Quotes about cause (4816 quotes, page 18)

“As we look back, it seems like willful blindness. The abandonment of the radical economic foundation of the women's and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully retrained generation of activists in the politics of image, not action.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

Women

“It's all about soul.
It's all about faith and a deeper devotion.
It's all about soul.
'Cause under the love is a stronger emotion.
She's got to be strong
'Cause so many things getting out of control
Should drive her away.
So why does she stay?
It's all about soul.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

All About Soul.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Love , Faith , Soul , Strong

“People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to ﬁve without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8

People , Way , Guy , Understanding

“As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 3 Variant portion: Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Men , Truth , Law , History

“I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship;
friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

I Am a Rock
Song lyrics, Sounds of Silence (1966)

Love , Pain , Friendship , Laughter

“Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across ad dry plain. Our pilgrimage is the match that will light our cause for all farm workers to see what is happening here, so that they may do as we have done. The time has come for the liberation of the poor farm worker.
History is on our side. May the strike go on! Viva la causa!”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

A similar statement (perhaps used in a later declaration) has been quoted at the UFW site http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/09.html: "Across the San Joaquin valley, across California, across the entire nation, wherever there are injustices against men and women and children who work in the fields — there you will see our flags — with the black eagle with the white and red background, flying. Our movement is spreading like flames across a dry plain."
The Plan of Delano (1965)

People , History , Light , Time

“Edmund Gettier convinced most philosophers that the received wisdom of millennia about the concept of knowledge was mistaken: “knowledge” was not simply a matter of having a justified, true belief … A justified true belief isn’t “knowledge” when the justification for the true belief isn’t the cause of why the agent holds the belief. As Philip Kitcher put the point, in explaining the stimulus Gettier provided to the “naturalistic” turn in epistemology: “the epistemic status of a belief state depends on the etiology of the state.” … We can understand, now, the logic of the hermeneutics of suspicion as exploiting precisely this point about the epistemic status of belief: we should be suspicious of the epistemic status of beliefs that have the wrong causal etiology. That’s the lesson of the Gettier counter-examples, and it is the lesson which underwrites the suspicion that Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud recommend by way of providing alternative causal trajectories to explain our beliefs. To be sure, beliefs with the wrong causal etiology might be true; but since they are no longer cases of knowledge, we have no reason to presume that to be the case.”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

Wisdom , Way , Understanding , Knowledge

“Privacy has currently become a hot button issue, but I recognized years ago that there was a problem with the government having access to too much information on the citizens without establishing probable cause before they gathered it. And I started pursuing that. There were 400 private and public institutions around this country that were trying to access drones for surveillance purposes. It was not to protect us from harm, it was not to protect us from terrorists. There was nothing in statute that described what drones could be used for, what kind of information they could gather, what they could with that information once they gathered it.”

Matt Rosendale (1960) Member of the Montana House of Representatives

An Exclusive Interview with Congressional Candidate Matt Rosendale http://www.freedomsdiscourse.com/2015/05/24/an-exclusive-interview-with-congressional-candidate-matt-rosendale/ (May 24, 2015)

Problem , Country

“The magnitude of the business of this road, its numerous and important connections, and. the large number of employés engaged in operating it, have led many, whose opinions are entitled to respect, to the conclusion, that a proper regard to details, which enter so largely into the elements of success in the management of all railroads, cannot possibly be attained by any plan that contemplates its organization as a whole; and in proof of this position, the experience of shorter roads is referred to, the business operations of which have been conducted much more economically.
Theoretically, other things being equal, a long road should be operated for a less cost per mile than a short one. This position is so clearly evident and so generally admitted, that its truth may be assumed without offering any arguments in support of it; and, notwithstanding the reverse, so far as practical results are considered, has generally been the case, we must look to other causes than the mere difference in length of roads for a solution of the difficulty.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 33-34: First two paragraphs

Truth , Business , Support , Success

“The running up of this queer flag caused much fear to the families of the Californians established in the neighborhood of Sonoma, Petaluma, and San Rafael, for they realized that the instigators of the uprising that had disturbed the tranquility of the frontier had made up their minds to rule, come what might, and, as the rumor had been spread far and wide that Ide and his associates had raised the bear flag in order to enjoy complete liberty and not be obliged to any civilized governments, the ranchers, who would have remained unperturbed should the American flag have been run up in Sonoma and who would have considered it as the harbinger of a period of progress and enlightenment, seized their machetes and guns and fled to the woods, determined to await a propitious moment for getting rid of the disturbers of the peace. Strange to relate, the first victim that the ranchers sacrificed was the painter of the "Bear Flag," young Thomas Cowie…”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted in The Literature of California: Native American beginnings to 1945 (2000) ed., Jack Hicks
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Fear , Family , Peace

“The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government – one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Concurring opinion, Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957).

