Quotes about cause
page 32

“You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye,
And I got that red lip, classic thing that you like.
And when we go crashing down, we come back every time,
'Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style.
You've got that long hair slick back, white t-shirt
And I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt.
And when we go crashing down, we come back every time.
'Cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Style, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback, and Ali Payami
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)

Faith, Girl, Time

“Life, in a body whose order and state of affairs can make it manifest, is assuredly, as I have said, a real power that gives rise to numerous phenomena. This power has, however, neither goal nor intention. It can do only what it does; it is only a set of acting causes, not a particular being. I was the first to establish this truth at a time when life was still thought to be a principle, an archeia, a being of some sort.”

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) French naturalist

Système Analytique des Connaissances Positives de l'Homme (1820), as quoted in Lamarck, the Mythical Precursor: A Study of the Relations Between Science and Ideology (1982) by Madeleine Barthélemy Madaule, p. 102.

Life, Truth, Time

“[The spider of sin] sleeps quietly, unseen by the human eye. How do we then bring him into the light? The answer is the stick of God's Law. It is the only means of revealing him. If we open up the Moral Law, it will cause his ugly head to appear… Later, if you are willing, we will lure him out into the open and with the help of God, spray him with the 'gospel spray' of the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

God, Law, Sleep, Light

“No new choices are introduced by raising the specter of disaster. These become opportunities for swearing new allegiance to technology. The solution is to discover new technologies that will correct and modify the harm either potentially or already caused by present technologies.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 178

“Come on girls! Do you believe in love? Cause I got something to say about it.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

(Lyric From Express Yourself).

Love, Girl

“Think about this — some of us actively fighting to remove Saddam Hussein don't agree with the cause themselves, but they're doing their duty. And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins, unless — unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2003-03-03
I Made a Mistake...
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79779,00.html
2010-11-19

Thinking, Fight

“WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may cause offence to narrow minded listeners.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Warning label on Almost Blue (1981)

Music, Country

“No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Reported in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, " Woman in the News: Sotomayor, a Trailblazer and a Dreamer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27websotomayor.html?pagewanted=all", The New York Times (26 May 2009).

“Heat can evidently be a cause of motion only by virtue of the changes of volume or of form which it produces in bodies.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Change

“As you begin to eat healthful, nutrient-dense foods, such as vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds, you flood your body with the vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that it so desperately needs. You will not only see immediate weight-loss benefits, your food preferences will also undergo a metamorphosis as you begin to crave health-supporting food instead of disease-causing food. The foods that once meant so much to you lose their appeal. And your bad emotionally based eating habits will start to disappear along with your waistline.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

“The End of Dieting Pledge”
The End of Dieting (2014)

Health, Disease, Food, Support

“We have never said that the fight against the Iranian aggression and against the expansionist Persian tendencies (which have been demonstrated by various means under successive regimes in Iran) is the decisive battle for the Arabs. What we have said, and still say, is that the fight against Zionism is the main decisive battle for the Arabs. This is a great objective reality, which cannot be denied or underestimated except by someone who would not only harm the Arab nation and its main causes, but would also overlook the main danger.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Reality, Decision, Success, Fight

“Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution. That's their cause: Spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2002, Ann Coulter : Left Is 'out to Destroy the Country' (2002)

“Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

(February 19, 2010) http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/02/tiger_woods_buddhism_teaches_about_cravings_and_other_press_conference_confessions_1.html?hpid=sec-religion and the video on this page: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6223495n Note: This quote was widely reported incorrectly ("creating of things") by the Associated Press, and in the text of the CBS page with the embedded video.

Search, Learning

“I don't know how to lie. But I don't know what truth is, either. I always try to speak the way I think will cause least trouble to God and men.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur talking to Vegmey
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Men, God, Truth, Lie

“I share with you an innate desire to be of public service to this country. It is the lot of our generation to serve as military men first, and then, with an idealism undaunted to enlist with as much zeal to form a lasting peace. All will come right, our cause is just and righteous. This country will not lose.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to friend Loren Hickerson (December 13, 1941)

Men, Peace, Country

“God gives his grace freely, in the strictest sense of the word, and without merit on the part of man. For if God did not bestow his grace in this perfectly gratuitous manner, but on account of some subordinate contingent uncertain cause, he could not possibly foresee how he should bestow his free gifts.”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

De causa Dei contra Pelagium

God, Sense, Parting

“For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.”

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

Source: Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1; The Works of Francis Bacon (1857) p. 232, https://books.google.com/books?id=HloJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA232 Vol. 3.

