Quotes about brief
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“Having been a demon curse, however brief, should leave a mark. A streak of silver hair, or bewitching eyes. Maybe crows on one's roof or a hound from hell at your heel. Blowing out my breath I stood and squinted at my reflection. A black eye. Swell.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: For a Few Demons More

Hell

“There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.”

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

Thinking, Silence

“Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”

Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986) lyricist and librettist from the United States

Source: Camelot: Vocal Selection

“The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark.”

Michael Crichton book The Andromeda Strain

Source: The Andromeda Strain

Parting

“Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Life, Way

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Life, Grass

“Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Time

“A time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

Source: A Long Fatal Love Chase

Peace, Time, Joy

“Mathematics because of its nature and structure is peculiarly fitted for high school instruction [Gymnasiallehrfach]. Especially the higher mathematics, even if presented only in its elements, combines within itself all those qualities which are demanded of a secondary subject. It engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things. Mathematics, therefore, above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.

Truth, World, School, Law

“Ludwig also provides a brief, quite brilliant exposition and critique of the concept of an "authentic" self, noting that it is rooted in a male Victorian ethos and that it has been overshadowed by the more contemporary American notion of self-invention. Ludwig's beautifully written and intellectually provocative book is one of those rare works that offer fresh, profound insights, moving the reader to think probingly about his or her own life and self.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

Kirkus Reviews on How Do We Know Who We Are?: A Biography of the Self (1997)

Life, Books, Thinking

“Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 72.

World, History, Knowledge, Learning

“Early every morning a van calls to take his brief bag up to the Parliament House, where his papers are trustingly displayed in his box in the public corridor of the Courts and whence they are brought home again after the day's work.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 44

Home, Housing, Box

“Only this time it was just a brief rest, till the stars came out. They stared down with mockery in their twinkles, saying all our sweat and blood really had no meaning in the long eye of time. Nothing we did would be recalled a thousand years from now.
Such thoughts infected us all. No one had any ideals or glory-lust left. We just wanted to get somewhere, lie down, and forget the war.
The war would not forget us.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 5, “Harden” (p. 140)

War, Lie, Star, Time

“Posito I assume and when I say posito, I have the right to assume the unlikely; therefore posito, I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. Posito, I assume, and when I say posito, I have the right to assume what is more unreasonable than the most unreasonable; therefore; posito, I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it-then what? Let us linger for a moment on this thought, with which, of course, we have all been familiar for several years: the thought of the prospect for the hope of the system. Therefore, in order to be very brief, posito, I assume that the system appeared here in Copenhagen, then what? Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view; then we would again be saved by the promise. If this does not happen, then of course one would have to read it. How troublesome, and who would finally benefit from that?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Prefaces, Nichol, 1997 p. 39-40
1840s, Prefaces (1844)

Hope, Appearance, Reading

“We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued. The injury she has inflicted on Great Britain, the United States, and other countries, and her detestable cruelties, call for justice and retribution. We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (8 May 1945) from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1344
The Second World War (1939–1945)

God, Lie, Justice, Home

“The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts. […] There are now twenty-four of these distinct States, none smaller perhaps than your Morea, several larger than all Greece. Each of these has a constitution framed by itself and for itself, but militating in nothing with the powers of the General Government in its appropriate department of war and foreign affairs. These constitutions being in print and in every hand, I shall only make brief observations on them, and on those provisions particularly which have not fulfilled expectations, or which, being varied in different States, leave a choice to be made of that which is best. You will find much good in all of them, and no one which would be approved in all its parts. Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt […].”

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

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)

War, Distant, Parting, Country

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”
Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.

Horace Ars Poetica

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Lines 335–337; Edward Charles Wickham translation

Men, Learning

“"Devilling", properly so called, by which is designated in England the system whereby a young barrister assists a busy counsel by digesting and annotating his papers, looking up authorities, drafting opinions, and sometimes holding his brief for him in Court, is not know and indeed is not permitted in Scotland.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 26

Business

“I propose to tell you a very brief tale about a love which…ran a smooth course to its happy conclusion.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Uno amore...a lieto fin pervenuto, in una novelletta assai piccola intendo di raccontarvi.
Fifth Day, Fourth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Love, Happiness