People , Way

“Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.”
Quanquam nobis in intima naturae mysteria penetrare, indeque veras caussas Phaenomenorum agnoscere neutiquam est concessum: tamen evenire potest, ut hypothesis quaedam ficta pluribus phaenomenis explicandis aeque satisfaciat, ac si vera caussa nobis esset perspecta.

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

§1
A conjecture about the nature of air (1780)

Nature , Learning

“Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "Once Solomon, son of David said, '(By Allah) Tonight I will have sexual intercourse with one hundred (or ninety-nine) women each of whom will give birth to a knight who will fight in Allah's Cause.' On that a (i. e. if Allah wills) but he did not say, Allah willing.' Therefore only one of those women conceived and gave birth to a half-man. By Him in Whose Hands Muhammad's life is, if he had said, "Allah willing', (he would have begotten sons) all of whom would have been knights striving in Allah's Cause."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Bukhari 4:52:74i http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/052.sbt.html#004.052.074i
Sunni Hadith

Life , Women , Birth , Fight

“You're an idiot,” Lucy said. “Just ’cause you don’t understand them don’t mean they’re out to get you.”

Cherie Priest book Boneshaker

Source: Boneshaker (2009), p. 265

Understanding

“Equally unavailing is the insistence that the statute is designed to prevent the circulation of scandal which tends [p722] to disturb the public peace and to provoke assaults and the commission of crime. Charges of reprehensible conduct, and in particular of official malfeasance, unquestionably create a public scandal, but the theory of the constitutional guaranty is that even a more serious public evil would be caused by authority to prevent publication. To prohibit the intent to excite those unfavorable sentiments against those who administer the Government is equivalent to a prohibition of the actual excitement of them, and to prohibit the actual excitement of them is equivalent to a prohibition of discussions having that tendency and effect, which, again, is equivalent to a protection of those who administer the Government, if they should at any time deserve the contempt or hatred of the people, against being exposed to it by free animadversions on their characters and conduct. There is nothing new in the fact that charges of reprehensible conduct may create resentment and the disposition to resort to violent means of redress, but this well understood tendency did not alter the determination to protect the press against censorship and restraint upon publication. […] The danger of violent reactions becomes greater with effective organization of defiant groups resenting exposure, and if this consideration warranted legislative interference with the initial freedom of publication, the constitutional protection would be reduced to a mere form of words.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

People , Peace , Freedom , Evil

“I've been on the computer a lot. They say that's the cause of the soreness in my elbow. I'll be in control. I spent four hours. Now, I'll have to spend one hour and take it easy.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Muskat, Carrie, Notes: Zambrano needs quiet time http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050522&content_id=1058873&vkey=news_chc&fext=.jsp&c_id=chc, MLB.com, Retrieved on June 15, 2007.
2005

“For sure, even with the best will, the modern person seems generally unable to imagine how large a significance those components of our consciousness rooted in religious beliefs have actually had upon culture, national character, and the organization of life. Nevertheless, it can not be, of course, the intention here to set a one-sided spiritualistic analysis of the causes of culture and history in place of an equally one-sided “materialistic” analysis. Both are equally possible. Historical truth, however, is served equally little if either of these analyses claims to be the conclusion of an investigation rather than its preparatory stage.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Life , Truth , Imagination , History

“No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

People , Thinking

“The secret of love is in opening up your heart.
It's okay to feel afraid,
But don't let that stand in your way, no.
'Cause anyone knows that love is the only road.
And since we're only here for a while yeah
Might as well show some style.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Secret O' Life"
Song lyrics, JT (1977)

Love , Secret , Way , Feeling

“God has ends and designs in giving evil men outward mercies and present rest from sorrows and sufferings that cause saints to sigh.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Men , God , Suffering , Evil

“I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

"Sunshine Superman"
Sunshine Superman (1966)

“In complex systems cause and effect are often not closely related in either time or space. The structure of a complex system is not a simple feedback loop where one system state dominates the behavior. The complex system has a multiplicity of interacting feedback loops. Its internal rates of flow are controlled by nonlinear relationships. The complex system is of high order, meaning that there are many system states (or levels). It usually contains positive-feedback loops describing growth processes as well as negative, goal-seeking loops. In the complex system the cause of a difficulty may lie far back in time from the symptoms, or in a completely different and remote part of the system. In fact, causes are usually found, not in prior events, but in the structure and policies of the system.”

Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) American operations researcher

Source: Urban dynamics (1969), p. 9

Lie , Behavior , Time , Parting

“As the lists multiply in number and the lists themselves grow longer, we should ask ourselves who the real victims are in the confusion sowed by Ms. Napoles and those who supposedly want to shed light on the Pork Barrel Scam. Those who have been unfairly dragged into this mess are not the real victims; these lists and affidavits are baseless and lack the kind of evidentiary support that can establish cases against many of those who have been named, myself included. The real victims here are our citizens. After learning the scale at which funds allocated to help them have been efficiently and systematically plundered, our people now seek redress. As it stands, there is an opportunity for our people to obtain justice as the Ombudsman already found probable cause which concluded to filing of the cases. Again, I assure the public that I have never allocated public money using the PDAF or budgetary incentives to any fictitious NGOs set up by Ms. (Janet) Napoles nor have I dealt with her to supposedly solicit or receive campaign funds. Such claim is a total falsity and runs counter to common sense because as early as October of 2009, I already withdrew any intention to run for the presidency and in 2010, I was not even a candidate for any elective position. And by Ms. Napoles’ own list, I am the only one who did not allocate any funds to her foundations from my PDAF releases. Let's keep our eye on the ball and remain vigilant to ensure the conviction of those who truly deserve to be punished for the misuse of public funds. Let us persuade our authorities to focus on evidence, testimonial or otherwise, that has probative value to avoid distractions.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, May 28). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152473011595610/
2014, Facebook

Money , People , Justice , Support

“It was during the first years [1906-1910] that we [the Futurist artists] realized the presence of a dualism deep down within us, where another person, whom we ourselves do not know, tends, at the moment of the creative act, to supplant the person we believe ourselves to be and would like to be. It is difficult to bring these two individualities into accord, yet it is upon this accord that the development of a personality largely depends. My first contact with the art of Seurat whom I adopted, once and for all, as my master, did a great deal to help me to express myself in terms of the two simultaneous and often opposed aspirations. This opposition caused me much mental torture, I must admit..”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

In an interview, 1956; as quoted in Letters of the great artists, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 247

Art , Help , Dependency , Personality

“Men of repute, including the staunchest patriots such as Samuel Adams and Jonathan Mayhew, expressed their abhorrence of mobs and of all licentious proceedings in general; but many were nevertheless disposed to think, with good Deacon Tudor, that in this particular instance "the universal Obhorrance of the Stamp Act was the cause of the Mob's riseing." It would be well to punish the mob, but punishing the mob would not cure the evil which was the cause of the mob…”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Men , Thinking , Universe , Evil

“Rather than studying the laws of cause and effect, people spend their lives being the effect and running from the cause.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

People , Law , Study

“There are men in the House of Commons, who profess in a special sense to be the representatives of Labour, who would not allow me, who represent a great working-class constituency…to claim to represent you. In order to do so I must be a man who did some work 30 years ago and never did any since. (Loud laughter.) It is these men who are at the present time blackening the characters of those who are upholding the British dominion and British honour throughout the world…They have no ear of sympathy for the men who suffered for the Imperial cause. The other day some officers, British soldiers, were murdered with savage brutality for no reason or provocation. They had no sympathy with those officers or the families that they left behind them, their only idea was to shield the assassins from the proper penalty of their crime. ("Traitors.")…But one thing I will say, and I say it in your name; these men at any rate do not represent the working classes of England (loud cheering), and never yet in our history or in the history of the British race has a great democracy been unpatriotic.”

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

Hear, hear.
On the Labour Party (7 July 1906), quoted in ‘The Chamberlain Celebration In Birmingham.’, The Times (10 July 1906), p. 11.
1900s

Men , World , Family , Penalty

“The army causes taxes, the taxes cause discontents, & the discontents are alleged to make an army necessary. Thus you go in a circle.”