Life, Men, Truth, Business

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they’d never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice. It's also amusing to see Jefferson Davis represented. Yes, Davis came to Georgia, once to try to settle disputes within the high command of the Army of Tennessee, not a rousing success, and once to rally white Georgians to the cause once more after the fall of Atlanta. But any serious student of the war knows that Davis spent much of his presidency arguing with Georgia governor Joseph Brown about Georgia's contribution to the Confederate war effort, and that the vice president of the Confederacy, Georgia's own Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was not a big supporter of his superior. Yet we don't see Brown or Stephens on Stone Mountain, either.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Brooks D. Simpson, "The Future of Stone Mountain" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-stone-mountain/ (22 July 2015), Crossroads, WordPress

Men, War, Home, History

“The weather is superb except for a very keen wind which causes me to lose much time. - I am doing a portrait of your mother in pastel, it seems it is not adequate as a likeness, it is too old, too red, not fine enough, in short, it won't do. This surprises me not at all. You know that everyone accepts the one I made pretty obvious, but that is not much good either.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to his son Lucien, Osny, 10 April 1885; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 26
1880's

Time, Weather

“Let me get a sip of water here…you figure this stuff is safe to drink? [audience yells "No"] Actually, I don't care, I drink it anyway. You know why? 'Cause I'm an American and I expect a little cancer in my food and water. I'm a loyal American and I'm not happy unless I let government and industry poison me a little bit every day.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Doin' It Again, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics (1990)

Happiness, Food, Drink, Water

“Our cause is just, our union is perfect.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

Declaration on taking up Arms in 1775. From the original manuscript draft in Dickinson's handwriting, which has given rise to the belief that he, not Jefferson (as formerly claimed), is the real author of this sentence.

Perfection

“Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. … when nonvegetarians say that “human problems come first” I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 6: Speciesism Today

Money, People, Support, Problem

“Since its inception, Zionism's Jewish supremacy borrowed much from anti-Semitic rhetoric. Not only did Herzl agree with anti-Semites that it was Jews who 'caused' anti-Semitism but also with the anti-Semitic conclusion that the end of anti-Semitism could only be brought about by the removal of Jews from gentile societies.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

“If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 414 (See also: Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter 25, Section 4(e), p. 742
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

World, Parting, Country

“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 2.2

World, Dogs, Way

“It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. III, p. 83

Perfection

“And you throw your head back laughing
Like a little kid.
I think it's strange that you think I’m funny cause
He never did.
I've been spending the last 8 months
Thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end.
But on a Wednesday in a cafe,
I watched it begin again.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Begin Again.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Love, Thinking

“The success with which we have met in all of these undertakings is a matter of universal knowledge. We are at peace with all the world. Those of this generation who passed through the World War have had an experience which will always cause them to realize what an infinite blessing peace is. We are in an era of unbounded prosperity. The financial condition of our National Government is beginning to be more easy to be borne. While many other nations and many localities within our own country are struggling with a burden of increased debts and rising taxes, which makes them seek for new sources from which by further taxation they can secure new revenues, we have made large progress toward paying off our national debt, have greatly reduced our national taxes, and been able to relieve the people by abandoning altogether many sources of national revenue. We are not required to look altogether to the future for our rewards and find in our lot nothing but sacrifices for the present. Now, here, to-day, we are all able to enjoy those benefits which come from universal peace and nation-wide prosperity.”

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

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

War, People, World, Peace

“Our only "crime" is that in Bucharest we did not agree that a fraternal communist party like the Chinese Communist Party should be unjustly condemned; our only "crime" is that we had the courage to oppose openly, at an international communist meeting (and not in the marketplace) the unjust action of Comrade Khrushchev, our only "crime" is that we are a small Party of a small and poor country which, according to Comrade Khrushchev, should merely applaud and approve but express no opinion of its own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say and we will not give up this right for any one, neither on account of political and economic pressure nor on account of the threats and epithets that they might hurl at us. On this occasion we would like to ask Comrade Khrushchev why he did not make such a statement to us instead of to a representative of a third party. Or does Comrade Khrushchev think that the Party of Labor of Albania has no views of its own but has made common cause with the Communist Party of China in an unprincipled manner, and therefore, on matters pertaining to our Party, one can talk with the Chinese comrades? No, Comrade Khrushchev, you continue to blunder and hold very wrong opinions about our Party. The Party of Labor of Albania has its own views and will answer for them both to its own people as well as to the international communist and workers' movement.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People, Courage, Thinking, Country

“The gravitational repulsion created by this small patch of repulsive gravity material would be, then, the driving force of the Big Bang and it would cause the region to undergo exponential expansion… there is a certain doubling time, and if you wait the same amount of time it doubles again, and if you wait the same amount of time it doubles again… and it's because these doublings build up so dramatically, it doesn't take very much time to build the whole universe. In about 100 doublings this tiny patch of 10-28 cm can become large enough, not to be the universe, but to be a small marble-sized region which will then ultimately become the observed universe, as it continues to coast outward after inflation ends.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I
The Early Universe (2012)

