Quotes about call
page 38

Thomas Jefferson photo

“After long and fruitless endeavors to effect the purposes of their mission and to obtain arrangements within the limits of their instructions, they concluded to sign such as could be obtained and to send them for consideration, candidly declaring to the other negotiators at the same time that they were acting against their instructions, and that their Government, therefore, could not be pledged for ratification….
Whether a regular army is to be raised, and to what extent, must depend on the information so shortly expected. In the mean time I have called on the States for quotas of militia, to be in readiness for present defense, and have, moreover, encouraged the acceptance of volunteers; and I am happy to inform you that these have offered themselves with great alacrity in every part of the Union. They are ordered to be organized and ready at a moment's warning to proceed on any service to which they may be called, and every preparation within the Executive powers has been made to insure us the benefit of early exertions.”

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

Thomas Jefferson's Seventh State of the Union Address (27 October 1807). Description of the negotiations and rejected treaty of James Monroe and William Pinkney with Britain over maritime rights, and subsequent negotiations over the British sinking of the American ship Chesapeake, leading to an American embargo (The Embargo Act).
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Ilana Mercer photo

“Violent Jihad is not an ideology, as our Moderate Muslim friends keep calling it. Jihad is a pillar of a faith. That faith is Islam.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

A Muslim Ban Won't Kill Americans -- Accepting Them Might http://www.unz.com/imercer/a-muslim-ban-is-logical-moral-even-libertarian/," The Unz Review, November 2, 2017.
2010s, 2017

Richard Leakey photo

“It is impossible to imagine existence in the absence of subjective sensation we call reflective consciousness.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Matt Dillon photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Sara García photo

“Spanish for, One day I got tired and I called him and told him my son come here, do not believe that being a star consists of being late for calls, being a star means arriving on time for his call, doing his duty, giving everything what you have to praise the public and come out triumphant as far as you can, that is to be a star but not to be late for the calls”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Un día me canse y lo llame y le dije óigame hijito venga para acá, no se crea usted que ser estrella consiste en llegar tarde a los llamados, el ser estrella consiste en llegar a tiempo a su llamado, cumplir con su deber, dar todo lo que se tiene para alagar al publico y salir triunfante hasta donde se pueda, eso es ser estrella pero no llegar tarde a los llamados.
Sara responding after being asked about some passages of Pedro Infante's life in his artistic career that she remembered with more heart and couldn't forget. SARA GARCIA PARTE 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HyjqMuf5Vs

Northrop Frye photo

“Everything that happens in the Old Testament is a "type" or adumbration of something that happens in the New Testament, and the whole subject is therefore called typology, though it is a typology in a special sense.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Four, p. 79

Ray Harryhausen photo
Al Sharpton photo

“When he said he was going to stop the march and called it a hate march, I think that was very provocative. The Mayor's statements have created a climate that could possibly lead to some kind of confrontation.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

News conference (18 August 1999), prior to the second Million Youth March[citation needed]

Will Cuppy photo
Hans Arp photo
Aron Ra photo
Pat Conroy photo

“Here is how my father appeared to me as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come crawling out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought we were being raised by Zeus and Athena. After Happy Hour my father would drive his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children. He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol, and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward the home place. My sister, Carol, stationed at the door, would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper toward the door to watch his entry. The door would be flung open and the strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter pilot!" He would then line his seven kids up against the wall and say, "Who's the greatest of them all?" "You are, O Great Santini, you are." "Who knows all, sees all, and hears all?" "You do, O Great Santini, you do."”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

We were not in the middle of a normal childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we would ever have. For all we knew other men were coming home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand by for a chiropractor".
Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

John Harvey Kellogg photo
Rush Limbaugh photo

“It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anticapitalist, pro-Marxist communists.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Speaking about Iraq War protests (February 2003), quoted in — [Hunt, Jim, They Said What?: Astonishing Quotes on American Democracy, Power, and Dissent, Polipoint Press, 2009, 22, 23398015M, 9780981709161, 0981709168, 2009023037, 313653904, [JK31.H88 2009]]

Steven Chu photo

“I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, “That’s nice — and when are you going to see me next?””