William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath (1684–1764) English politician

Cited in John Brewer, The Sinews of Power 8-10 (1988)

“If we fail to see that there are powers that cause people to be bowed down in bondage, we are going to fight the wrong battle.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the xenophobic attacks in South Africa - "How I Predicted Xenophobic Attacks In South Africa - TB Joshua" http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/04/how-i-predicted-xenophobic-south-africa-t-b-joshua/ Vanguard Nigeria (April 17 2015)

People , Fight

“Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony, that's life
Try to make ends meet
you're a slave to money then you die.No change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
I am here in my mold
and I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mould, no, no, no, no, no…”

Richard Ashcroft (1971) English singer-songwriter

Urban Hymns (1997)

Life , Money , People , Change

“It is a melancholy reflection that our modes of population have been more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. The evidence of this is the utter extirpation of nearly all the Indians in the most populous parts of the Union. A future historian may mark the causes of this destruction of the human race in sable colors. Although the present Government of the United States cannot with propriety be involved in the oppropbrium, yet it seems necessary however, in order to render their attention upon this subject strongly characteristic of their justice, that some powerful attempts should be made to tranquilize the frontiers, particularly those south of the Ohio.”

Henry Knox (1750–1806) Continental Army and US Army general, US Secretary of War

Report by then Secretary of War Henry Knox to the president http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rrath/hist281/IndianPolicyNewNation.html, 1790.

Justice , Color , Future , Parting

“As far as fanatical Muslims are concerned, Yazidis must be classified among the heathen because they do not belong to any of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Under Islamic rules, Jews and Christians are regarded as “people of the book” and thus could live among Muslims provided they pay a protection fee known as “dhimma.” Even if they wanted to, Yazidis cannot make use of that provision because they regard themselves as followers of Zoroaster, a prophet of ancient Iranian peoples who preached around 700 BC… A peaceful people opposed to violence and bloodshed, Yazidis believe that no cause is worth killing people for, something that scandalizes fanatical Muslims who regard the spread of “The Only True Faith” by sword as a duty and the man who does it as the “Ghazi” (Holy Warrior) who is assured a place in paradise. The Yazidis tradition of equality between men and women, including the rejection of polygamy, also scandalizes their fanatical Muslim neighbors.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Why some Muslims want to kill the Yazidis by genocide" http://nypost.com/2014/08/17/why-some-muslims-want-to-destroy-the-yazidis-by-genocide/, New York Post (August 17, 2014).
New York Post

Women , Men , People , Books

“Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past.
Postulate 2. Constant systems of chance causes do exist in nature.
Postulate 3. Assignable causes of variation may be found and eliminated.”

Walter A. Shewhart (1891–1967) American statistician

Source: Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product,1931, p. 8

Nature , Sense , Chance , Past

“Yet, even did it be ever proved that Man once to be a fish, I to have no cause to abate the first part of mine argument; but to have the more need of the thought, that I gain power to accept the Fact; for I still then to have no occasion that I think Man to have been truly a Fish, or aught truly different from a Man; but only that he did be once Modified physically to his need, and to be still possessed of the Man-Spirit, though all lackt of development. Yet, truly, I to be less offend in my Reason, if that it be shown that Man did be ever somewise in his present shape, though mayhap so brutish as the Humpt Men; but yet I do be ready to consider all matters, and do build no Walls about my Reason. Yet, neither I to have an over-ready acceptance of aught, but to need that my Reason shall approve.”

William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land

Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 15

Men , Thinking , Fish , Parting

“God is the Immanent Cause of all things, never truly transcendent from them”
Deus est omnium rerum causa immanens, non vero transiens

Baruch Spinoza book Ethics

Part I, Prop. XVIII
Ethics (1677)

God

“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

Women , Men , War , Children

“The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary, thanks to propaganda and advertising, are words that relate to visual reproduction. They are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance. Make no mistake here: this is how modern people usually think. We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

People , Truth , Justice , Idea

“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

Life , People , Age , Mountain

“I think the hard thing about this job [stand-up] — I mean, I think this part is great — but that the traveling is y'know, 'cause — 'cause I'm gone a lot from home and this time I'm out for three-and-a-half weeks without going home, and that's hard, to be gone three-and-a-half weeks 'cause then I have to ask my friends, "Would you mind going to the house and watering the plants, and turn some lights on and make it look like somebody's home, and make sure that the mobile over the crib isn't tangled or the baby's gonna get bored…"”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Taste This

Travel , Home , Thinking , Light

“I feel the reason why I'm really like outspoken and stuff is because all of these things were inflicted upon me, and I never went and caused any trouble, you know? I just feel like I was kind of skipping along in some country and somebody decides to drop a bomb and shake up my life and then it's all been survival from then on. And that's the reality for thousands - and millions - of people today. Why should I get censored for talking about a life that half the time I didn't choose to live?”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/mia-050506.shtml with PopMatters, 2005
Sourced quotes

Life , People , Feeling , Reality

“To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Love , Women , Men , Children

“For that which is without a beginning, a final cause need not be sought.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.13