Universe, Time, Waiting

“This annoyed me: I was on the phone with somebody today tryin to get a phone number from that person and write it down, but they didn't have phone number rhythm and that pissed me off. You know what I'm talkin about? Phone number rhythm. Especially if there's like an area code involved, like 'two one two - bum bum buh - bum buh bum buh!' That is the rhythm I think we're all familiar with. This guy had no clue! I was like "Okay, Hank. Gimme the number." He's like "Alright. It's two one two nine - fifteen eight eleven six [mumbling incoherently] fou.. tw.. five.. eight.. seven.. two." "Did you throw in your zip code? Cause I got a lot of extra numbers over here. I have extra. I can almost start a new number! What do ya got?! Start again from the top!" They really screw you up on the last four numbers. That's where they get ya. "Five five five - six.. teen forty one" "Dude, I already wrote the six! I made the dash too close, I can't shimmy the one in there now! Forget you!"”

Kevin James (1965) American actor and comedian

Sweat The Small Stuff (2001)

Guy, Thinking, Personality, Forgetting

“Our daily life is no longer cursed by fear of those pestilences, plagues, black deaths, which used to devastate Europe. The layman has abolished those plagues by using the medical expert's knowledge. The medical expert has said in effect, "There are not many things that we are agreed upon, but at least we are agreed upon this: that though we cannot cure bubonic plague or cholera, we can prevent them, for we know that they are caused by microorganisms transmitted through water and vermin. Keep sewage from your drinking water and vermin from your homes, and you will prevent these plagues." The layman has seen the point, applied appropriate measures, and these dreadful pestilences have disappeared.
Now, if our publics these last twenty years could have grasped certain social truths, not inherently more difficult to understand than the microbic theory of disease, a large part at least of the economic and political pestilences which have come upon us in our generation would not have arisen.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Life, Death, Truth, Fear

“Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic's combatants on the wrong one. (…) One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of goodfaith, was on the wrong side. (…) The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. (…) We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms.”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

cited in «La destra si riconosca nell'antifascismo» http://www.corriere.it/politica/08_settembre_13/fini_antifascismo_ccb8bcec-8175-11dd-95db-00144f02aabc.shtml, Il Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2008).

History, Freedom, Fight

“The border is, if not wide open, then certainly open enough to get what the demand requires inside of the country. Terrorist organizations could seek to leverage those same smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States.”

John F. Kelly (1950) American politician and military officer; White House Chief of Staff since July 2017

Posture Statement of General John F. Kelly, United States Marine Corps Commander, United States Southern Command, before the 114th Congress Senate Armed Services Committee (March 12, 2015)
2010s

Country

“So my answer to why I wrote this book [about Pakistani textbooks] is: I have written for posterity. (Sometimes I feel that I have written all my books for the generations whom I will not see). In a hundred years' time; when the future historian sets out to contemplate the Pakistan off an age gone by and look for the causes that brought it low, he might find in this book of mine one small candle whose quivering flame will light his path.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

Khursheed Kamal Aziz The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Books, Age, Feeling, Light

“Anaximander used to assert that the primary cause of all things was the Infinite,—not defining exactly whether he meant air or water or anything else.”

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

Anaximander, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Water

“If E1 is the cause of E2, then a small variation (a mark) in E1 is associated with a small variation in E2, whereas small variations in E2 are not associated with variations in E1. If we wish to express even more clearly that this concept does not contain the concept of temporal order, we can express it in the following form, where events that show a slight variation are designated E*: E1E2, E1*E2*, E1E2* and never the combination E1*E2.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble. (…) Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge –liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Liberation
Source: "I am That." P.68.

Death, Happiness, Peace, Dreams

“Just as the fire is the direct cause for cooking, so without Knowledge no emancipation can be had. Compared with all other forms of discipline Knowledge of the Self is the one direct means for liberation.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Source: Atma Bodha (1987), p. 4: Quote nr. 2.

Knowledge, Cooking

“To return to the question of strategy…The Falkland Islands are unlikely to cause a major explosion.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech in the House of Commons (7 July 1981) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/jul/07/defence-programme Post-Prime Ministerial

Question

“Oh, it's evil babe
The way you let your grace enrapture me,
When well you know I'd be insane
To ever let that dirty game recapture me.You made me a shadowboxer, baby.
I wanna be ready for what you do.
I been swinging all around me
'Cause I don't know when you're gonna make your move.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Shadowboxer
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Way, Game, Evil, Baby

“In a piece of my mind the world can't erase
I remember the time and the look on your face
And I will 'till the wind blows the stars from the sky
'cause the road never ends and the soul never dies
Be who you are
just as long as you can
Know in your heart I'm still your man
Headin for home
starlight and stone..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Starlight and Stone
Song lyrics, Closer to the Bone (2009)

World, Home, Soul, Star

“Disagreements don't cause disunity, a lack of forgiveness does.”

