Quotes about building
page 6

“These houses had been plunked down with an alarming randomness -- unevenly spaced, on crooked lines, like whoever had designed the place had said, "We'll just follow this cat, and wherever he sits down, we'll build something.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Cats, Housing

“Jules: Why are you on the floor?
Emma: I've heard roling out of bed in the morning helps you build up resistance to surprise attacks.
Jules: Oh yeah? What does screaming "holy crap!" do?
Emma: That part's optional.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Help, Parting

“Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, Happiness

“It's like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That's how we keep going.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Love

“How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: Marilyn: Her Life In Own Words

World, For women

“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Thinking, Heart, Personality

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Life, Art

“We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Future, Help

“Using supernatural beings to build the perfect weapon? Intriguing idea."

"Not really," I said. "They did it on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A sub-par season. I slept through half the episodes.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Idea, Perfection, Season

“clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Science flies men to the moon, religion flies men into buildings.”

Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) American philosopher

In The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (2009), 59. As attributed on a web page using the quote as a title at web site of Richard Dawkins Foundation.
Variant: Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

Men, Religion, Science

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Thinking

“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you saybut you never come through.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“I would never build a lawn trimmer," Myrnin said. "What did the lawn ever do to me?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

“I'll build mine tomorrow," Horace said through a mouthful of food. "This is excellent, Will! When I have grandchildren, I'll name them all after you!”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Halt's Peril

Food

“Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

Thinking, Strong

“It was the building from the drawing in my brain.
And if you don’t think that’s a weird sentence, maybe you should reread it.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Thinking, Drawing

“Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

“Babe, you've destroyed a car, burned down two buildings, stapled a guy's nuts, and you have sixteen stitches in your leg. Take a night off. Have a glass of wine, watch some television, and go to bed early."
-Ranger”

Janet Evanovich book Lean Mean Thirteen

Source: Lean Mean Thirteen

Cars, Guy, Wine, Night

“When a man starts out to build a world,
He starts first with himself”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

World

“Fine. Let’s begin with something even you can’t screw up.” – Death
“Way to build up my crappy confidence there. You should volunteer for the suicide hotline.” – Nick
“What makes you think I don’t?” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Way, Confidence, Thinking

“Trying to build myself up with the fact that I have done things right that were even good and have had moments that were excellent but the bad is heavier to carry around and feel have no confidence.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

Feeling, Confidence

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

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

2000s, 2001, I Can Hear You, the Rest of the World Hears You (September 2001)

People, World

“To refer to the Church as a building is to call people 2 x 4's.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

People

“I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud -
I build it bright to see, -
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Dreams, Housing

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Children, World, Light

“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Time

“Sam screamed the fun scream, and there it was. Downtown lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. and in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Light

“She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling

“But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Suicide

“You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

World, Personality

“For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: The Shoemaker's Wife

Love, Dreams, Star

“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?”

Ismail Kadare book Chronicle in Stone

Source: Chronicle in Stone

World, Animals

“To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

World

“Trust is a fragile thing - difficult to build, easy to break. It cannot be bargained for. Only if it is freely given it can be expected in return”

Peter Lerangis book The Sword Thief

Source: The Sword Thief

“If I have to build a big company by mistreating other people then the Bible says WOE to me. I don't know what that is, but I don't want any of it.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

People

“But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.”

Anne Sexton book Live or Die

"Wanting to Die"
Live or Die (1966)

Suicide

“Why couldn’t they just give the human female a bag of money and then pee on the building so that everyone would know it was theirs?”

Anne Bishop book Vision in Silver

Source: Vision in Silver

Money

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Clod and the Pebble, st. 3
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Love, Hell, Loss, Joy

“There is no real security except for whatever you build inside yourself.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer

Faith, Evil, Gratitude, Birthday

“Heaven is not gained by a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies;
And we mount to its summit round by round.”

Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881) Novelist, poet, editor

Variant: Heaven is not gained by a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies;
And we mount to its summit round by round.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 564.

“Think back a minute to the definition of a rentier: someone who uses their control over something that already exists in order to increase their own wealth. The feudal lord of medieval times did that by building a tollgate along a road and making everybody who passed by pay. Today’s tech giants are doing basically the same thing, but transposed to the digital highway.”