“[The Spanish news] really keeps me awake at night and in the day I can think of nothing else. I did not think it possible that anything could have made me regret being out of office, but I now wish I was in a situation, in which it might be possible to assist this glorious cause.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Lady Holland (2 July 1808), quoted in E. A. Smith, Lord Grey. 1764-1845 (Alan Sutton, 1996), p. 169.
1800s

Thinking , Night

“And when did mediocrity become excellence in our country? Music is dead in 2011 because Lady Gaga lives. Really? Is that the best we can do? Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, "Poker Face"? This stuttering, growling midget with a speech impediment is music? Really? This vapid, pop cancer, Madonna mini-me? She makes Miley Cyrus look like John Lennon. She makes Jack Lemon look like John Lennon. I'm sorry. And you don't get to claim you're not accepted at a billion hits on YouTube. And you're not an artist just cause you can wear a live chimpanzee as a bra. Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie raped Carol Burnett.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

Music , Dead , Country

“Over the years, it has slowly dawned on me that the people who cause my painful experiences are ignorant and crude. They are the critics who have not read enough and the clients who do not know why they have come to us. I have been helped to realise this by noticing that the scholars whose work we most respect, the clients whose projects intrigue us, and the patrons whose friendship inspires us, have no problem understanding my role. They are the sophisticates. Partly through them I gain heart and realise that, over the last twenty years, I have managed to do my work and, despite some sliding, to achieve my own self-respect.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Pain , Friendship , People , Understanding

“Intellectual superiority is not always accompanied by an equal degree of moral superiority, and the greatest geniuses may have much to expiate. For this reason, they often have to undergo an existence inferior to the one they have previously accomplished, which is a cause of suffering for them the hindrances to the manifestation of his faculties thus imposed upon a spirit being like chains that fetter the movements of a vigorous man. The idiot may be said to be lame in the brain, as the halt is lame in the legs, and the blind, in the eyes.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 193.

Suffering

“I believe every lie that I ever told
Paid for every heart that I ever stoll I paid my cause and I didn't fold
Well, it ain't that hard when you got soul (This is my world)
Somewhere I heard that life is a test
I been though the worst but still I give my best yeah”

Aloe Blacc (1979) American soul singer, rapper and musician

The Man.
Song lyrics

Life , Lie , World , Soul

“What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; — show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; — and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

World , Law , Nature , Light

“What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn’t true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvi

“Chris Rock: I love the story of how you turned down an offer to appear in Michael Jackson's music video for, Bad.
Prince: You know that Wesley Snipes character? That would've been me. Now you run that video in your mind. The first line in that song is "your butt is mine." Now I said to Michael, who's gonna sing that to whom? 'Cause you sure ain't singing it to me and I sure ain't singing it to you so right there we got a problem.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

VH1 interview (1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ZN9nKQqe0

Love , Music , Problem , Appearance

“Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

2000s

Intelligence , Nature

“Living with the conditions of slavery and then later segregation, many Negroes lost faith in themselves. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human, perhaps they were inferior. But then something happened to the Negro. Circumstances made it possible and necessary for him to travel more. The coming of the automobile, the upheavals of two world wars, the great depression. So his rural plantation background gradually gave way to urban industrial life. His economic life was gradually rising and even his cultural life was gradually rising through the steady decline of crippling illiteracy. All of these forces conjoined to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself. His religion revealed to him that God loves all of his children and that all men are made in His image. That the basic thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamental. Not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin but his eternal dignity and worth.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s

Love , Life , Men , God

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money , Family , Way , Feeling

“Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

L'espérance oubliée (1972) [Hope in Time of Abandonment] translated by C. Edward Hopkin (1973)

World , Faith , History , Falseness

“The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Pain , Pleasure , Nature , Light

“We saw your [ Cuno Amiet's ] work with feelings of admiration and enthusiasm... Our group [ Die Brücke ] would be exceedingly glad to find in you a comrade in arms and a champion of its cause.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

Quote of Heckel, in a letter of 1 September 1906, to the Swiss artist Amiet; as cited by Günter Krüger, in Die Künstlergemeinschaft Brücke und die Schweiz; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; by Museum Associates, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 70
Amiet's radically simplified art-style obviously attracted the younger artists of Die Brücke

Feeling

“Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away.
And I'll be okay.
I'm not big on social graces;
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis.
Oh, I've got friends in low places.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Friends in Low Places, written by DeWayne Blackwell and Earl "Bud" Lee.
Song lyrics, No Fences (1990)

Beer , Thinking

“[Duesberg] is absolutely correct in saying that no one has proven that AIDS is caused by the AIDS virus. And he is absolutely correct that the virus cultured in the laboratory may not be the cause of AIDS.”