Steven Chu (1948) American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate

NY Times, April 16, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19wwln-q4-t.html?_r=4

Osama bin Laden photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
Ludwig Van Beethoven photo
Carl Sagan photo
Bernhard Riemann photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth - sinners! It is a sin to call man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, lions! and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta, 1985, Vol I. p. 11. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1996). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“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)
2000s

Jacques Ellul photo
Kent Hovind photo

“Eight simple steps of what I think caused the Flood and explain all these strange phenomena on the planet. Then we'll go into a little bit more detail and then we'll close this down.
1. Noah and the animals got safely in the ark.
2. A 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space. As it was breaking up, some of the fragments got caught and became the rings around the planets. They made the craters on the Moon, the craters on some of the planets, and what was left over came down and splattered on top of the North and South pole.
3. This super cold snow fell on the poles mostly, burying the mammoths, standing up.
4. The dump of ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep. The spreading ice caused the Ice Age effects. The glacier effects that we see. It buried the mammoths. It made the earth wobble around for a few thousand years. And it made the canopy collapse, which used to protect the earth. And it broke open the fountains of the deep.
5. During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals would settle out, and dead plants, and all get buried. They would become coal, if they were plants, and oil if they're animals. And those are still found today in huge graveyards. Fossils found in graveyards. Oil found in big pockets under the ground.
6. During the last few months of the flood, the unstable plates of the earth would shift around. Some places lifted up; other places sank down. That's going to form ocean basins and mountain ranges. And the runoff would cause incredible erosion like the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks.
7. Over the next few hundred years, the ice caps would slowly melt back retreating to their current size. The added water from the ice melt would raise the ocean level creating what's called a continental shelf. It would also absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which allows for radiation to get in which is going to shorten people's life spans. And in the days of Peleg, it finally took affect.
8. The earth still today shows the effects of this devastating flood.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Jonah Goldberg photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“I say that this Bill has been changed in its most vital features, and yet it has always been found perfect by hon. Members behind the Treasury Bench. The Prime Minister [William Gladstone] calls "black," and they say, "it is good": the Prime Minister calls "white," and they say "it is better." It is always the voice of a god. Never since the time of Herod has there been such slavish adulation.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers, cries of "Progress!" and "Judas!"
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1893/jul/27/committee-progress-new-clauses-26th-july#column_724 in the House of Commons (27 July 1893) against the Irish Home Rule Bill
1890s

James K. Morrow photo

““A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.”
“Golden ages rarely return,” I said “especially if they never existed.””

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 366)

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Harry Emerson Fosdick photo
Baba Amte photo
George Peacock photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“Fortunately, President Obama and most world leaders understand that the idea that Iran's goal is not to develop nuclear weapons is ridiculous. Yet incredibly, some are prepared to accept an idea only slightly less preposterous: That we should accept a world in which the Ayatollahs have atomic bombs. Sure, they say, Iran is cruel, but it's not crazy. It's detestable but it's deterrable. Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the belief that the world's most dangerous regime won't use the world's most dangerous weapons. And I promise you that as Prime Minister, I will never gamble with the security of Israel. From the beginning, the Ayatollah regime has broken every international rule and flouted every norm. It has seized embassies, targeted diplomats and sent its own children through mine fields. It hangs gays and stones women. It supports Assad's brutal slaughter of the Syrian people. Iran is the world's foremost sponsor of terror. It sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and terrorists throughout the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Iran's proxies have dispatched hundreds of suicide bombers, planted thousands of roadside bombs, and fired over twenty thousand missiles at civilians. Through terror from the skies and terror on the ground, Iran is responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. In 1983, Iran's proxy Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 240 American servicemen. In the last decade, its been responsible for murdering and maiming American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just a few months ago, it tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in a restaurant just a few blocks from here. The assassins didn't care that several Senators and members of Congress would have been murdered in the process. Iran accuses the American government of orchestrating 9/11, and it denies the Holocaust. Iran brazenly calls for Israel's destruction, and they work for its destruction – each day, every day. This is how Iran behaves today, without nuclear weapons. Think of how they will behave tomorrow, with nuclear weapons. Iran will be even more reckless and far more dangerous.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference http://www.aipac.org/pc/videos/2012/monday-gala-plenary/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu (March 2012).
2010s, 2012