Rutger Bregman (1988) Dutch journalist, writer and historian

"No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there"

Thinking, Time, Wealth

“Darab Khan who had been sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and to demolish the great temple of the place, attacked the place on the 8th March/5th Safar, and slew the three hundred and odd men who made a bold defence, not one of them escaping alive. [16 October 1678] The temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood were demolished…'On Sunday, the 25th May/24th Rabi. S., Khan Jahan Bahadur came from Jodhpur, after demolishing the temples and bringing with himself some cart-loads of idols, and had audience of the Emperor, who highly praised him and ordered that the idols, which were mostly jewelled, gold en, silver y, bronze, copper or stone, should be cast in the yard (jilaukhanah) of the Court and under the steps of the Jam'a mosque, to be trodden on. They remained so for some time and at last their very names were lost' [25 May 1679]…Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana's palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers Twenty machator Rajputs who were sitting in the temple vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images…..”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: “Darab Khan was sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and demolish the great temple of that place.” (M.A. 171.) “He attacked the place on 8th March 1679, and pulled down the temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood.”(M.A. 173.) Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Life, Men, Age, Strong

“I think there was a layer of several inches of crystal clear ice, probably in the form of metallic hydrogen, about 10-20 miles up. It could have been held up by the earth’s magnetic field or the internal air pressure like a giant inflatable building or even helped by the centrifugal force of the spinning earth. It could also have had its own spin to help suspend it. Maybe a combination of effects.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 44

Thinking, Help

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, War, Children, People

“We were clear that we had to be internationally competitive and were passionate about building competencies that were the best in the world even when the tariffs were very high. It was an obsession with me to beat the Taiwanese and the Koreans who dominated the polyester business in the '70s.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on how Reliance was built

World, Business, Passion

“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Double Trouble", pp. 38–40
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Books, Hope, Imagination, Nature

“You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.”

Norman Borlaug (1914–2009) American biologist

From "Eat This!", an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!; Quoted in: Gary Beene (2011) The Seeds We Sow: Kindness that Fed a Hungry World. p. 9

World, Peace

“Physical health is not a commodity to be bargained for. Nor can it be swallowed in the form of drugs and pills — it has to be earned through sweat. It is something that we must build up.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

Health

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“Jevons saw the kettle boil and cried out with the delighted voice of a child; Marshall too had seen the kettle boil and sat down silently to build an engine.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 188

“These are areas of unparalleled natural beauty to be handed to our children undisturbed. We are merely custodians. You would not build a toll plaza and an administration block in the Grand Canyon or next to the Victoria Falls or within any other World Heritage Site.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

24 February 2012, Cape Argus (p5), in response to the building of a toll plaza on Chapman’s Peak, South Africa.
Speaking & Features

Children, World, Beauty, Nature

“Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system. It is like a set of trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and persistently encourages our terror of time.
…
It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion.”

Robert Grudin (1938) American writer

Time and the Art of Living (1982)

God, Feeling, Knowledge, Science

“And just so — if I could, because he insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made — New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. You had two one hundred, you had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. I saw them come down. Thousands of people killed, and the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and in construction. I was down there, and I've never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death — nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full Transcript of the Sixth Republican Debate in Charleston http://time.com/4182096/republican-debate-charleston-transcript-full-text/, Time (14 January 2016). <br class="br">2010s, 2016, January

Love, Death, People, World

“The winter oak… is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre… and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both… take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus… are of great service from their stiffness. …they are a convenient material to use in carving.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 9

Water, Winter

“A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854).

Children, Family, Housing

“Far down the street I saw the building where Vera lived. Hanging from the wall, like a man crucified, was the bed.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Twelve

“I do a dance to make the rain come,
Smile to keep the sky from falling down, down, down, down.
Collect the love that I've been given
Build a nest for us to sleep in here
You know it's real.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"All My Stars Aligned"
Marry Me (2007)

Love, Smile, Sleep, Dance

“It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

The Case for India (1931)

“There comes a time in the life of every nation when it stands at the cross-roads of history and must choose which way to go. But for us there need be no difficulty or hesitation, no looking to right or left. Our way is straight and clear—the building up of a socialist democracy at home with freedom and prosperity for all, and the maintenance of world peace and friendship with all nations.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

First broadcast as Prime Minister, on 11 June 1964 http://lbsim.ac.in/about-shastriji.aspx?mpgid=2&pgid1=10&pgidtrail=11

Life, Friendship, World, Peace

“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346 <br class="br">1980s

Life, Game

“The art of marketing is largely the art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will be probably be viewed as a commodity.”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Philip Kotler (1999), as cited in: Dennis Adcock, ‎Al Halborg, ‎Caroline Ross (2001), Marketing: Principles and Practice. p. 208

Art

“Those without a chip will not be allowed in high security places like military installations, prisons, government buildings of all sorts and of course airports, subways, trains and later cars and trucks. Eventually, after some major planned crisis of course, it will become mandatory and anyone who does not take this chip will not only not be allowed to do those things, they will become “enemies of the state” for “disrupting the economy” or “threatening public security” or whatever phrase they can dream up to excuse arresting, imprisoning and eventually executing those who don't cooperate. Wars and civil unrest have always been great “cover” for implementing grabs for power.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), pp. 140-141

War, Dreams, Cars, Training

“[Apple] brings to mind the idea of a corporate edifice complex. That's where a successful company builds a monument to its greatness just as it is losing touch with the realities of its market. … The construction of a $5 billion palatial headquarters when the company is — at best — between hit products does reflect a certain corporate arrogance.”

