the self-destroyer, was not lucid in his mind.”

William Plomer (1903–1973) South African-British writer

"Father and Son: 1939", line 73.
The Dorking Thigh, and Other Satires

Men, Time

“There is a paradox. In retaining this integrity, the writer sometimes must risk both the state's indictment of treason, and the liberation forces' complaint of lack of blind commitment.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2004-07-03 speech to Congress opposing House resolution celebrating 40th anniversary of Civil Rights Act, quoted in * Civil Rights Act
RonPaul.com
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/civil-rights-act/
2000s, 2001-2005

Color, Business, Country

“Saved by a bell
Suffer in hell
But you were too blind to tell!
Saved by a bell
Suffer in hell
And you made it through so well!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

Hell, Suffering

“Blind as I'd become, I used to wonder where You are-
These days I can't find where You're not!”

Aaron Weiss

The Sun and the Moon.
Brother, Sister (2006)

“And what they don't see,
Is what is killing me.
It's blessing and a curse
That love is blind.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

In Another's Eyes.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Love

“Whether it is in the slums of New Delhi or in the affluence of Las Vegas, it simply isn't fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair — there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being born with sight. There is nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of an impecunious parent. There is nothing fair about Muhammad Ali having been born with a skill that enables him to make millions of dollars one night. There is nothing fair about Marlene Dietrich having great legs that we all want to watch. There is nothing fair about any of that. But on the other hand, don't you think a lot of people who like to look at Marlene Dietrich's legs benefited from nature's unfairness in producing a Marlene Dietrich. What kind of a world would it be if everybody was an absolute identical duplicate of anybody else. You might as well destroy the whole world and just keep one specimen left for a museum. In the same way, it's unfair that Muhammad Ali should be a great fighter and should be able to earn millions. But would it not be even more unfair to the people who like to watch him if you said that in the pursuit of some abstract idea of equality we're not going to let Muhammad Ali get more for one nights fight than the lowest man on the totem pole can get for a days unskilled work on the docks. You can do that but the result of that would be to deny people the opportunity to watch Muhammad Ali. I doubt very much he would be willing to subject himself to the kind of fights he's gone through if he were to get the pay of an unskilled docker.”

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

From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5.

Life, People, World, Way

“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness.
We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us-and in us-and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial.
We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom. We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom-the forced actors who take the consequences-are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Source: Letters & Autobiographical Writings (1954), pp. 184-185.

Men, War, People, World

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Beauty, Hope, Art, Feeling

““Excuse me,” she said hesitantly, “but what effect do these minor planets have on our behavior and fortunes? I mean, you know, astrological influence?”
He looked at her. “None.”
“None at all.”
“No.”
“But if the planets affect our fortunes—” She stumbled to a stop at the dispassionately scornful look on the pale man’s face, the slow way he shook his head. “Surely you’ll agree that the planets order and control our destinies?”
“They do not.”
“Not at all?”
“Then what does? Control our destinies, I mean.”
“The only external forces that have any influence on us are those we can see every day: the smile, the frown, the fist, the brick wall. What you call ‘destiny’ is merely a semantic fallacy, the attribution of purpose to blind causality. Insofar as any of us are compelled to resist the flow of random events, we are driven solely by internal drives and forces.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 6 (p. 88)

Smile, Way, Behavior

“The schools, having found the object of their long, blind searching, shall teach directness, simplicity, naturalness: they shall protect the young against palpable illusion. They shall teach that, while man once invented a process called composition, Nature has forever brought forth organisms. They shall encourage the love of Nature that wells up in every childish heart, and shall not suppress, shall not stifle, the teeming imagination of the young.
They shall teach, as the result of their own bitter experience, that conscious mental effort, that conscious emotionality, are poor mates to breed from, and that true parturition comes of a deep, instinctive, subconscious desire. That true art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life.
That Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile: that in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man's life.
That, thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Love, Life, School, Art

“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

“For too long, African societies have been identified as superstitious, consisting of people who cannot question, reason or think critically. Dogma and blind faith in superstition, divinity and tradition are said to be the mainstay of popular thought and culture. African science is often equated with witchcraft and the occult; African philosophy with magical thinking, myth-making and mysticism, African religion with stone-age spiritual abracadabra, African medicine with folk therapies often involving pseudoscientific concoctions inspired by magical thinking. Science, critical thinking and technological intelligence are portrayed as Western — as opposed to universal — values, and as alien to Africa and to the African mindset. An African who thinks critically or seeks evidence and demands proofs for extraordinary claims is accused of taking a “white” or Western approach. An African questioning local superstitions and traditions is portrayed as having abandoned or betrayed the essence of African identity. Skepticism and rationalism are regarded as Western, un-African, philosophies. Although there is a risk of overgeneralizing, there are clear indicators that the continent is still socially, politically and culturally trapped by undue credulity. Many irrational beliefs exist and hold sway across the region. These are beliefs informed by fear and ignorance, misrepresentations of nature and how nature works. These misconceptions are often instrumental in causing many absurd incidents, harmful traditional practices and atrocious acts.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa (2012)

People, Age, Fear, Faith

“Love's immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this—but not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Love, Dreams, Way, Kiss

“The boy seemed ready to die… he almost lost the use of his Legs and Feet… and to compleat his misfortunes was afflicted with so violent a disorder in his Eyes that there appeared to be the utmost danger of his becoming totally blind.”

Granville Sharp (1735–1813) English campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade

Describing his first meeting with Jonathan Strong (slave).
Quoted in Black Slaves in Britain by Folarin O. Shyllon, Institute of Race Relations/Oxford University Press (1974)

Boy, Affliction, Appearance

“The work itself, whether thought of as image of idea, as revelation, or as a manifest of meaning, could not have existed without a profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance, for a man’s term of life. Yet, while one looks at his works, a warning should be given, lest one forget, among the multitude of issues, the relation I bear to those with 'eyes'. Although the reference is in a different context and for another purpose, a metaphor is pertinent as William Blake set it down: THE Vision of Christ that thou dost see – Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy: - Thine is the friend of All Mankind, - Mine speaks in parables to the Blind: 'Therefore, let no man under-value the implications of this work or its power for life; - or for death, if it is misused'.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 196
1950s

Life, Death, Idea, Christ

“From our best qualities come our worst. From our urge to pull together comes our tendency to pull apart. From our devotion to higher good comes our propensity to the foulest atrocities. From out commitment to ideals come our excuse to hate. Since the beginning of history, we have been blinded by evil's ability to don a selfless disguise. We have failed to see that our finest qualities often lead us to the actions we most abhor—murder, torture, genocide, and war.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Who is Lucifer?
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

Hate, War, History, Evil

“Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.”

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

Fancy in Nubibus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light, Sea

“In many ways art is similar to religion. Its development consists not in new discoveries which invalidate the old truths (as is obviously the case in science). Its development consists in sudden illuminations, similar to lightning, in explosions, which burst in the sky like fireworks.... this illumination shows with blinding light new perspectives, new truths, which are basically nothing but the organic development, the further organic growth of the earlier wisdom... Was the New Testament possible without the Old? Could our time, that of the threshold of the 'third' revelation, be thinkable without the second?”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 33

Wisdom, Truth, Religion, Art

“But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.”

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

Summations, Chapter 47
Context: Two things belong to our soul as duty: the one is that we reverently marvel, the other that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. For He would have us understand that we shall in short time see clearly in Himself all that we desire.
And notwithstanding all this, I beheld and marvelled greatly: What is the mercy and forgiveness of God? For by the teaching that I had afore, I understood that the mercy of God should be the forgiveness of His wrath after the time that we have sinned. For methought that to a soul whose meaning and desire is to love, the wrath of God was harder than any other pain, and therefore I took that the forgiveness of His wrath should be one of the principal points of His mercy. But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.

Life, God, Feeling, Soul

“I'm twenty-seven,
she's seventeen.
"Blind Cupid,
lame Cupid,
both blind and lame Cupid
said, Love this girl,"”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From A Spring Piece Left In The Middle

Love, Girl

“He willeth that we know by the sweetness and homely loving of Him, that all that we see or feel, within or without, that is contrary to this is of the enemy and not of God. And thus — If we be stirred to be the more reckless of our living or of the keeping of our hearts because that we have knowing of this plenteous love, then need we greatly to beware. For this stirring, if it come, is untrue; and greatly we ought to hate it, for it all hath no likeness of God’s will. And when that we be fallen, by frailty or blindness, then our courteous Lord toucheth us and stirreth us and calleth us; and then willeth He that we see our wretchedness and meekly be aware of it. But He willeth not that we abide thus, nor He willeth not that we busy us greatly about our accusing, nor He willeth not that we be wretched over our self; but He willeth that we hastily turn ourselves unto Him. For He standeth all aloof and abideth us sorrowfully and mournfully till when we come, and hath haste to have us to Him. For we are His joy and His delight, and He is our salve and our life.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 79

Love, Life, God, Hate

“You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing that you believe it.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“To get their attention, start lobbing the light grenades (That burst and blind them with the truth! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!)”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Truth, Light

“May the blind things at the bottom of the great sea, whose bellies are circles of light,” he said, “recall with pleasure the flavor of your marrow.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter (p. 125)

Pleasure, Light, Sea

“According to my first birth I am nothing but unclean slime and dust of earth, conceived and born in sin from my mother's womb, and educated all my life in all manner of ignorance, sin and blindness, until the clear light of grace and knowledge appeared unto me from high heaven and which has given me such a heart, will and desire, that I willingly seek after that which is good, and strive, with holy Paul to "follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus," Phil. 3: 12.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.248

Life, Education, Birth, Knowledge

“A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.”

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

First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (18 September 2005) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/ANSWERMAN/509180304/1023

People, Tree

“Frank sincerity is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing to every one, while simulation, on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yet for a man's self, simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sincerity tending rather to the interest of others. But since it cannot be denied that it is not a fine thing to deceive, I would commend him whose conduct is as a rule open and straightforward, and who uses simulation only in matters of the gravest importance and such as very seldom occur; for in this way he will gain a name for honesty and sincerity, and with it the advantages attaching to these qualities. At the same time, when, in any extreme emergency, he resorts to simulation, he will draw all the greater advantage from it, because from his reputation for plain dealing his artifice will blind men more.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Number 104.
Counsels and Reflections (1857)

Men, Way, Time, Drawing

“Whether it be in the toleration of sharia courts, or the turning of a blind eye to cultural practices which go against our laws, too often it has been women who have been the victims of those problems. I have always believed that a multi-ethnic society such as ours can be successful if it can be united by a common set of values and sense of identity, instead of a constant emphasis on division. It’s amazing to think that this was once considered outlandish. It can be difficult to explain this crucial difference in a city like London. More than one TV interviewer has asked me how, as UKIP’s Mayoral candidate, I can appeal to such a multicultural place as our capital. But this is to miss the point entirely. Like anybody else, I enjoy the huge profusion of completely diverse cuisine, fashion and music. Indeed the different cultural influences on our city are so big and ingrained it’s easy to take them for granted. But this is not the same thing as ensuring and, indeed, standing up for the common values and laws which should and must underpin any cohesive society. Here, as across Europe, one of those values – enshrined in our legal system – is that everybody is equal before the law regardless of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

‘Cultural Cringe’: Women Are The First Victims Of State-Sponsored Multiculturalism http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/13/2764329/ (January 13, 2016)

Women, Law, Music, Fashion

“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices" http://books.google.com/books?id=DLcEAQAAIAAJ&q=%22The+difference+between+patriotism+and+nationalism++is+that+the+patriot+is+proud+of+his+country+for+what+it+does+and+the+nationalist+is+proud+of+his+country+no+matter+what+it+does+the+first+attitude+creates+a+feeling+of+responsibility+but+the+second+a+feeling+of+blind+arrogance+that+leads+to+war%22&pg=PA228#v=onepage <br class="br">Strictly Personal (1953)

War, Feeling, Country

“There are none so blind as those who see angels…None so deaf as those who hear gods.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 17 (p. 288)

God, Angels

“Then he saw that she was blind, her face slightly upcast to her companion's in the manner of those whose expressions never fully attain their target - the eyes of another.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958), II

“I no longer believe that most traditional historians are emotionally equipped, even with training, to use their feelings as psychohistorical research tools, although there is a whole new generation of psychohistorians just now beginning to write who are able to do so. To expect the average historian to do psychohistory is like trying to teach a blind man to be an astronomer […]. Whenever I speak to a scholar of the emotional development necessary to make a good psychohistorian and get a blank look of total incomprehension, I try to find a way to leave the subject of psychohistory altogether. My listener usually is in another world of discourse where emotional reactions are not considered crucial to the results.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: Foundations of Psychohistory (1982), Ch. 2, ibid.

World, Way, Feeling, Training

“How can the human race, whether for selfish or more cosmopolitan ends, understand and control the seemingly blind forces of history?”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

p, 125
War and Change in World Politics (1981)

History, Understanding, Selfishness

“If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Fortune
Essays (1625)

“I have very little regard for consensus if it blinds you to the truth.”

Harry Belafonte (1927) American singer

Interview in The Guardian (2007)

Truth

“I am blind, but I am able to read thanks to a wonderful new system known as broil. I'm sorry, I'll just feel that again.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"Blind", in Derek and Clive (Live) (1976)

Feeling, Reading

“Current Catholic worship often ignores the essential connection between truth and beauty, body and soul, at the center of the Catholic worldview. The Church requires that we be faithful, but must we also be deaf, dumb, and blind? I deserve to suffer for my sins, but must so much of that punishment take place in church?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

30
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Truth, Faith, Beauty, Soul

“It’s Derren Brown, it’s Derren Brown, it’s Derren Brown, it’s Derren Brown. He’s very kind, he’ll read your mind, even if you’re blind, your thoughts he’ll find”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Reading

“The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

with A., Kushiner, James M., (editors),[2001, Signs of intelligence: understanding intelligent design, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1587430045, [BL263.S54, 2001], 00067612]
2000s

Intelligence, Nature, Reality

“You can be screamingly blind to the obvious if you don’t realize that you have not opened up all the doors of your mind.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 83 (p. 298)

“It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and thereafter never entirely goes away. Violence and hatred, and the fear of our own inability to control them in ourselves, are a fundamental part of our birthright, along with altruism, creativity, tenderness, pity and love. It therefore requires an immense act of hypocrisy to stigmatize our young adults and teenagers as agents of deviance and disorder. It requires a policy of dishonesty about and blindness to our own histories, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals who were troubled as teenagers, and who will always be troubled, by the same dark impulses. It also requires that favorite tool of the hypocritical, dishonest and fearful: the suppression of constitutional rights.”

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

Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/opinion/13CHAB.html?ex=1397188800&en=e08e585ef55c305e&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND, New York Times (April 13, 2004)

Love, Children, Age, Fear

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

Love, Life, God, Marriage

“For no reason at all, I thought of New Year's Eve, when all those people crowd into Times Square and scream like jackals as the lighted ball slides down the pole, ready to shed its thin party glare on three hundred and sixty-five new days in this best of all possible worlds. I have always wondered what it would be like to be caught in one of those crowds, screaming and not able to hear your own voice, your individuality momentarily wiped out and replaced with the blind empathic overslop of the crowd's lurching, angry anticipation, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with no one in particular.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

People, World, Light, Time

“He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross…. She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Fourth measure “Lords and Ladies” (p. 169)
Pavane (1968)

Men, God, People, Justice

“Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 34–39

“Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see.”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

"Help on the Way"
Song lyrics, (1975)

Learning, Time

“That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day.”

Thomas Browne book The Garden of Cyrus

Opening lines of Ch. 1
The Garden of Cyrus (1658)

Sun

“There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.”

Joseph Conrad book Nostromo

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 9
Nostromo (1904)

Universe

“A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

Life, Men, Disease

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

http://www.jwz.org/doc/markup.html
JWZ
Markup.

People, Motivation, Thinking, Help

“I saw them go: one horse was blind,
The tails of both hung down behind,
Their shoes were on their feet.”

James Smith book Rejected Addresses

Rejected Addresses, "The Baby's Début", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Shoe, Horse

“And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
Nausea (1938)

Feeling, Future, Night, Forgetting

“Son, you're probably too young to look for wisdom in anyone's words but your own, but I'll tell you this: love is the enemy… Yes. The poets continually and sometimes willfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a cannibal with extremely acute vision. Love is insectile; it is always hungry.
When asked what love eats:
Friendship. It eats friendship.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 11
Christine (1983)

Love, Wisdom, Friendship

“It can postpone death, cure disease, release the captive, bring sight to the blind, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, destroy the despot, win the love of women, and procure all reasonable earthly happiness to any man who is not entirely too old. In course of time perhaps it may even resurrect the dead, create life and storm the very gates of heaven, for money is force and force is the essence of the universe.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

Rival Caesars (1903)

Love, Life, Death, Women

“The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 165
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Life, God, Intelligence, Idea

“Toward dawn, he dreamed that he was in hiding, in one of the naves of the Clementine Library. What are you looking for? a librarian wearing dark glasses asked him. I'm looking for God, Hladik replied. God, the librarian said, is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes in the Clementine. My parents and my parents' parents searched for that letter; I myself have gone blind searching for it.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

God, Dreams, Search, Parent

“Artists have, for the most part, bound themselves down to follow a blind routine. Noble exceptions, however, have presented themselves. Nicholas Poussin, one of the most profound thinkers, whom the arts have produced, took care to correct and regulate by the antique the proportions which Leon Baptista Alberti and Albert Durer had given from the living model.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Art, Parting

“Roswell Gardiner has never wavered in his faith, from the time when his feelings were awakened by the just view of his own insignificance, as compared to the power of God! He then learned the first, great lesson in religious belief, that of humility; without which no man can be truly penitent, or truly a Christian. He no longer thought of measuring the Deity with his narrow faculties, or of setting up his blind conclusions, in the face of positive revelations. He saw that all must be accepted, or none; and there was too much evidence, too much inherent truth, a morality too divine, to allow a mind like his to reject the gospel altogether. With Mary at his side, he has continued to worship the Trinity, accepting its mysteries in an humble reliance on the words of inspired men.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849)

Men, God, Truth, Faith

“We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow (1955)

“The bourgeois court, which claimed to maintain order, but which, as a matter of fact, was a blind, subtle instrument for the ruthless suppression of the exploited, and an instrument for protecting the interests of the moneybags.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 453–482.
Collected Works

“He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Men, Dogs, Change

“Why lean upon a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own? Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? Why use the shield of another, when the apostle gives you armour of your own? It would be better for him to learn from you to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh, than for you from him to deny it; because if Christians must needs deny it, it would be sufficient if they did so from their own knowledge, without any instruction from the ignorant multitude.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

De Resurrectione Carnis [Of the Resurrection of Flesh] Ch.1 as quoted in The Writings of Tertullian, Vol.2 http://books.google.com/books?id=nlcPAQAAMAAJ Tr. Peter Holmes, as contained in Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to AD 325 Vol.15 (1870)

Knowledge, Learning, Christ, Clothes

“Dialogue in Hell:
First Dialogue

Machiavelli:…I am less preoccupied by what is good and moral than by what is useful and necessary.
…I will tell you that, as a witness in my homeland of the fickleness and the cowardice of the populace, of its innate taste for slavery, of its incapacity to conceive and to respect the conditions of free life; it is to my eyes a blind force which dissolves itself sooner or later, if it is not in the hands of a single man that it would never be able to administer, nor to judge, nor to make war….”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Life, War, Hell

“And sun and moon and starry fires and earth and air and sea
Are creatures from the deep let loose who pause in ecstasy,
Or wing their wild and heavenly way until again they find
The ancient deep and fade therein, enraptured, bright and blind.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Way, Sun, Sea

“For do our Theologians pretend to make a monopoly of the word, action, and may not the atheists likewise take possession of it, and affirm that plants, animals, men, &c. are nothing but particular actions of one simple universal substance, which exerts itself from a blind and absolute necessity?”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 4, Section 5
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Men, Universe, Animals

“I may be subjected to the criticism of being called ‘scientistic’ or a kind of blind believer in science who holds that science is able to solve absolutely all problems. Well, I certainly don’t believe that, because I cannot conceive that a day will come when science will be complete and achieved.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Source: Myth and Meaning (1978), Chapter 1 : The Meeting of Myth and Science

Problem, Science

“That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their Law, that same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, Let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit and temple-orthodoxy, would not bear to hear of an inward savior, not bear to hear of being born again of his Spirit, of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them, and they in him. To have their Law of ordinances, their temple-pomp sunk into such a fulfilling savior as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ, Beelzebub, his doctrine, blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy.
Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a savior living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and Spirit in it, as its only redemption, whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ when teaching these very things, "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, "We will not have this man to reign OVER us."”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

The sober-minded Christian scholar has none of this Jewish blindness, he only says of Christ, we will not have this man to REIGN IN US, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me."
¶ 157 - 158.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life, Wisdom, Law, Soul

“Events,” I say to the Captain, “events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.”

Barry N. Malzberg book Beyond Apollo

Source: Beyond Apollo (1972), Chapter 60

Motivation, Understanding, Universe, Chance