“Sir, we are trying to work because we are having to take the examination in a very brief time from now, but the younger boys are not realizing the importance of our labours and they are creating veritable pandemoniums while we are immersed in our studies. To us who are their lawful and appointed superiors they are giving overmuch insolence, nor are they sufficiently overawed by our frequent threatenings. I would be taking it, sir, as inestimable favour if you would deliver harsh words and verbal punishing to them all, sir, especially the Malay boys, who are severely lacking in due respectfulness and incorrigible to discipline also.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Law, Boy, Study, Time

“Being alive is just a brief technicality.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A (2009), p. 167

“We now live, as Earth always has (see my 1996 book Full House), in an Age of Bacteria. These simplest organisms will dominate our planet (if conditions remain hospitable for life at all) until the sun explodes. During our current, and undoubtedly brief, geological moment, they watch with appropriate amusement as we strut and fret our hour upon the stage. For we are, to them, only transient and delectable islands ripe for potential exploitation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"War of the Worldviews", p. 352
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Books, Age, Sun

“I think it was when I got to the butterflies -- in that brief, beautiful image comprising life, death and technology -- that the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on end. All at once, the pleasure I took in reading was altered irrevocably. Before then I had never noticed, somehow, that stories were made not of ideas or exciting twists of plot but of language. And not merely of pretty words and neat turns of phrase, but of systems of imagery, strategies of metaphor.”

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

Close Encounters http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62470-2002Apr4, Washington Post (April 7, 2002) <br class="br">On reading Rocket Man by Ray Bradbury

Life, Death, Pleasure, Beauty

“The wretch who on the scaffold stands
Has some brief time allow’d
For parting grasp of kindly hands,
For farewell to the crowd :”

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

Madeline
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Time, Parting

“In brief, the onus of protecting Hindus against Muslim and Christian proselytization falls on Hindu social and cultural organizations.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Source: Return to Roots (2002), p. 105

“Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 385)

Time, Past

“Everybody, I think, who hopes to become a judge would aspire to be able to write as well as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. None are going to be able to attain that. But I’ll try at least — if confirmed to be as brief and pithy as he is.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Justice, Hope, Thinking

“My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contemp. But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/47/mode/1up p. 47

Time, Pain, Life, Dependency

“Following the lead given by new institutional economics, we shall take the transaction as our unit of analysis. For our purposes, a transaction can be thought of as any act of social exchange that depends on information flows for its accomplishment. Transactions can be as simple and brief as the purchase of a packet of cigarettes, or as complex as and extended as those which bind a Zen master to his disciples. Like institutional economists, we are interested in the relationship that can be established between different transactional characteristics and the phenomenon of institutionalization. Our use of the term transaction, however, will extend beyond that of institutional economics where the focus has tended to be primarily on transaction costs and efficiency considerations. These, to be sure, are relevant. But, as we shall see, they are not the whole story.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 124; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Dependency

“The old diluvialists were induced by their system to confound all the groups of strata together instead of discriminating,—to refer all appearances to one cause and to one brief period, not to a variety of causes acting throughout a long succession of epochs. …Under the influence of such prejudices, three centuries were of as little avail, as a few years in our own times, when we are no longer required to propel the vessel against the force of an adverse current.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 34
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Appearance, Time, Success

“He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess…the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 338

Education, Dead

“It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes our responsibilities. Except in the case of official persons, the traveler now lives for himself alone, and is no longer accountable to a community or a family clan. A foreign country is merely a spectacle; in it we no longer have the continual awareness of responsibility. All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast. Periods of rest, however, must be brief, but it is amazing to discover how a few days of travel can restore our mental freshness.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Family, Travel, Home, Communication

“Society will oscillate between long periods of relative stagnation in which state-protected privileges crowd out experiments in the organization of production and brief interludes in which much is destroyed before anything can be created. To perpetuate the practice of innovation, societies must replace such drastic and violent swings with a more constant liquefaction of deals and privileges. They must invent the structures that make structures easier to change.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 192

Change

“Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Ten, Power behind the Throne, p. 238

Nature, Problem, Science

“I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Men versus the Man: A Correspondence between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H.L. Mencken, Individualist (1910), pg. 116
1910s

Life, Education, Failure

“O be less beautiful, or be less brief.”

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

"Autumn" http://books.google.com/books?id=YjFKAAAAMAAJ&q=%22O+be+less+beautiful+or+be+less+brief%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage, Poems (1892).