Peter Cohan American businessman

Is Apple the Next Dell? http://forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/04/25/is-apple-the-next-dell in Forbes (25 April 2013)

Idea, Reality, Success

“When a new building block is discovered, the result is usually a range of innovations.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 2. Adaptive Systems, p. 62

“I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.
The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

World, Fear, Way, Imagination

“I am thinking of airtight windows! No other country can build such airtight and beautiful windows.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Ich denke an dichte Fenster! Kein anderes Land kann so dichte und so schöne Fenster bauen.
Answering the question what emotions Germany arouses in her, Interview in the BILD-Zeitung on November 29, 2004
2004

Beauty, Thinking, Country

“The thing about the Army Corps of Engineers is that they don’t build things very well.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 15 (p. 198)

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“We reduce the complexity of the variety of the world in experiments whose results are validated by their repeatability, and we may build knowledge by the refutation of hypotheses.”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 51 cited in: Rosário Macário (2011) Managing Urban Mobility Systems. p. 52

World, Knowledge

“I suspect that some of you would say ‘A civilized nation is one that has railways, modern industry, organized army, tank, aircraft, etc., and an uncivilized nation is one that does not possess such things.’ Or you would say that a civilized nation is one whose cities … have wide and paved streets, with multi-storey buildings, and so on.’ Civilized nations, of course, do have such things, but I submit that these are products of civilization, not its essence. The essence of civilization is that people are mature, and the clearest sign of their maturity is that they observe the law.”

Mohammad Ali Foroughi (1877–1942) Iranian politician

Radio broadcast (October 1941)

People, Law

“We in Zaire spent a lot of time building a strong central state which could resist Soviet aggression quickly and effectively. This enabled us to decisively make the uniform decisions that were necessary to fulfill our national defense obligations and our commitments to the United States.”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

George B. N. Ayittey, Africa in Chaos, p. 113

Decision, Strong, Time

“It's an exciting time to be a woman. When I was a kid the "power of women" or "women power" was a phrase that seemed to carry on it a call of action. I dream of what could be in the future. The women that I grew up around they they seem to feel their power but they also seem to shy away from the full expression of it, or they expressed in unthreatening ways that were not disruptive. When I was a young women in Hollywood if you were a woman focused on building your career you were labeled "ambitious", and it was a bad word. So I was decidedly not. And adopted a kind of an, 'Ooh, how did this happen to me?'”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

approach. I believed that wanting my success was somehow a bad thing.

Women, Dreams, Way, Feeling

“If I build a castle of love [i. e., mystical knowledge]
for the suffering people, they kill me!
If I don’t build I die!”

Jahonotin Uvaysiy (1781–1845) Uzbekistani poet

(Uvaysiy 1980:58) Quoted in Female Celebrations in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan: The Power of Cosmology in Musical Rites http://raziasultanova.co.uk/YTM%2008-Sultanova-FINAL.pdf by Razia Sultanova, in The 2008 Yearbook For Traditional Music, Volume 40, page 14

Love, People, Knowledge, Suffering

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Wisdom, Men, Hostility

“Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world’s most “perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea’s past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Get Ready For Selective Amnesia (November 2015)

World, Family, History, Past

“Science, which is the logic of nature, demands proportion between the house and its foundation. Theology sometimes builds weighty structures on a doubtful base.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Nature, Science, Housing

“Set out to build a company and make a contribution, not an empire and a fortune.”

David Packard (1912–1996) American electrical engineer, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, businessman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense,…

Source: Bill & Dave, 2007, p. 394

“For so many who had been driven from their office buildings, these five weeks were only the prelude to spending months cloistered in cramped and inadequate office space while they advised senators on some of the toughest calls they would ever have to make … As the gap widened between perceptions of fear or danger in Washington and in much of the rest of the country, I believe it had a significant influence on why representatives reacted to terrorism concerns in a way that was fundamentally different from most of their constituents.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

On the effects of the 2001 anthrax attacks, from While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, as quoted in [Moyer, Justin, The speed read: ‘While America Sleeps,’ by Russ Feingold, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-while-america-sleeps-by-russ-feingold/2012/02/28/gIQATdIszR_story.html?utm_term=.8231b88d08d1, 20 August 2018, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012]
2012

Fear, Way, Country

“Intellectual leadership in the eighteenth century passes from France to economically, socially and politically more progressive England. The great romantic movement starts here about the middle of the century, but the enlightenment also receives its decisive impulse from this country. The French writers of the period see in English institutions the quintessence of progress and build up a legend around English liberalism—a legend which only partly corresponds to reality. The displacement of France as the upholder of culture by England proceeds hand in hand with the decadence of the French royal house as the leading European power and, hence, the eighteenth century sees the ascent of England both in politics and in the arts and sciences.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

Source: The Social History of Art, Volume III. Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism, 1999, Chapter 2. The New Reading Public

Art, Reality, Decision, Science

“I am grateful that they have worked together to make it safer and stronger to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I'm grateful for the relationship of respect and partnership she and the president have enjoyed. And the signal that sends to the rest of the world, that democracy does not have a -- have to be a blood sport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2012-09-05 Democratic National Convention Speech in Charlotte, North Carolina http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/transcript-bill-clinton-speech-at-dnc/ <br class="br">2010s

World, Democracy, Sport, Partnership

“By 2050 Egypt’s population will increase from 90 million to 138 million. The population of Nigeria will increase from 186 million to 390 million. Uganda’s population will rise from 38 million to 93 million, and Ethiopia’s from 102 to 228 million. It is János Martonyi who usually warns us – and how right he is – that projecting current trends into the future requires caution, because in history there are always events which can change their course. But as we cannot prepare for unforeseeable events in the future, common sense tells us that we must project these figures into the future, and we must prepare for them. They clearly show that the real pressure on our continent will come from Africa. Today we are talking about Syria, today we are talking about Libya; but in fact we must prepare for the population pressure coming from the region beyond Libya – and its magnitude will be far greater than anything we have experienced so far. This warns us that we must be steely in our determination. Border protection – particularly when we need to build a fence and detain people – is something which is difficult to justify in aesthetic terms, but believe me, you cannot protect the borders – and thus ourselves – with flowers and cuddly toys. We must face this fact.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/viktor-orban-s-presentation-at-the-27h-balvanyos-summer-open-university-and-student-camp, 26 July 2016

People, History, Flowers, Sense

“The basis of science is the empirical method, which uses the senses to build up a picture of the world; but science tells us that our senses have evolved to help us get by, not to show us the world as it is. Science is only a systematic examination of our impressions, and in the end all each of us has left are our own sensations … The end-result of the empirical method, then, is that each individual is left alone with their own experiences. We can escape this solitude, Balfour suggested, only if we accept that there is a divine mind.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Cross-correspondences (p. 69-70)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

World, Sense, Solitude, Science

“On the other end of this process, there are the finished forms which I sometimes portray at night with sporadic illumination. The obscurity isolates them and the light accentuates their volumes. My focus is on creating images of the buildings which have a sense of being unreal and that have a certain autonomy. Small and big parts of the building can now stand on their own and become independent characters.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

In: Hélène Binet’s ‘Forming | Portrait – Architecture of Zaha Hadid’ @ Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery http://sandsof.com/2012/11/24/helene-binets-forming-portrait-architecture-of-zaha-hadid-gabrielle-ammann-gallery/, sandsof.com, 24 November 2012

Sense, Light, Parting, Night

“Dershowitz: The Israeli military then did an analysis, and they discovered, of course, that when they dropped that bomb and killed those people, they had no idea that those people were in the building, and the people who made the decision to drop the bomb were criticized and disciplined for it. The point I make is, when they knew, for sure, that family members were there, they withheld doing it. That doesn't deny the fact that on occasion they will accidentally make a decision that's wrong. The difference is deliberateness, willfulness…
Norman Finkelstein: …That was a nice fairy tale, dropping a 1 ton bomb on a densely populated civilian neighborhood in Gaza, and they had no idea that civilians would be there. And then he goes on to fantasy #2, that those who did it were disciplined. Really, Mr. Dershowitz? I'd love the evidence for that. I mean, if I could get $10,000 for every one of your fraudulent statements…”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Never Before Aired: Watch PART II of the debate between Finkelstein and Dershowitz http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=109 (archive located here http://web.archive.org/web/20120814094352/http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/never-before-aired-watch-part-ii-of-the-debate-between-finkelstein-and-dershowitz/ is a continuation of part 1 http://web.archive.org/web/20120910213955/http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/24/scholar_norman_finkelstein_calls_professor_alan) published 2003-9-24

Love, People, Family, Idea