George Eliot photo

“In the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party was the party of overt white supremacy and even called itself 'The White Man's Party' into the 1920s.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

2010s, 2014, How Two Historians Responded To Racism In Mississippi (December 2014)

Bernard Cornwell photo
Han Han photo
François Englert photo

“At the ULB, Brout and I initiated a research group in fundamental interactions, that is, in the search for the general laws of nature. Joined by brilliant students, many of them becoming world renowned physicists, our group contributed to the many fields at the frontier of the challenges facing contemporary physics. While the mechanism discovered in 1964 was developed all over the world to encode the nature of weak interactions in a "Standard Model," our group contributed to the understanding of strong interactions and quark confinement, general relativity and cosmology. There we introduced the idea of a primordial exponential expansion of the universe, later called inflation, which we related to the origin of the universe itself, a scenario, which I still think may possibly be conceptually the correct one. During these developments, our group extended our contacts with other Belgian universities and got involved in many international collaborations.
With our group and many other collaborators I analysed fractal structures, supergravity, string theory, infinite Kac-Moody algebras and more generally all tentative approaches to what I consider as the most important problem in fundamental interactions: the solution to the conflict between the classical Einsteinian theory of gravitation, namely general relativity, and the framework of our present understanding of the world, quantum theory.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

excerpt[François Englert - Biographical, Nobel Prize in Physics (nobelprize.org), 2013, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/englert-bio.html]

Leo Tolstoy photo

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

Edward Fredkin photo

“Cellular automata are now being used to model varied physical phenomena normally modelled by wave equations, fluid dynamics, Ising models, etc. We hypothesize that there will be found a single cellular automaton rule that models all of microscopic physics; and models it exactly. We call this field DM, for digital mechanics.”

Edward Fredkin (1934) American physicist and computer scientist, a pioneer of digital physics

[An informational process based on reversible universal cellular automata, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 45, 1–3, September 1990, 254–270, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016727899090186S, 10.1016/0167-2789(90)90186-S]

Adam Gopnik photo
Pat Condell photo

“It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims — thanks for asking — I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West — I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

The Enemy Within http://youtube.com/watch?v=NUiysSau8Qk (18 July 2010)]
2010

Mitt Romney photo

“So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn't get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church's pension fund to invest, but I didn't. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we'd ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
[2012-08-30, gopconvention2012, Mitt Romney: Introduction (video), YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cGyPwt5UI]
2012

“To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all.... on the contrary it is realism of our time.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

1950s, Conversations With Artists, 1957

Edmund Burke photo
Franz Marc photo
Zach Galifianakis photo
Sandra Fluke photo

“Attacking me and women who use contraception by calling us prostitutes and worse cannot silence us.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (March 13, 2012).
Articles

A.C. Cuza photo

“And the venality of those Judaized is incapable of explaining anti-Semitism as a social phenomenon, we will call it the anti-Semitic theory.”

A.C. Cuza (1857–1947) Romanian politician

From "Ştiinţa antisemitismului" ("The Science of Anti-Semitism"), Apararea Nationala ("The National Defense") No. 16, Nov. 15, 1922, lst year.