Walter Gilbert (1932) American biochemist

Hippocrates (Sept./Oct. 1988)

“Only in this age and generation, is it at last possible to impart the laws of magnetic healing, and to indicate the causes of those diseases - originating in the three inner bodies - which today devastate the human frame, cause endless suffering and pain, and usher man through the portal which leads to the world of bodiless existence. Only today is man at the point in the evolution of his consciousness where he can begin to realise the power of the subjective worlds, and the new and vast science of psychology is his response to this growing interest.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Esoteric Healing (1953), p. 1

Pain , Age , World , Disease

“It is abundantly evident, both from history and from present experience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feeling of disgust, caused by the sight of the sufferings of men is not generically different from that which is caused by the sight of the sufferings of animals.”

William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838–1903) British politician

Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 2 (2nd edition, Vol. 1, London: Longmans, 1869, p. 294 https://books.google.it/books?id=hdUJs_S3ezwC&pg=PA294)

Men , Feeling , History , Nature

“When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine — like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: How I Grew (1987), Ch. 6

Pain , Thinking , Memory

“As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Aids to Reflection (1873), Sequelae to Aphorism 107

Age , Feeling

“I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity. I'm for it.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "Smut"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

“I am not saying that the events in one life cause the events in another, but that there is an overall pattern - a bank of probable events - and that in each life each individual chooses those that suit his or her overall private purposes. Yet those lives will be connected. An individual may have a serious illness in one life. That event may turn up as one uncomfortable nightmare in another existence. In still another life, the individual might have a dear friend who suffers from the same disease. In still another existence the individual might decide to be a doctor, to seek a cause and a cure for the same disease.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Way Toward Health (1997), p. 229

Life , Disease , Suffering

“Wert thou to open the heart of a single soul by helping him to embrace the Cause of Him Whom God shall make manifest, thine inmost being would be filled with the inspirations of that august Name. It devolveth upon you, therefore, to perform this task in the Days of Resurrection, inasmuch as most people are helpless, and wert thou to open their hearts and dispel their doubts, they would gain admittance into the Faith of God.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 15
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , People , Faith , Soul

“[on John McCain being too old] When you die at 72, no matter what you die of, it's natural causes. Even if you get hit by a truck, it's natural causes. 'Cause if you was younger, you'd have got out the way!”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Kill the Messenger (2008)

Way , Nature

“The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.”

Michael Shermer (1954) American science writer

[Shermer, Michael, July, 2008, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results, How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results, Scientific American, 2008-07-24]

Nature , Thinking

“In recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one — the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religous experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed — and the belief caused them considerable distress — that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Men , World , Way , Intelligence

“Well if I was in your position
I'd put down all my ammunition
I'd wondered why'd it take me so long.
But Lord knows that I'm not you
And if I was I wouldn't be so cruel
Cause waiting on love ain't so easy to do.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing.
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

Love , Waiting

“The terrorist kills because he cannot compete with his adversaries. Instead of responding to Salman Rushdie’s ill-structured and unreadable novel with a novel that is well-plotted and properly written, the terrorist calls for his murder. The terrorist cannot challenge Theo van Gogh’s controversial documentary with a better one and thus decides to stab him to death. The history of contemporary Islamist terrorism is full of instances of cold-blooded murder ordered by those who could not compete in literary, political, social or even theological fields against those better than them. With the advent of globalisation, Islamist terrorism is now able to strike beyond the frontiers of the Muslim world. But the same lazy mentality is at work. The terrorist knows that he is incapable of building an alternative civilisation capable of competing with the one he despises. So he tries to destroy what becomes the cause of his humiliation.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Terrorism Cannot Win: This is Why", Elaph.com, (January 16, 2014).

Death , World , History

“Young Ones.
Darling we're the Young Ones.
Young Ones shouldn't be afraid
To live, love, there's a song to be sung,
Cause we may not
Be the Young Ones
very long.”

Sid Tepper (1918–2015) American songwriter

Song The Young Ones

Love

“I was not more than thirteen years old, when in my loneliness and destitution I longed for some one to whom I could go, as to a father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels against His government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I consulted a good old colored man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to 'cast all my care upon God'. This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, and especially, did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 110–111.

Love , Men , God , World

“A world of such individual minds is by the final implications of this proof the world of primary causes, and every member of it, secure above the vicissitudes of Time and Space and Force, is possessed of a supertemporal or eternal reality, and is therefore not liable to any lethal influence from any other source. Itself a primary cause, it can neither destroy another primary cause nor be destroyed by any. The objector who would open the eternal permanence of the soul to doubt, then, must assail the proofs of a priori knowledge; for so long as these remain free from suspicion, there can be no real question as to what they finally imply. The concomitance of our two streams of experience, the timed stream and the spaced stream, raised from a merely historical into a necessary concomitance by the argument that refers it to the active unity of each soul as its ground, becomes the steadfast sign and visible pledge of the imperishable self-resource of the individual spirit.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.307-8

World , Soul , Question , Knowledge

“No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.”

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

Pre-Raphaelitism, section 1 (1851).

People

“Over the door of his room he caused this sentence to be inscribed: "lnnocuex vivito--- Numen Adest!" He always entertained veneration and admiration for his Creator, and endeavoured to trace his science to its Author. "Tu decus omne tuis, postquam te fata tulere." (Virgilio)”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Linnaeus Diary

Science

“They had this movie called Juno about a teenage girl who gets pregnant and it's nominated for an Oscar. That's an unusual experience for me, 'cause when a black girl gets pregnant it ain't no Oscar. It's social work and a box of condoms is what that is.”

D. L. Hughley (1963) American actor and comedian

Appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (January 17, 2008)

Girl , Box

“The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. … Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Source: Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973), pp. 15-16

Life , Death , Pain , War

“Once you have acquired the skills, you must test them on an opponent, but in no way should you consider victory or submission to be a cause for shame or pride. Rather, you ought to think, "By what means did I defeat him?" Or, "By what means could have I defeated him?"”

Qi Jiguang book Ji Xiao Xin Shu

Then you exert and test yourself for a while.
Source: Jixiao Xinshu (1560; 1584), Chapter 14: The Chapter on the Fist Canon and the Essentials of Nimbleness

Way , Thinking , Victory

“I am of the opinion that the main and final cause why the prince pretends to the power of altering the coinage is the profit or gain which he can get from it.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Source: De Moneta (c. 1360), Ch. 15: That the Profit accruing to the Prince from Alteration of the Coinage is unjust

“My most coveted thing is a high self-esteem, and a low tolerance for them telling me how to lean,
see the most important parts are the ones that are unseen, cause the wings don't make you fly
and the crown don't make you king”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Gold Watch"
Albums, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (2007)

Parting , Flying

“The giraffe's neck supposedly supplies a crucial example for preferring natural selection over Lamarckism as a cause of evolution. But Darwin himself (however wrongly by later judgement) did not deny the Lamarckian principle of inheritance for characters acquired by use or lost by disuse. He regarded the Lamarckian mechanism as weak, infrequent, and entirely subsidiary to natural selection, but he accepted the validity of evolution by use and disuse. Darwin does speculate about the adaptive advantage of giraffe's necks, but he cites both natural selection and Lamarckism as probable causes of elongation.”

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

"The Tallest Tale", p. 312
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Nature

“Scientism exalts the idea of science on its own, causing people to become fixated on the assumptions that seemed scientific to them during their formative years. This prevents them from seeing contrary facts, however glaring they may be, that have been noticed more lately.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Are You an Illusion (2014). 5.

People , Idea , Science

“I talk about going to his Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to "wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water"… the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.”

Sarah Vowell (1969) American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator

Referring to George W. Bush on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart http://www.cc.com/video-clips/e88k08/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-sarah-vowell (2006-02-21)

Imagination , Failure , Drink , Water

“Now it's
O-over
But I do admit I'm sad
It hurts real bad
I can't sweat that, 'cause I loved a ho”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

"Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)"
Lyrics, I Don't Want You Back (2004)

Love , Sadness , Hurt

“The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_III/Apologetic/On_Idolatry/Wide_Scope_of_the_Word_Idolatry, Chapter 1

World

“Though but ten years old he was fully as strong as the average man of thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever becomes. And day by day his strength was increasing.
His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals with which he was familiar.
He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body, burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low snake, or other reptile.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 5 : The White Ape

Life , Feeling , Strong , Universe

“Do you know me? Of course you do. 'Cause I'm famous!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool (1984)

