Quotes about call
page 92

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“The shortcoming thus acknowledged to attach to the content turns out at the same time to be a shortcoming in respect of form. Spinoza puts substance at the head of his system, and defines it to be the unity of thought and extension, without demonstrating how he gets to this distinction, or how he traces it back to the unity of substance. The further treatment of the subject proceeds in what is called the mathematical method. Definitions and axioms are first laid down: after them comes a series of theorems, which are proved by an analytical reduction of them to these unproved postulates. Although the system of Spinoza, and that even by those who altogether reject its contents and results, is praised for the strict sequence of its method, such unqualified praise of the form is as little justified as an unqualified rejection of the content. The defect of the content is that the form is not known as immanent in it, and therefore only approaches it as an outer and subjective form. As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, Substance, as the universal negative power, is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive subsistence of its own.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Baruch Spinoza photo

“From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of Spinoza. The charge will be seen to be unfounded if we remember that his system, instead of denying God, rather recognises that he alone really is. Nor can it be maintained that the God of Spinoza, although he is described as alone true, is not the true God, and therefore as good as no God. If that were a just charge, it would only prove that all other systems, where speculation has not gone beyond a subordinate stage of the idea — that the Jews and Mohammedans who know God only as the Lord — and that even the many Christians for whom God is merely the most high, unknowable, and transcendent being, are as much atheists as Spinoza. The so-called atheism of Spinoza is merely an exaggeration of the fact that he defrauds the principle of difference or finitude of its due. Hence his system, as it holds that there is properly speaking no world, at any rate that the world has no positive being, should rather be styled Acosmism. These considerations will also show what is to be said of the charge of Pantheism. If Pantheism means, as it often does, the doctrine which takes finite things in their finitude and in the complex of them to be God, we must acquit the system of Spinoza of the crime of Pantheism. For in that system, finite things and the world as a whole are denied all truth. On the other hand, the philosophy which is Acosmism is for that reason certainly pantheistic.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Michael Witzel photo
Michael Witzel photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“This is like winning an Oscar!… As if I would know! Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

And that’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.
2000s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (31 August 2004)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
George Santayana photo

“At midday the daily food of all Spaniards was the puchero or cocido, as the dish is really called which the foreigners call pot-pourri or olla podrida.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

This contains principally yellow chick-peas, with a little bacon, some potatoes or other vegetables and normally also small pieces of beef or sausage, all boiled in one pot at a very slow fire; the liquid of the same makes the substantial broth that is served first.
Source: Persons and Places (1944), p. 14

Elizabeth Warren photo

“Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

Donald Trump, referring to Warren, during an event honoring the Navajo code talkers on November 27, 2017. "Pocahontas" is a nickname that Trump has used to refer to Warren prior to that event, because she claims to have Native American Heritage with no evidence.

Wilson Chandler photo

“I was pretty health-conscious even before going vegan. The transition came after I watched Food, Inc. and a documentary called GMO OMG.”

Wilson Chandler (1987) American basketball player

After that I went pescatarian for a while, but I went deeper and deeper with research. … Part of why I stopped eating meat is because the more acid is in your body, the harder it is for muscles to recover.
"The Real-Life Diet of Wilson Chandler, Nuggets Forward and Vegan" https://www.gq.com/story/wilson-chandler-real-life-vegan-diet, interview with GQ (December 6, 2016).

Willem Roelofs photo

“Then make those studies outside. With the utmost simplicity you try to get rid of all the so-called manners, and try in one word to follow nature with feeling, but without thinking about the works of others.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Maak dan die studies buiten; met de grootste eenvoudigheid, tracht u van alle zogenaamde manier te ontdoen en tracht in een woord de natuur met gevoel maar zonder denken aan het werk van anderen, na te volgen.
Quote in Roelof's letter to his pupil Hendrik W. Mesdag, 1866; as cited in Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850, Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 16, note 7
1860's

Zygmunt Vetulani photo

“Earthquakes generate elastic waves when one block of material slides against another; the break between the two blocks being called a fault.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

Explosions generate elastic waves by an impulsive change in volume in the material. Small explosive charges are used in controlled-source seismic experiments in which the waves penetrate only a few kilometres into the earth.
[Seismology and plate tectonics, 1990, http://books.google.com/books?id=tZRxPzwoChIC&pg=PA12] (p. 12)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)

“All right you fucks, shut up! We got a call to order!”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Rebecca Solnit photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Glen Cook photo

“We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.”

True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.
Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

Herm Edwards photo

“People aren’t used to this in Kansas City. Get over it! It happens. It’s called life. You can’t think you’re too big that it’s not going to happen to you. It happens to everybody.”

Herm Edwards (1954) American football player, coach and analyst

Edwards in a press conference after losing six consecutive games.
With Kansas City
Source: December 13, 2007, http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2007/12/11/herm_edwards_press_conference__1211/, Kansas City Chiefs - Herm Edwards Press Conference - 12/11, 13 December 2007 http://web.archive.org/web/20071213163651/http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2007/12/11/herm_edwards_press_conference__1211/,

Aisha photo

“It was Pythagoras who discovered that the 5th and the octave of a note could be produced on the same string by stopping at 2⁄3 and ½ of its length respectively. Harmony therefore depends on a numerical proportion. It was this discovery, according to Hankel, which led Pythagoras to his philosophy of number. It is probable at least that the name harmonical proportion was due to it, since1:½ :: (1-½):(2⁄3-½).Iamblichus says that this proportion was called ύπ eναντία originally and that Archytas and Hippasus first called it harmonic.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

Nicomachus gives another reason for the name, viz. that a cube being of 3 equal dimensions, was the pattern &#940;&rho;&mu;&omicron;&nu;&#943;&alpha;: and having 12 edges, 8 corners, 6 faces, it gave its name to harmonic proportion, since:<center>12:6 :: 12-8:8-6</center>
Footnote, citing Vide Cantor, Vorles [Vorlesüngen über Geschichte der Mathematik ?] p 152. Nesselmann p. 214 n. Hankel. p. 105 sqq.
A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

“The process in which something functions as a sign may be called semiosis.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

This process, in a tradition which goes back to the Greeks, has commonly been regarded as involving three (or four) factors: that which acts as a sign, that which the sign refers to, and the effect on some interpreter in virtue of which the thing in question is a sign to that interpreter. These three components in semiosis may be called, respectively, the sign vehicle, the designatum, and the interpretant; the interpreter may be included as a fourth factor. These terms make explicit the factors left undesignated in the common statement that a sign refers to something for someone.
Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 3

Randolph Bourne photo

“Randolph Bourne, horrified at the support of the war by so-called liberals and progressives, had insisted that an unconditionally defeated Germany would become a greater menace to European peace; the war itself, he charged, was the only real enemy of American freedom.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

Leonard P. Liggio, " Why the Futile Crusade? https://mises.org/library/why-futile-crusade" Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1965) p. 26.

Philip Melanchthon photo

“What do you believe was on the mind of the ancient Romans that they called the arts of speaking humanity?”

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

They judged that, indisputably, by the study of these disciplines not only was the tongue refined, but also the wildness and barbarity of people’s minds was amended.
Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 66

Willem de Sitter photo

“Both the law of inertia and the law of gravitation contain a numerical factor or a constant belonging to matter, which is called mass.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

We have thus two definitions of mass; one by the law of inertia: mass is the ratio between force and acceleration. We may call the mass thus defined the inertial or passive mass, as it is a measure of the resistance offered by matter to a force acting on it. The second is defined by the law of gravitation, and might be called the gravitational or active mass, being a measure of the force exerted by one material body on another. The fact that these two constants or coefficients are the same is, in Newton's system, to be considered as a most remarkable accidental coincidence and was decidedly felt as such by Newton himself. He made experiments to determine the equality of the two masses by swinging a pendulum, of which the bob was hollow and could be filled up with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its active mass, its inertia is proportional to its passive mass, so that the period will depend on the ratio of the passive and the active mass. Consequently the fact that the period of all these different pendulums was the same, proves that this ratio is a constant, and can be made equal to unity by a suitable choice of units, i.e., the inertial and the gravitational mass are the same. These experiments have been repeated in the nineteenth century by Bessel, and in our own times by Eötvös and Zeeman, and the identity of the inertial and the gravitational mass is one of the best ascertained empirical facts in physics-perhaps the best. It follows that the so-called fictitious forces introduced by a motion of the body of reference, such as a rotation, are indistinguishable from real forces. ...In Einstein's general theory of relativity there is also no formal theoretical difference, as there was in Newton's system. ...the equality of inertial and gravitational mass is no longer an accidental coincidence, but a necessity.
"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)

Louis Althusser photo

“I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions: …”

the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),
the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),
the family ISA,
the legal ISA,
the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),
the trade-union ISA,
the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),
the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).
Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 96

“The case is a simple one. A mere increase in the variety of our material consumption relieves the strain imposed upon man by the limits of the material universe, for such variety enables him to utilise a larger proportion of the aggregate of matter. But in proportion as we add to mere variety a higher appreciation of those adaptations of matter which are due to human skill, and which we call Art, we pass outside the limits of matter and are no longer the slaves of roods and acres and a law of diminishing returns.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

So long as we continue to raise more men who demand more food and clothes and fuel, we are subject to the limitations of the material universe, and what we get ever costs us more and benefits us less. But when we cease to demand more, and begin to demand better, commodities, more delicate, highly finished and harmonious, we can increase the enjoyment without adding to the cost or exhausting the store. What artist would not laugh at the suggestion that the materials of his art, his colours, clay, marble, or what else he wrought in, might fail and his art come to an end? When we are dealing with qualitative, i.e. artistic, goods, we see at once how an infinite expenditure of labour may be given, an infinite satisfaction taken, from the meagrest quantity of matter and space. In proportion as a community comes to substitute a qualitative for a quantitative standard of living, it escapes the limitations imposed by matter upon man. Art knows no restrictions of space or size, and in proportion as we attain the art of living we shall be likewise free.
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

Jacques Lacan photo

“It is on this step that depends the fact that one can call upon the subject to re-enter himself in the unconscious—for, after all, it is important to know who one is calling. It is not the soul, either mortal or immortal, which has been with us for so long, nor some shade, some double, some phantom, nor even some supposed psycho-spherical shell, the locus of the defences and other such simplified notions. It is the subject who is called— there is only he, therefore, who can be chosen. There may be, as in the parable, many called and few chosen, but there will certainly not be any others except those who are called. In order to understand the Freudian concepts, one must set out on the basis that it is the subject who is called—the subject of Cartesian origin. This basis gives its true function to what, in analysis, is called recollection or remembering. Recollection is not Platonic reminiscence —it is not the return of a form, an imprint, a eidos of beauty and good, a supreme truth, coming to us from the beyond. It is something that comes to us from the structural necessities, something humble, born at the level of the lowest encounters and of all the talking crowd that precedes us, at the level of the structure of the signifier, of the languages spoken in a stuttering, stumbling way, but which cannot elude constraints whose echoes, model, style can be found, curiously enough, in contemporary mathematics.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of the Network of Signifiers
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

John Wallis photo

“Let as many Numbers, as you please, be proposed to be Combined: Suppose Five, which we will call a b c d e. Put, in so many Lines, Numbers, in duple proportion, beginning with 1. The Sum (31) is the Number of Sumptions, or Elections; wherein, one or more of them, may several ways be taken. Hence subduct (5) the Number of the Numbers proposed; because each of them may once be taken singly. And the Remainder (26) shews how many ways they may be taken in Combination; (namely, Two or more at once.) And, consequently, how many Products may be had by the Multiplication of any two or more of them so taken. But the same Sum (31) without such Subduction, shews how many Aliquot Parts there are in the greatest of those Products, (that is, in the Number made by the continual Multiplication of all the Numbers proposed,) a b c d e.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

For every one of those Sumptions, are Aliquot Parts of a b c d e, except the last, (which is the whole,) and instead thereof, 1 is also an Aliquot Part; which makes the number of Aliquot Parts, the same with the Number of Sumptions. Only here is to be understood, (which the Rule should have intimated;) that, all the Numbers proposed, are to be Prime Numbers, and each distinct from the other. For if any of them be Compound Numbers, or any Two of them be the same, the Rule for Aliquot Parts will not hold.
Source: A Discourse of Combinations, Alterations, and Aliquot Parts (1685), Ch.I Of the variety of Elections, or Choice, in taking or leaving One or more, out of a certain Number of things proposed.

Alex Salmond photo
Samuel T. Cohen photo

“As you can well imagine, any nuclear bombing study that neglected to target Moscow would be laughed out of the room. (That is, no study at that time; 10 or 15 years later senior policy officials were debating how good an idea this might be. If you wiped out the political leadership of the Soviet Union in the process, who would you deal with in arranging for a truce and who would be left to run the country after the war?) Consequently, two of RAND’s brightest mathematicians were assigned the task of determining, with the help of computers, in great detail, precisely what would happen to the city were a bomb of so many megatons dropped on it. It was truly a daunting task and called for devising a mathematical model unimaginably complex; one that would deal with the exact population distribution, the precise location of various industries and government agencies, the vulnerability of all the important structures to the bomb’s effects, etc., etc. However, these two guys were up to the task and toiled in the vineyards for some months, finally coming up with the results. Naturally, they were horrendous.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

Harold Mitchell, a medical doctor, an expert on human vulnerability to the H-bomb’s effects, told me when the study first began: “Why are they wasting their time going through all this shit? You know goddamned well that a bomb this big is going to blow the fucking city into the next county. What more do you have to know?” I had to agree with him.
F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo
Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
Charan Singh photo
Aryabhata photo
James Braid photo
Rajiv Gandhi photo

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l.”

Walter Harte (1709–1774) poet and historian

a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Source: Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l.”

Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) German-British polymath

a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

Caterina Davinio photo

“A central concept called into question by net-poetry is the relation with reality.”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Does it make sense to define "virtual" reality as what actually reaches us through the Internet? How the artist relates to it, how he or she perceives and represents it and how a net-poet should "sing" it? The relationship with reality mediated by the Internet is a network of contacts in itself, it is ontologically a "connective" image of reality, which gradually outlines and qualify itself, both as reality and as representation.
Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 132

Gangubai Hangal photo
Tulsidas photo
Tulsidas photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Angela of Foligno photo

“Yet more complex are the environments we have called turbulent fields.”

Fred Emery (1925–1997) Australian psychologist

In these, dynamic processes, which create significant variances for the component organizations, arise from the field itself.
Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 30.

“The next level of causal texturing we have called the disturbed reactive environment.”

Fred Emery (1925–1997) Australian psychologist

It may be compared with Ashby's ultra-stable system or the economists' oligopolic market.
Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 29.

“There are two subcategories of holist called irredundant holists and redundant holists.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Students of both types image an entire system of facts or principles. Though an irredundant holist’s image is rightly interconnected, it contains only relevant and essential constitents. In contrast, redundant holists entertain images that contain logically irrelevant or overspecific material, commonly derived from data used to "enrich" the curriculum, and these students embed the salient facts and principles in a network of redundant items. Though logically irrelevant, the items in question are of great psychological importance to a "redundant holist", since he uses them to access, retain and manipulate whatever he was originally required to learn.
Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 258.

John Scalzi photo
Rajinikanth photo
James K. Morrow photo

“A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.”

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

“Golden ages rarely return,” I said “especially if they never existed.”
Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 366)

Sandra Fluke photo

“We are caught up in a paradox, one which might be called the paradox of conceptualization.”