Henri Lefebvre photo
Richard Henry Lee photo

“The military forces of a free country may be considered under three general descriptions — 1. The militia. 2. the navy — and 3. the regular troops — and the whole ought ever to be, and understood to be, in strict subordination to the civil authority; and that regular troops, and select corps, ought not to be kept up without evident necessity. Stipulations in the constitution to this effect, are perhaps, too general to be of much service, except merely to impress on the minds of the people and soldiery, that the military ought ever to be subject to the civil authority, &c. But particular attention, and many more definite stipulations, are highly necessary to render the military safe, and yet useful in a free government; and in a federal republic, where the people meet in distinct assemblies, many stipulations are necessary to keep a part from transgressing, which would be unnecessary checks against the whole met in one legislature, in one entire government. — A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and render regular troops in a great measure unnecessary. The powers to form and arm the militia, to appoint their officers, and to command their services, are very important; nor ought they in a confederated republic to be lodged, solely, in any one member of the government. First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. I am persuaded, I need not multiply words to convince you of the value and solidity of this principle, as it respects general liberty, and the duration of a free and mild government: having this principle well fixed by the constitution, then the federal head may prescribe a general uniform plan, on which the respective states shall form and train the militia, appoint their officers and solely manage them, except when called into the service of the union, and when called into that service, they may be commanded and governed by the union. This arrangement combines energy and safety in it; it places the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community, and not in the hands of men destitute of property, of principle, or of attachment to the society and government, who often form the select corps of peace or ordinary establishments: by it, the militia are the people, immediately under the management of the state governments, but on a uniform federal plan, and called into the service, command, and government of the union, when necessary for the common defence and general tranquility. But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. As a farther check, it may be proper to add, that the militia of any state shall not remain in the service of the union, beyond a given period, without the express consent of the state legislature.”

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) American statesman

Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 169 (1788)

Charlotte Brontë photo
Bill Downs photo
Prem Rawat photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Giacomo Casanova photo
Jack Vance photo

“I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say.”

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 10, section 3 (p. 954)

Nicholas Roerich photo
Camille Paglia photo
William Crookes photo

“The so-called Al-Qaeda is, in my opinion, an illusion. It is a bunch of organizations which used to be supervised by the CIA, and used to commit crimes in some Arab and Islamic countries.”

Riyad Naasan Agha (1947) former minister of culture of Syria

CIA and Mossad behind London Bombings and All Other Bombings in Europe http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1405 March 2007.

Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pythagoras, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 8: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

Murray Walker photo
Madison Grant photo
Yukio Mishima photo
Bill Hybels photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Sathya Sai Baba photo
Daniel Buren photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo
Bill Pearl photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“…for thy huggest thy bolster, which men call a Dutch wife in some parts.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

John Glenn photo

“To me, there is no greater calling … If I can inspire young people to dedicate themselves to the good of mankind, I've accomplished something.”

John Glenn (1921–2016) American astronaut and politician

On inspiring others to public service, as quoted in "John Glenn had the stuff U.S. heroes are made of http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/02/20/loc_john_glenn_had_stuff.html" by Howard Wilkinson, in The Cincinnati Enquirer (20 February 2002).

Noam Chomsky photo
Abby Sunderland photo

“Just like that, a single phone call erased one possible, horrendous future—and replaced it with the bright certainty that God had answered the prayers of thousands and that their beloved Abby was coming home.”

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

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 179

Aron Ra photo

“Godzilla 2014 missed the mark primarily because it is not an origins story. Gojira was a monster of our own making. Similarly Gino was supposed to impose nature’s response to our meddling. But G2014 pre-existed genetic modifications and nuclear testing. We have no responsibility for him, nor the mutos either. They come from a time that never was, millions of years ago, “when the world was much more radioactive than it is today”. The story implies that mutos ‘eat radiation’. In the film, they can track it through every kind of protective shielding, and they eat nuclear devices like fruit -metallic peal and all. I guess millions of years ago, nuclear missiles grew on trees, and kaiju were common even though they’re absent from the fossil record -with only one top-secret exception. As an advocate of science education with a deep interest in paleontology, and as someone who would rather see humans held accountable for what they do to their environment, this film was very disappointing. As an atheist, it was even worse. The star of the film not only has impossible dimensions and an inexplicable power, he is also immortal. He’s been alive forever, and spends all his time sleeping. He awakens only he senses submarines or the arrival of other kaiju, because he has a mission to protect humanity. G2014 put the ‘god’ in Godzilla. The director called him a god, and some of the characters in the movie describe him as a god too. So he’s not a lizard, not a dinosaur, but one of the Lovecraftian great old ones like Cthulhu. In a video I made years ago, I too joked about Godzilla being a god. But it was still somewhat disappointing to see him depicted that way.”

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

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

Scott Joplin photo

“What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians.”

Scott Joplin (1868–1917) American composer, musician, and pianist

"School of Ragtime" (1908)

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo