Notes on the Banner of Peace (24 May 1939)
Context: I was asked to collect information where the symbols of our Banner of Peace could be found. It turned out that the symbol of the Holy Trinity has been scattered all over the world. This has been explained in various ways. Some say it means the past, present and future, bound by the ring of eternity. Others find it more palatable to explain it as religion, knowledge and art in the ring of Culture. Obviously there were various explanations already in the ancient times, but the symbol, the sign itself had become fixed all over the world. … You can find it on the ancient icon in Bar depicting St. Nicholas. The same is on the centuries-old image of St. Sergius. It is on the image of Holy Trinity. It is on the coat of arms of Samarkand. It is on ancient Ethiopian and Coptic antiquities. It is on Mongolian rocks. It is on Tibetan rings. The steed of happiness on the Himalayan Mountains passes bears the same flaming sign. It is on all the brooches of Lahuli, Ladakhi and Himalayan Mountains. It is on Buddhist banners. Going back to the Neolithic depths we can find the same sign in the ornaments decorating their pottery. … And that is why the symbol was chose for all uniting Banner as the symbol that has passed through centuries, more exactly — millennia. The symbol was not a mere decorating ornament all over, it bore a very special meaning. Collecting all its images together, we might prove that it is the most extensively spread and ancient one among all the symbols of mankind. No one can claim that it belongs but to one religion or is based on the only one folk-lore. It would be very beneficial to glance at the evolution of human consciousness in its variegated forms.
Quotes about bore
page 9
Final lines
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
“Never do anything that bores you.”
Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
Context: Never do anything that bores you. My experience in science is that someone is always telling to do something that leaves you flat. Bad idea. I'm not good enough to do something I dislike. In fact, I find it hard enough to do something that I like. … Constantly exposing your ideas to informed criticism is very important, and I would venture to say that one reason both of our chief competitors failed to reach the Double Helix before us was that each was effectively very isolated.
Space (1912)
Context: Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, "between dog and wolf," when the mind is disposed to marvels.
"The Future of Democracy"
What I Saw in America (1922)
Context: There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even something of it in the fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where they will in darkness, and for them as for the sceptics the universe may have no centre; kites and vultures may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as for the plutocrats existence may have no origin and no end; but it was far back in the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun.
Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)
Context: No sane person with a life really wants to be a political activist. When activism is exciting, it tends to involve the risk of bodily harm or incarceration, and when it's safe, it is often tedious, dry, and boring. Activism tends to put one into contact with extremely unpleasant people, whether they are media interviewers, riot cops, or at times, your fellow activists. Not only that, it generates enormous feelings of frustration and rage, makes your throat sore from shouting, and hurts your feet.
Nonetheless, at this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that the Earth is a living, conscious being that we're part of, that human beings are interconnected and precious, and that liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing.
The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or — better still — industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are "free" is lying or stupid. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to heirarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the families they start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain the vitality from people at work, they'll likely submit to heirarchy and expertise in everything. They're used to it.
last words (15 February 1988), recalled by sister Joan Feynman, in Christopher Sykes, editor, No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1994), p. 254
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)
Context: I'm afraid of habit patterns... It would be too much of a routine if you had to establish definite ways of getting through things. You'd get very bored.
The Cold Gray God (1935), p. 235
Short fiction, Northwest of Earth (1954)
Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 2, p. 8
On the victims of wage theft in “Wage Theft, Slavery, and Climate Change on the Outlaw Ocean” https://civileats.com/2019/09/27/wage-theft-slavery-and-climate-change-on-the-outlaw-ocean/ (Civil Eats; 2019 Sep 27)
On avoiding the typical play structures in “María Irene Fornés by Allen Frame” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/maria-irene-fornes/ in BOMB Magazine (1984 Oct 1)
Interview with Media For Us, 2019
“The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring, as Dick Nixon would say.”
As quoted by Matt Labash, "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016) The Weekly Standard.
Living the Message: Daily Reflections with Eugene H. Peterson (1996), p. 114
George Santayana, in a letter to Henry Ward Abbot, December 1886. As quoted in A Philosophical Novelist: George Santayana and The Last Puritan, edited by H. T. Kirby-Smith (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997)
S - Z, George Santayana
Gavin Friday, [July 16, 2012, http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/everybody-loves-rufus-3168433.html, everybody loves rufus]
Po-Chih Leong, director of The Wisdom of Crocodiles, reported in John McVicar, "Jude Law", Artnik, London 2006, p. 4.
“I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, but how boring is that?”
On writing about good people in “‘Color of Water’ author, James McBride, reflects on race, politics and his new book” https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/novelist-james-mcbride-talks-about-race-politics--and-his-new-book/2017/09/25/8774c4a4-97a1-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html in The Washington Post (2017 Sept 26)
2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)
“I'd rather be judged for doing something interesting than not judged and be so utterly boring.”
Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy
"Ready to Give a Hoot", by Margaret Wappler; Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2006
Interviews
[226. My strength and weaknesses, Sydney Brenner, Web of Stories, https://www.webofstories.com/play/sydney.brenner/226]
spirituality and consciousness
Source: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_clues_to_prehistoric_times_found_in_blind_cavefish (February 2016)
So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.
Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
Selected Letters (1983-1985)
Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate and so therefore [sic] when I make these films, I prefer to show what I know to be the facts, what I know to be true, and then people can deduce what they will from that.
"Sir David Attenborough" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sir-david-attenborough/, interview with Ed Bradley, CBS News (7 November 2002)
“It’s not God I fear but the woman who bore him.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR DEBBIE DADEY https://rhyskeller.com/debbie-dadey-author-interview/ (February 13, 2018)
“Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”
Robert Powell on Jesus, marriage and the Belgian detective: 'My Poirot is my Poirot' https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/theatre/454276/Robert-Powell-talks-Jesus-Pan-s-People-and-Poirot (January 16, 2014)
“That life is chemistry is true but boring, like saying that football is physics.”
Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 1 “Life” (p. 15)
“Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there.”
Pt. II, Ch. II - p.64
Novels, The Secret People (1935)
Referring to Arturo Ui (representing Adolf Hitler), in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)
“It’s lots better to be miserable than to be bored.”
Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 8 (p. 94)
Source: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005), Chapter 4 (p. 141)
Letter to Lady Mosley (9 March 1966), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 638
"Zhirinovsky: 'Europe, you shall tremble!'" in DW News https://www.dw.com/en/zhirinovsky-europe-you-shall-tremble/a-42923191 (11 March 2018)
“Normality is a boring uniformity, madness a lively uniqueness.”
Original: La normalità è una noiosa uniformità, la follia una vivace unicità.
Source: prevale.net
From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, DEATH
“Do what you love to do and makes you happy, you will never get bored.”
Original: Fate ciò che amate fare e vi rende felici, non vi annoirete mai.
Source: prevale.net