Quotes about building
page 15

Pierre Bayle photo

“Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over, or, like Penelope, constantly undoing what it creates…. It is better suited to pulling things down than to building them up, and better at discovering what things are not, than what they are.”

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French philosopher and writer

Pierre Bayle, Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (Réponse aux questions d'un provincial, 1703). Quoted in Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle, trans. Denys Potts (Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 61

“The road ahead bears many challenges and now more than ever do the people of our community need a limited government that allows the people to do what they do best … to build their own wealth.”

Scribd:Robert Agresta Inauguration speech Quoted in Mayor & Council Meeting of January 2009. http://www.scribd.com/full/54569111?access_key=key-11gd71r31loly41co5n5

Gordon B. Hinckley photo

“I'm aware it's now a hostile city [New York City]. I feel I'm in school, actually. There are signs everywhere you don't get in any other city. When you see all the smokers outside a building in New York, I just think the building is full of bad-mannered people who haven't thought, "We'll give them a little room to smoke in."”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

That's what a reasonable person, a person with good manners, would do.
Interview with Marion Finlay, "Hockney on … politics, pleasure, and smoking in public places," FOREST Online (28 July 2004)
2000s

Jacob Maris photo

“When I am tired of long, straight roof lines, why should I not introduce a cupola, especially where the cloud formation requires its support?.. Why should I not build my own towns to suit myself?”

Jacob Maris (1837–1899) Dutch painter

as cited in Landscape Painting and Modern Dutch Artists, E. B. Greenshields https://ia902605.us.archive.org/6/items/landscapepaintin00greeuoft/landscapepaintin00greeuoft.pdf; The Copp, Clark, Co. Limited, Toronto, 1906, p. 150
Jacob Maris painted many 'Dutch City' paintings, in which he combined different parts of the cities Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Delft and Rotterdam

Francis Heylighen photo
H. R. McMaster photo
Fred Brooks photo
Peter Porter photo

“We cannot know what John of Leyden felt
Under the Bishop's tongs – we can only
Walk in temperate London, our educated city,
Wishing to cry as freely as they did who died
In the Age of Faith. We have our loneliness
And our regret with which to build an eschatology.”

Peter Porter (1929–2010) British poet

"The Historians Call Up Pain", first collected in Once Bitten, Twice Bitten (1961); cited from Edward Lucie-Smith and Philip Hobsbaum (eds.) A Group Anthology (London: Oxford University Press, 1963) p. 83.

Eliza Dushku photo

“I'd like to go back to Buffy, but I've been in a coma, I've jumped off a building, I've been in prison - how many other ways can they bring me back? But those guys are geniuses, so who knows?”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Eliza Strikes Back - Faith No More by David O'Donnell http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/01_nw-insider.html
She would come back in Cavalry.

George Fitzhugh photo
R. H. Tawney photo
Philip Johnson photo
Francis Escudero photo
Gary Johnson photo

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

Max Weber photo
Hilary of Poitiers photo
Sudhir Ruparelia photo

“If I owned half of the buildings in Kampala, I'd probably be god. Reports of my property holdings are quite frankly, grossly exaggerated. I don't own half of Kampala as people suggest, but I own quite a lot. And I've worked very hard for it…”

Sudhir Ruparelia (1956) Ugandan businessman

Interview http://www.ventures-africa.com/2013/04/africas-newest-billionaire-ugandan-tycoon-builds-1-1b-fortune-from-the-ground-up/ with Ventures Africa (2013)

Nycole Turmel photo

“We remember the Tommy Douglas quote Jack included in every email he sent: 'Courage my friends, 'tis never too late to build a better world.”

Nycole Turmel (1942) Canadian politician

friends, colleagues pay tribute to Layton http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/QPeriod/20110822/layton-tributes-110822/Family, August 22, 2011.

Charles Taze Russell photo
Kent Hovind photo

“Sir John Bowring, who negotiated the treaty of 1855, was able to secure the principle of extra-territoriality for British subjects, permission to build churches and exemption of all duty for import of opium.”

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

Moshe Dayan photo
Boris Yeltsin photo

“You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Televised speech (4 October 1993), as quoted in A Democracy of Despots (1995) by Donald Murray. p. 8
Variant translations: You can make a throne of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
1990s

Grady Booch photo

“The object-oriented paradigm is useful when building software systems where there is a hierarchy defined as a ranking or ordering of abstractions.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 54

“I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants, 28 April 2005

Kenneth N. Waltz photo

“To build a theory of international relations on accidents of geography and history is dangerous.”

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter IV, The Second Image, p. 107

André Malraux photo
Russell Brand photo
Charles Manson photo

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Dylan Moran photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“We have to all come together and create unity out of diversity that the destiny that [we ]build will be one that is right not just for now but for generations to come.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech (2013)

Clement Attlee photo
Marvin Minsky photo
Alex Salmond photo

“The people of Scotland want a Government based on principle but able to move with mainstream opinion to build consensus in the public interest.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

Jim Butcher photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“If we can take the time to mute the noise we’ve build around ourselves the rhythm of the heartbeats and the purpose may be clear.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Why Are The Drums So Silent"
Sunshine, Dust and The Messenger (2002)

Michael Ende photo

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.

'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Sri Chinmoy photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Elia M. Ramollah photo
Will Durant photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“A people divided over the right to vote can never build a Nation united.”

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

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Samuel Rutherford photo

“Build your nest upon no tree here, for ye see that God hath sold the forest to death.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 206.

Joseph Conrad photo

“Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe. Smoking quietly at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature. The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses. But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West Kensington. Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-gates. Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron roofs. This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.”

Hope Point to Tilbury / Gravesend
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband's corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….”

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

Abby Sunderland photo

“The swells were amazing! As big as three-story apartment buildings!”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p.. 153

Michael Swanwick photo
Saddam Hussein photo
Judy Chicago photo

“The basic line in any good verse is cadenced… building it around the natural breath structures of speech.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)

Albert Speer photo
Seth Lloyd photo
Walter Wick photo
Steve Jobs photo
James Martin (author) photo

“Enterprise engineering is an integrated set of disciplines for building an enterprise, its processes, and systems.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

Source: The great transition (1995), p. 58; As cited in: Jan Hoogervorst (2009, p. 9)

Vitruvius photo
Jim Butcher photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Jack Vance photo
Osama bin Laden photo
Serzh Sargsyan photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo

“A nation that fails to take pride in its past achievements or to take inspiration therefrom, can never build up the present or plan for the future. A weak nation can never attain greatness.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

“Object-oriented methods tend to focus on the lowest-level building block: the class and its objects.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

Frederick Douglass photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Lucio Russo photo
John Ruskin photo

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

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

Mika Waltari photo
Moshe Safdie photo
Timothy McVeigh photo

“You can't handle the truth. Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could reap this kind of hell?”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Dead Man Talking http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/22/mcveigh.usa, The Observer (April 22, 2001)
2000s

George W. Bush photo
James Howard Kunstler photo
John McCain photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Ken Wilber photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“Tell me the truth, girl: how does the man next door ship out trailer-loads of material from a building ten times too small to hold the stuff?”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

"He cuts prices."
"In Our Block" (1965); later in Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

Richard Nixon photo