Abraham Kaplan (1918–1993) American philosopher

The proper concepts are needed to formulate a good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts.
Source: "The Conduct of Inquiry", p. 53.

Thomas Young (scientist) photo

“Besides these improvements,… there are others,… which may… be interesting to those… engaged in those departments… Among these may be ranked, in the division of mechanics, properly so called, a simple demonstration of the law of the force by which a body revolves in an ellipsis; another of the properties of cycloidal pendulums; an examination of the mechanism of animal motions; a comparison of the measures and weights of different countries; and a convenient estimate of the effect of human labour: with respect to architecture, a simple method of drawing the outline of a column: an investigation of the best forms for arches; a determination of the curve which affords the greatest space for turning; considerations on the structure of the joints employed in carpentry, and on the firmness of wedges; and an easy mode of forming a kirb roof: for the purposes of machinery of different kinds, an arrangement of bars for obtaining rectilinear motion; an inquiry into the most eligible proportions of wheels and pinions; remarks on the friction of wheel work, and of balances; a mode of finding the form of a tooth for impelling a pallet without friction; a chronometer for measuring minute portions of time; a clock escapement; a calculation of the effect of temperature on steel springs; an easy determination of the best line of draught for a carriage; an investigation of the resistance to be overcome by a wheel or roller; and an estimation of the ultimate pressure produced by a blow.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Laura Anne Gilman photo

“Call it not paranoia, but caution.”

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 96

Kalle Lasn photo

“We got rich by violating one of the central tenets of economics: thou shall not sell off your capital and call it income.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

And yet over the past 40 years we have clear-cut the forests, fished rivers and oceans to the brink of extinction and siphoned oil from the earth as if it possessed an infinite supply. We've sold off our planet's natural capital and called it income. And now the earth, like the economy, is stripped.
Hey President Obama http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/82/obama_economics.html/. Adbusters (March 24, 2009).

“It is a fantastic letter. Very understated. He calls it an optical maser, it’s as if a maser was made to run in the optical. No flamboyant phrase, just straightforward science.”

Peter Franken (1928–1999) American physicist

describing Ted Maiman's paper announcing the first operational laser. In an interview http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4612.html by Joan Bromberg on March 8, 1985, at University of Arizona. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA.

James Bolivar Manson photo
Christopher Smart photo
Louis C.K. photo
Frithjof Schuon photo

“What most men do not know - and if they could know it, why could they be called on to believe it?”

Is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the vision of interplanetary space, is nonetheless an adequate reflection of the Heaven of the Angels and the Blessed and that therefore, despite everything, it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, that is right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do.
Understanding Islam (1963)

Stephen L. Carter photo

“But that is the way of the place: down our many twisting corridors, one encounters story after story, some heroic, some villainous, some true, some false, some funny, some tragic, and all of them combining to form the mystical, undefinable entity we call the school.”

Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni — more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.
Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 9, A Pedagogical Disagreement, II

Peter Beckford photo
Kurt Student photo
Gottfried Helnwein photo

“If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last fifty years could be called a star, then there is only one person who meets all the criteria: Gottfried Helnwein.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Presence and Time: Gottfried Helnwein's Pictures http://www.helnwein-museum.com/article2534.html, Stella Rollig, director of the Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, 2006

“We in al Qaeda organization call on God to witness that we will retaliate for the blood of … Abdul Rashid Ghazi and those with him against Musharraf and those who help him, and for all the pure and innocent blood.”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Sheikh Osama bin Laden, Bin Laden vows revenge on "infidel" Musharraf, Reuters, Sep 20, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2041722020070920,.

Francis Escudero photo
Guy Debord photo
David Horowitz photo

“I have written a book with Jacob Laksin about universities called One Party Classroom.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

Among other things, the title highlights the fact that so-called liberals have purged American faculties of conservative voices. It has been the most successful witch-hunt in American history.
[David, Horowitz, http://townhall.com/columnists/davidhorowitz/2009/05/04/the_threat_at_home, "The Threat at Home", townhall.com, July 31, 2006, 2014-21-06]
2009

Michael Richards photo

“Cracker-ass? Are you calling me cracker-ass, nigga?!”

Michael Richards (1949) American actor

Laugh Factory incident (2006)

Chittaranjan Das photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Vandana Shiva photo

“When you call somebody a fraud, that suggests the person knows she is lying. I don’t think Vandana Shiva necessarily knows that. But she is blinded by her ideology and her political beliefs. That is why she is so effective and so dangerous.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Mark Lynas, journalist and environmental activist, as quoted in " Seeds of Doubt http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt" by Michael Specter, The New Yorker (25 August 2014)

Ze Frank photo

“Okay, roll-call, no talking. Benny, Marc; Ethel, Shakina, nice shoes. Bobo twins, anyone seen the Bobo twins? Those Bobo twins.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_05-30-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Harry Turtledove photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!
Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Brett Favre photo

“You can call it a miracle or a legend or whatever you want to. I just know that on that day, Brett Favre was larger than life.”

Brett Favre (1969) former American football quarterback

Alabama coach Gene Stallings
Brett Favre Timeline, Traina, Jimmy, Sports Illustrated, 5 October 2002, 2007-02-08 http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/nfl/features/favre/timeline,
About Favre

Augustus De Morgan photo

“A great many individuals ever since the rise of the mathematical method, have, each for himself, attacked its direct and indirect consequences. …I shall call each of these persons a paradoxer, and his system a paradox.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

I use the word in the old sense: ...something which is apart from general opinion, either in subject-matter, method, or conclusion. ...Thus in the sixteenth century many spoke of the earth's motion as the paradox of Copernicus, who held the ingenuity of that theory in very high esteem, and some, I think, who even inclined towards it. In the seventeenth century, the depravation of meaning took place... Phillips says paradox is "a thing which seemeth strange"—here is the old meaning...—"and absurd, and is contrary to common opinion," which is an addition due to his own time.
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)

Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“I have the principles of an Englishman, and I utter them without apprehension or reserve…this is not the language of faction; let it be tried by that criterion, by which alone we can distinguish what is factious, from what is not—by the principles of the English constitution. I have been bred up in these principles, and I know that when the liberty of the subject is invaded, and all redress denied him, resistance is justifiable…the constitution has its political Bible, by which if it be fairly consulted, every political question may, and ought to be determined. Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights, form that code which I call the Bible of the English constitution.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Had some of his Majesty's unhappy predecessors trusted less to the commentary of their Ministers, and been better read in the text itself, the glorious Revolution might have remained only possible in theory, and their fate would not now have stood upon record, a formidable example to all their successors.
Speech in the House of Lords (22 January 1770), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), p. 98.

Andrea Dworkin photo

“A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—calls that penetration violation.”

This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy.
Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Colin Wilson photo

“We have all experienced the moments that William James calls melting moods, when it suddenly becomes perfectly obvious that life is infinitely fascinating. And the insight seems to apply retrospectively.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Periods of my life that seemed confusing and dull at the time now seem complex and rather charming. It is almost as if some other person a more powerful and mature individual has taken over my brain. This higher self views my problems and anxieties with kindly detachment, but entirely without pity. Looking at problems through his eyes, I can see I was a fool to worry about them.
Source: Access to Inner Worlds (1990), p. 2-3

Martin Amis photo
Robert Aumann photo
Mohamed ElBaradei photo

“You remember that book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

… Well that's very much true. I find a lot in common in the way I manage things and the way she manages three-year olds. We humans are the same when we are three years old and when we are 50!
Comparing his work as an international diplomat to that of his wife, Aida Elkachef, a kindergarten teacher, with a mention of the book by Robert Fulghum.
Breaking the Cycle (2003)

David Cross photo

“So at the CES, there was a guy selling off this porno called Fuck My Dirty Shithole: The Movie.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

I bet you're thinking exactly what I was thinking … how did they make that book into a movie?
The Pride is Back