Beauty

“I used to wear food briefs. They were crumby.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (May 16, 2007)

Food

“Buddy: I wear boxers, Roger wears boxer briefs.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“And how does the God’s existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go – I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i. e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 32

God, Behavior

“The heavy armor becomes the light dress of childhood; the pain is brief, the joy unending.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Books and Reading

Pain, Light, Joy, Childhood

“Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves — all plot and no characters, or made-up characters — Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"A Fun-House Mirror" (1972), pp. 107-108
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

God, Fate, War, Thinking

“In brief, part of the need for funding comes from the need to create balance to a third of a century of funding an “attitude” toward men. And part comes from the need to study how both sexes can make a transition from those rigid roles to more flexible roads with a clear enough road map to not go over too many cliffs along the way…”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Men, Sex, Way, Study

“After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion, that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever, of which Alexander of Macedon died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 323. As it was not very agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms towards the west, and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for such an explanation of their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat provided with soldiers and ships experiences in setting limits to his warlike career. It was an enterprise worthy of a great Greek king to protect the siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome.. and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans, that long with numerous others made their appearance at Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula, and of contracting relations with it. Carthage with is many connections in the east could not but attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably part of his design to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king over the Tyrian colony into a real one: the apprehensions of the Carthaginians are shown by the Phoenician spy in the suite of Alexander. Whether, however, those ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas were buried with him. For a few brief years a Grecian ruler had held in his hands the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race combined with the whole material resources of the east. On his death the work to which his life had been devoted - the establishment of a Hellenism in the east - was by no means undone; but his empire had barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, admidst the constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined to promote - the diffusion of Greek culture in the east - though not abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1., Page 394 - 395. Translated by W.P.Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life, Death, World, Dreams

“This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs — real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce — are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Liberals’N’Lawsuits http://www.nationalreview.com/article/213590/liberalsnlawsuits-joseph-6 (February 7, 2005)

World, Idea, Country

“This planet is run by crazy people. Remember what they have to do to get where they are. Their perspective is so narrow, so…brief. A few years. In the best of them a few decades. They care only about the time they are in power.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 23 (p. 403)

People, Time

“Learn their lesson, that if you would teach people you first must capture their interest with news; that your service rather than your sermons must be your claim upon their attention; that what you say must be simple, and brief, and above all sincere — the unmistakable voice of true regard and affection.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton book The Man Nobody Knows

On the teachings of Jesus, in Ch. 5 : His Advertisements
The Man Nobody Knows (1924)

People, Learning, Sincerity

“We believe that to the great body of the reading public the name of George Boole first became known, if indeed it has yet become known, through the announcement of his death; the announcement being accompanied in a few of the papers by a brief sketch of his life and works. Boole's researches were not of a nature to be appreciated by the multitude, and he never condescended to those arts by which less gifted men have won for themselves while living a more splendid reputation.”

Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897) English journalist

R.H. Hutton, "Professor Boole," in: The British Quarterly Review http://books.google.com/books?id=pfMEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA165. (1866), p. 141

Life, Death, Men, Art

“The average person is in the habit of saying, "The older I get" and he thereby calls the attention of his mind to the idea that he is getting older. In brief, he compels his mind to believe that he is getting older and older, and thereby directs the mind to produce more and more age. The true expression in this connection is, "The longer I live." This expression calls the mind's attention to the length of life, which will, in turn, tend to increase the power of that process in you that can prolong life. When people reach the age of sixty or seventy, they usually speak of "the rest of my days," thus implying the idea that there are only a few more days remaining. The mind is thereby directed to finish life in a short period of time, and accordingly, all the forces of the mind will proceed to work for the speedy termination of personal existence. The correct expression is "from now on," as, that leads thought into the future indefinitely without impressing the mind with any end whatever.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 6, p. 91–2

Life, People, Age, Idea

“Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 97

War, Change, Time

“An art mode, new or old, is for the creative mind essentially a point of beginning. Content is brought into being by the activity through which the artist translates the movement into himself. In such an appropriation, there is no difference between an ongoing movement and one that is finished. During the reign of Minimalism, a painter might realize the new through Impressionism. That art history has a schedule of continuous advances en masse is a fantasy of the historian. The shared syntax of art movements is constantly replaced by the sensibility and practice of individuals. The avant-garde art of yesterday is the only modern equivalent of an aesthetic tradition. The fading of the ideas of a movement does not mean that it can no longer be a stimulus to creation. At the very dawn of a movement, the work of its artists commences to replace the concept; instead of Cubism there appear Picasso, Braque, Gris. Compared to the activities to which they give rise, ideas in art have a brief life. In the last analysis, the vitality of art in our time depends on works produced by movements after they have died.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 230, Art on the Edge (1975) "Shall These Bones Live?: Art Movement Ghosts"

Life, Art, History, Idea

“I no more wrote than read that book which is
The self I am, half hidden as it is
From one and all who see within a kiss
The lounging formless blackness of an abyss. How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read"
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Love, Books, Kiss, Thinking

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

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

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, World, Faith

“Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Soul, Time

“The way to control circumstances is to control the forces within yourself to make a greater man of yourself, and as you become greater and more competent, you will naturally gravitate into better circumstances. In this connection, we should remember that like attracts like. If you want that which is better, make yourself better. If you want to realize the ideal, make yourself more ideal. If you want better friends, make yourself a better friend. If you want to associate with people of worth, make yourself more worthy. If you want to meet that which is agreeable, make yourself more agreeable. If you want to enter conditions and circumstances that are more pleasing, make yourself more pleasing. In brief, whatever you want, produce that something in yourself, and you will positively gravitate towards the corresponding conditions in the external world.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 3, p. 49

People, World, Way, Nature

“A few years hence and he will be beneath the sod; but those cliffs will stand, as now, facing the ocean, incessantly lashed by its waves, yet unshaken, immovable; and other eyes will gaze on them for their brief day of life, and then they, too, will close.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 384.

Life

“I know you want it to stay pleasant around here, but — there are so many things … that are so much better. Like silly, or sexy, or dangerous … or brief. And every one of those things is in you all the time, if you just have the guts to look for them.”

Gary Ross (1956) American film director

David Wagner/Bud Parker
Pleasantville (1998)

Time

“And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?</b”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Sesame and Lilies, lecture II: Lilies http://www.fullbooks.com/Sesame-and-Lilies3.html

Question, Problem

“I was born on the planet Earth, into the middle of the twentieth century, that period in the history of the race when man succeeded in casting off many of the inhibitions and taboos laid upon him by tradition, reveled for a brief time, and then discovered that it didn’t make a bloody bit of difference that he had. He was still just as dead when he died, and he was still faced with every life-death problem that had confronted him before, compounded by the fact that Malthus was right.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 4 (p. 72)

Life, Death, History, Problem

“The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Rocket Summer (1950)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Winter, Summer

“People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

" Knowledge and Information http://naggum.no/erik/knowledge.html".

Life, People, World, Search

“Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Women, Men

“Following the financial crisis of September 2008 when the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, threatening to engulf the entire banking system, the British economist John Maynard Keynes returned to center stage. In the popular press and in the writings of many economists, Keynes featured prominently as governments around the world urgently sought ways to avoid economic collapse. (…) After only a brief delay, critics of Keynes’s ideas also began to appear; but the emergence of such critics only served to emphasize the fact of his return, for only a few years earlier Keynes’s name would not even have appeared in public debate about economic policy: his ideas were seen as having so little relevance that it did not even seem necessary to mention his name when discussing the performance of the economy.”

Roger Backhouse (economist) (1951) British economist

Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman, ch.1 "Keynes Returns, but Which Keynes?" Capitalist revolutionary : John Maynard Keynes (2011).

World, Way, Idea, Appearance

“In brief, one can view organizing essentially as either an economic, behavioral, adaptive, mathematical, or decisional entity. In the aggregate most of these theories are concerned with structure, behavior, and strategy under conditions of change and complexity brought about by technology, environment, and human behavior.”

George R. Terry (1909–1979)

Source: Principles of Management, 1960, p. 314 (6th ed. 1971)

Behavior, Mathematics, Change

“Let us then in the brief prescribed moments simply consider the tax collector. Throughout all the ages he has been presented as the prototype of an honest and God-fearing churchgoer. Yet is seems to me that he is even more closely related to going to Communion, he who said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Is it not as if he were now going to Communion, he of whom it is said, “He went home to his house justified””

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

is it not as if he now went home from Communion!
Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 128
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

God, Age, Fear, Home

“It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Evaristo Carriego: A Book About Old-Time Buenos Aires

Evaristo Carriego (1930) Ch. 3

Books, Art, Parting

“Desolate—Life is so dreary and desolate—
Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan—
Holding and having its brief exultation—
Making its lonesome and low lamentation—
Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.”

Alice Cary (1820–1871) American writer

Life; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 189.

Life, Women, Men, Soul

“The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.”

Vladimir Lenin book The Development of Capitalism in Russia

Source: The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), Chapter Eight

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

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

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Life, Death, Pain, Family

“I have an action pending before the Legate [Titian's friend, Giovanni della Casa ] here against the brothers of [the church] San Spirito of whom I hear they mean to tire me out by delays. Their purpose is to obtain a commission or brief, by which my cause shall be transferred to another judge, who is their friend. I beg your Reverend Lordship, in remembrance of my services and in view of the importance of the case to give Monsignor Guiddicioni to understand that he may not pass anything contrary to me, but trust to the goodness and sufficiency of Monsignor the Legate [Titian's friend] so that the brothers shall not have it in their power to ill-use me and create delays contrary to duty and justice; the matter being public at Venice where everyone knows that these brethren are old and certain debtors to me for my works.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote in Titian's letter to Cardinale Farnese, Venice, 11 Dec. 1544, taken from the original in Ronchini's Relazioni, u. s., note to p. 6
The canon of the church San Spirito had refused the commissioned paintings, Titian was painting there. So he claims in this letter countenance and protection by the cardinal
1541-1576

Justice, Understanding

“In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

"The Art of Controversy" as translated by T. Bailey Saunders
Essays

World

“THE quiet of the evening hour
Was laid on every summer leaf;
That purple shade was on each flower,
At once so beautiful, so brief,
Only the aspen knew not rest,
But still, with an unquiet song,
Kept murmuring to the gentle west,
And cast a changeful shade along.”

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

The Aspen Tree from The London Literary Gazette (21st August 1830)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Flowers, Change, Summer

“Froude informs the Scottish youth
That parsons do not care for truth.
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries
History is a pack of lies.
What cause for judgements so malign?
A brief reflexion solves the mystery –
Froude believes Kingsley a divine,
And Kingsley goes to Froude for History.”

William Stubbs (1825–1901) English historian and clergyman

Letter to John Richard Green, December 17, 1871; cited from William Holden Hutton (ed.) Letters of William Stubbs (London: Archibald Constable, 1904) p. 162.

Truth, Youth, History

“The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 7
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Way

““The intent of the Goddess is neither known nor knowable. She makes us dance, male and female, in ever-converging gyres that bring us ultimately each to our own destiny, and that destiny is always the same and never escapable. She does not tell us why.”
“You said there were no outside forces ordering our lives. That there was nothing but chance and random occurrence.”
He shrugged.
“You did!”
“The Goddess is unknowable and her aims unfathomable, unpredictable, and ineluctable. They might as well be random. We live our brief lives in ignorance and then we die. That’s all.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 7 (p. 101)

Chance, Dance

“Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles;: and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all their needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532), Chapter 8.

Books, World, Exercises, Knowledge

“Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs October 18, 2001 http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t10192001_t1018bc.html <br class="br">2000s

“The language of the game is interesting. You can think of the pauses as caesuras, breaks between the lines. As a poem the game is composed of a number of short lines representing the pitches. The number of lines per batter form a stanza. Then there is a space. Sometimes the stanzas become breathless, rushing full paragraphs that build rapidly on each other until the poem-inning explodes. The poem lives for this sudden blossoming out of prosodic regularity. Should someone make a computer analysis of baseball prosody, I believe that they would come up with something close to the prosody of some great American lyrical epic, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, let’s say, or Doc Williams’s Patterson…. The game is definitely an epic … formed of many lyrical moments dependent on silences for their effectiveness. An unfolding story punctuated by brief emotional swellings.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“A Kind of Love,” The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed (1993).

Game, Thinking, Silence, Grass

“pleasure wouldn’t exist without the sharp bite of pain. Even the brief flash of orgasm is too intense to be absolutely pleasurable”

Alice Borchardt book The Silver Wolf

have you ever seen anyone who could take anything from me against my will, ever, anywhere, anytime?
The Silver Wolf

Pain, Pleasure

“Certainly, for a newspaper director, to have within arm's reach a Travaglio, about whom every starring actor, supporting cast and extra of Italian political life he is ready upon cold request to provide an inquiry brief refined in the most minute details is a nice comfort. But also a bit unsettling. The day I asked him if in that archive, into which no one is allowed to stick their nose, there were a brief with my name on it, Marco changed the subject.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Preface to Il Pollaio delle Libertà by Marco Travaglio, Vallecchi, 1995.
1950s - 1990s

Life, Star, Support, Change

“Whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, p. 409, as translated by Joseph Pryce

Money, Justice, Reality, Freedom

“Think about some of the highest status men in modern societies: sports stars, rock stars, politicians. At first glance, it might seem that these individuals provide further proof of men’s polygynous nature: They are often notorious for their sexual antics and infidelities (the famous scandal with Tiger Woods is a case in point)… However, the picture is not so simple. Many of these men are in the position where they have essentially an unlimited supply of potential sexual partners. Do all of them or even most of them eschew long-term relationships and opt instead for as many one-night stands and brief love affairs as possible? Sometimes, perhaps, but often they do not. These men — the most eligible bachelors, the highest status males in our species — often do what male chimpanzees never do: They fall in love and form long-term pair bonds.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), pp. 156-157

Love, Men, Star, Nature

“Never be so brief as to become obscure.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 52.

“We flew to Crawford that night and were up at dawn the next morning for what Laura had termed "the afterlife." I was struck by the calm. There was no CIA briefing to attend and no blue sheet from the Situation Room. I felt like I had gone from a hundred miles an hour to about ten. I had to force myself to relax. I would read the news and instinctively think about how we would have to respond. Then I remembered that decision was on someone else's desk.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 475

Thinking, Decision, Reading, Night

“There are other difficulties in the way of accepting imperialism as an explanation of Muslim hostility, even if we define imperialism narrowly and specifically, as the invasion and domination of Muslim countries by non-Muslims. If the hostility is directed against imperialism in that sense, why has it been so much stronger against Western Europe, which has relinquished all its Muslim possessions and dependencies, than against Russia, which still rules, with no light hand, over many millions of reluctant Muslim subjects and over ancient Muslim cities and countries? And why should it include the United States, which, apart from a brief interlude in the Muslim-minority area of the Philippines, has never ruled any Muslim population? The last surviving European empire with Muslim subjects, that of the Soviet Union, far from being the target of criticism and attack, has been almost exempt. Even the most recent repressions of Muslim revolts in the southern and central Asian republics of the USSR incurred no more than relatively mild words of expostulation, coupled with a disclaimer of any desire to interfere in what are quaintly called the "internal affairs" of the USSR and a request for the preservation of order and tranquillity on the frontier.
One reason for this somewhat surprising restraint is to be found in the nature of events in Soviet Azerbaijan. Islam is obviously an important and potentially a growing element in the Azerbaijani sense of identity, but it is not at present a dominant element, and the Azerbaijani movement has more in common with the liberal patriotism of Europe than with Islamic fundamentalism. Such a movement would not arouse the sympathy of the rulers of the Islamic Republic. It might even alarm them, since a genuinely democratic national state run by the people of Soviet Azerbaijan would exercise a powerful attraction on their kinsmen immediately to the south, in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Another reason for this relative lack of concern for the 50 million or more Muslims under Soviet rule may be a calculation of risk and advantage. The Soviet Union is near, along the northern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; America and even Western Europe are far away. More to the point, it has not hitherto been the practice of the Soviets to quell disturbances with water cannon and rubber bullets, with TV cameras in attendance, or to release arrested persons on bail and allow them access to domestic and foreign media. The Soviets do not interview their harshest critics on prime time, or tempt them with teaching, lecturing, and writing engagements. On the contrary, their ways of indicating displeasure with criticism can often be quite disagreeable.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Hostility, People, Way, Exercises

“We [ Kandinsky and Gabriele] came here [in Murnau, near Munich] together, on a brief visit, for the first time in 1908, in June, and we were both delighted with the town and its surroundings. In August, we then returned to Murnau for two months, with Jawlensky and Marianne Werefkin.... Kandinsky fell in love with it [with the house in Murnau where Gabriele lived, till 1962] and said: 'You must buy it for our old age'. So I bought it and we then made it our home until he returned to Russia in 1914. Jawlensky and Marianne [Werefkin] used to stay with us here, and the people of Murnau called it: 'The House of the Russians”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

only Gabriele Münter was German, of the four artists here mentioned
Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 115

Love, People, Age, Home

“If you ask how he is to know when one interest outweighs another, I can only answer that he must get his knowledge just as the legislator gets it, from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 113
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Life, Knowledge, Study

“Catholicity, the focus of this study, has long been recognized as an essential attribute of the Church of Christ and has been of particular concern to those churches which designate themselves as 'Catholic'. It is not possible to analyse catholicity without speaking of other traditional attributes of the Church: unity, holiness, and apostolicity. In the context of planetization, in which the cultures of diverse peoples are interacting and interpenetrating, catholicity takes on new and challenging aspects, decisive for the future of Christianity. Catholicity has ramifications in many different areas of ecclesiology. The present work, although brief, necessarily touches on many problems of historical and contemporary theology. But it does not pretend to be, even in outline, a complete ecclesiology.”

Avery Dulles (1918–2008) Catholic cardinal

Preface
The Catholicity of the Church

People, Problem, Decision, Study

“Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution.One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first.Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing.Third, the United States in now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism, as we learned tragically on September eleventh. We are opposed by Osama Bin Ladin and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former national security adviser for President George Bush senior, who stated and I quote, "An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize if not destroy the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken."Fourth, at a time when this country has a six-trillion dollar national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.Fifth, I am concerned about the problems with so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed? And what role will the US play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the regions who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speech on Iraq War Resolution in US House of Representatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM (9 October 2002) <br class="br">2000s

Women, Men, War, Children

“In the field of non-Euclidean geometry, Riemann… began by calling attention to a distinction that seems obvious once it is pointed out: the distinction between an unbounded straight line and an infinite line. The distinction between unboundedness and infiniteness is readily illustrated. A circle is an unbounded figure in that it never comes to an end, and yet it is of finite length. On the other hand, the usual Euclidean concept of a straight line is also unbounded in that it never reaches an end but is of infinite length.
…he proposed to replace the infiniteness of the Euclidean straight line by the condition that it is merely unbounded. He also proposed to adopt a new parallel axiom… In brief, there are no parallel lines. This … had been tried… in conjunction with the infiniteness of the straight line and had led to contradictions. However… Riemann found that he could construct another consistent non-Euclidean geometry.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 454

“I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

On the Red Scare and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life by Lynn Haney (2003). page 167. ISBN 0786714735.

Law, Question

“The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Address in Edinburgh, Scotland (8 September 1977)

Thinking

“The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant, there was something in their faces that didn't belong in that atmosphere of joviality and the little move they instinctively made that shielded them behind the others in back of them was involuntary enough to stretch a tight-lipped grin across my face that told them I could know.
Could.
From away back out of the years I got that feeling across my shoulders and up my spine that said things were starting to smell right and if you kept pushing the walls would go down and you could charge in and take them all apart until there was nothing left but the dirt they were made of.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Survival...Zero! (1970)

Men, Smile, Feeling, Boy

“It is unnecessary for our pupose to go into the sordid details of the Company's early administration of their Diwani of Bengal. In brief, it may be stated that for a decade the whole power of the organized State was directed to a single purpose ‑ plunder. It was a robber State that had come into existence, and Richard Becher, a servant of the Company, wrote to his masters in London on May 24, 1769, as follows: `It must give pain to an Englishman to have reason to think that since the accession of the Company to the Diwani the condition of the people of this country has been worse than it was before …. This fine country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government, is verging towards ruin.'…”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Pain, People, Thinking, Country

“The ploughman ploughs, the fisherman dreams of fish;
Aloft, the sailor, through a world of ropes
Guides tangled meditations, feverish
With memories of girls forsaken, hopes
Of brief reunions, new discoveries,
Past rum consumed, rum promised, rum potential.”

Michael Hamburger (1924–2007) British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic

Lines On Brueghel's "Icarus" http://www.themediadrome.com/content/poetry/hamburger_lines_on_icarus.htm

World, Dreams, Hope, Girl

“The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance under which Chinese Labour is now being carried on do not, in my opinion, constitute a state of slavery. A labour contract into which men enter voluntarily for a limited and for a brief period, under which they are paid wages which they consider adequate, under which they are not bought or sold and from which they can obtain relief on payment of seventeen pounds ten shillings, the cost of their passage, may not be a healthy or proper contract, but it cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.”

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

In the House of Commons, February 22, 1906 "King’s Speech (Motion for an Address)" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1906/feb/22/kings-speech-motion-for-an-address#column_555, as Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, repeating what he had said during the 1906 election campaign. This is the original context for terminological inexactitude, used simply literally, whereas later the term took on the sense of a euphemism or circumlocution for a lie. As quoted in Sayings of the Century (1984) by Nigel Rees. <br class="br">Early career years (1898–1929)

Men