“The magnitude of the service which you rendered to your country and to humanity is beyond estimation. Sharp outlines here and there we know, but the whole account of the World War would be on a scale so stupendous that it could never be recorded. In the victory which was finally gained by you and your foreign comrades, you represented on the battle field the united efforts of our whole people. You were there as the result of a great resurgence of the old American spirit, which manifested itself in a thousand ways, by the pouring out of vast sums of money in credits and charities, by the organization and quickening of every hand in our extended industries, by the expansion of agriculture until it met the demands of famishing continents, by the manufacture of an unending stream of munitions and supplies, by the creation of vast fleets of war and transport ships, and, finally, when the tide of battle was turning against our associates, by bringing into action a great armed force on sea and land of a character that the world had never seen before, which, when it finally took its place in the line, never ceased to advance, carrying the cause of liberty to a triumphant conclusion. You reaffirmed the position of this Nation in the estimation of mankind. You saved civilization from a gigantic reverse. Nobody says now that Americans can not fight.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Money , War , People , World

“This was the true nature of consciousness and the meaning of matter, that ultimately both were one substance without cause or control outside itself.”

David Zindell (1952) American writer

Source: The Wild (1995), p. 518

Nature

“Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.”

Henry Clay Trumbull (1830–1903) Union Army chaplain

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 197.

God

“I don't want you get an idea I experiment with drugs, cause I don't. I am into full-scale research.”

Gallagher (1946–2022) American comedian

Idea

“Another conspicuous failure of classical mechanics was with one aspect of the problem of radiation. …Imagine a crowd of steel balls rolling about on a steel floor. …There must… be a steady leakage of energy from… causes, such as air resistance and the friction of the floor, so the balls will eventually lose energy, and, after no great length of time, will be found standing at rest on the floor. The energy of their motion seems to have been lost… most of it has been transformed into heat. The classical mechanics predicts that this must happen; it shows that all energy of motion, except possibly a minute fraction of the whole, must be transformed into heat whenever such a transformation is physically possible. It is because of this that perpetual-motion machines are a practical impossibility.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Imagination , Failure , Problem , Time

“In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 4.11
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the basic package, not HBO — screw those people. And before the war starts, we make them all sit down. "Okay, we'll go to war with you. You want a piece of us, fine, fine. Before we go, I want you guys to understand us a little better, so you have to sit down and watch ESPN2 for 24 hours. 'Cause you watch ESPN2 for a full day, you're gonna understand America a lot better. 'Hi, we're America! We build monster trucks for fun! We developed the top fuel dragster, zero to three hundred thirty miles an hour in under five seconds, cause, pfft, we were bored. Piss us off, heh, and see what we build! And we may feel bad about it later! Ask Japan. But before we feel bad…we're gonna jack you up! And then we're gonna send you FOOD! 'Cause we're America; we're schizophrenic. Don't mess with a nation that needs medication!'"”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

War , People , Food , Color

“To say that an arms race always leads to war seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse. A government resolved to attain ends detrimental to its neighbours, which does not shrink from the possibility of war, makes preparations for war, its neighbours take defensive action, and you say an arms race is beginning. But this is the symptom of the intention of one government to challenge or destroy its neighbours, not the cause of the conflict. The pace is set by the potential aggressor, and, failing collective action by the rest of the world to resist him, the alternatives are an arms race or surrender.”

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

Interview https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/winston-churchill-new-statesman-archive with Kingsley Martin for the New Statesman (7 January 1939)
The 1930s

War , World , Horse

“You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

As quoted in Marianne Sinclair's !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (1968)

Age , Drawing , Personality

“Make sure the check you write to a charity doesn't pay for cruel experiments on animals. Your donation should help end suffering — not cause it.”

Richard Pryor (1940–2005) American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC

Criticizing charities like the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (Pryor suffered from multiple sclerosis) for their animal studies; as quoted in "Pryor Fought Animal Abuse" by Lisa Lange, in Albuquerque Journal (15 December 2005)

Suffering , Help , Animals

“I am not thinking of those shining precepts which are the registered property of every school; that is to say — learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause of the weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice, and study problems in preference to periods.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Many of these precepts which he quotes here have been quoted as originating with Lord Acton.
The Study of History (1895)

Men , Books , School , Idea

“Arise, O Lord, and judge your own cause. Remember your reproaches to those who are filled with foolishness all through the day. Listen to our prayers, for foxes have arisen seeking to destroy the vineyard whose winepress you alone have trod.”

Pope Leo X Exsurge Domine

Exsurge Domine (1520)

“The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of History.
If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius, or success, or rank, or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man’s influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the Wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and religion itself tend constantly to depress. It serves where it ought to reign; and it serves the worst cause better than the purest.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504; also in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)

Secret , Religion , History , Suffering

Quotes about cause page 18

Quotes about cause
page 18