Loren Cunningham (1935) American missionary

Cited in: George Otis Jr, The God They Never Knew, 1978, p. 7-8.
retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20011115090120/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1082/geotisjr.htm on 19:19, 2 May 2007, (UTC)

Forgiveness

“The -- the constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause. It's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not for you.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

People, Problem

“It was around 1910/11 that everyone, at every level of the social scale, became aware of those apparent eccentricities that were challenging the precarious certainties of the world. And it was uniquely the painting of a group, not of an individual, that was the cause.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

after 1920, The Epic, From immobile form to mobile form (1925)

World, Painting

“Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Life, Death, Food, Home

“So there is little cause for the fear that our journalism, merely because it is prosperous, is likely to betray us. But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, and probably always will be some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others. But these are becoming constantly a less numerous and less potential element in the community. Their influence, whatever it may seem at a particular moment, is always ephemeral. They will not long interfere with the progress of the race which is determined to go its own forward and upward way. They may at times somewhat retard and delay its progress, but in the end their opposition will be overcome. They have no permanent effect. They accomplish no permanent result. The race is not traveling in that direction. The power of the spirit always prevails over the power of the flesh. These furnish us no justification for interfering with the freedom of the press, because all freedom, though it may sometime tend toward excesses, bears within it those remedies which will finally effect a cure for its own disorders.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Fear, Way, Travel, Feeling

“Himuin was excessively arrogant on account of his troops and elephants. He advanced, fought, and routed the Mughals, whose heads lay in heaps, and whose blood flowed in streams. He thus at first vanquished the Mughal army; but as the brilliancy of the star of Prince Akbar’s fortune was not destined to be diminished, it chanced that, by the decree of the Almighty, an arrow struck Himun in the forehead. He told his elephant driver to take the elephant out of the field of battle…
“When Shah Kuli Beg was told of what had occurred, he came up to the elephant, and brought it into the presence of Bairam Khan. Bairam Khan, after prostrating himself, and returning thanks, caused HImUn to descend from the elephant, after which he bound his hands, and took him before the young and fortunate Prince, and said, As this is our first success, let Your Highness’s own august hand smite this infidel with the sword. The Prince, accordingly, struck him, and divided his head from his unclean body (Nov. 5, AD 1556).”

Hemu (1501–1556) General and Chief Minister of Adil Shah Suri

Tarikh-i Salatin-i Afaghana of Ahmad Yadgar, translated in Elliot and Dowson, Volume V, pp. 65-66. Quoted in S. R. Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

Star, Chance, Success

“If I worked at a store and a duck came in I would like just give him some bread-- "sure man no problem-- tell your friends"--- but I would not give him Pepperidge Farm bread…. You know that stuff right? you open it and it still ain't open. That is why I do not buy it. Cause I do not need another step, between me and toast."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

Problem

“The rule of our law is that the immediate cause, the causa proxima, and not the remote cause, is to be looked at: for, as Lord Bacon says: "It were infinite for the law to judge the causes of causes and their impulsions one of another; therefore it contenteth itself with the immediate cause, and judgeth of acts by that, without looking to any further degree."”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Sneesby v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Rail. Co. (1874), L. R. 9 Q. B. Ca. 267.

Law

“Little yellow spider, laughing at the snow.
Maybe that spider knows something i don't know,
'cause i'm goddamn cold.”

Devendra Banhart (1981) American folk singer

From Niño Rojo

“Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another—the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.
Among the gods, who brought this quarrel on?
The son of Zeus by Lêto. Agamémnon
angered him, so he made a burning wind
of plague rise in the army: rank and file
sickened and died for the ill their chief had done
in despising a man of prayer.”

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) American poet, critic and translator

opening lines
The Iliad (1974)

Men, God, Dogs, Soul

“You gotta understand that people attach me and Jim Steinman. But you really have to attach Todd Rundgren to that. … you really have to credit Todd Rundgren for the initial mark. Yes, Steinman had things in his head. And, yes, I had some things in my head; I had how “All Revved Up with No Place to Go” should sound in my head. Jim had how “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” should sound in his head. But pulling things out of your head and accomplishing them, and somebody else trying to accomplish them, is a remarkable feat. … So not taking anything away from Jim, ‘cause Jim is an absolute genius and one of the smartest people that I’ve ever known, and I consider him one of my best friends. But, y’know, sometimes, people just… they pigeonhole things, and they go, “Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf.” And my thing is, no, stop it! Because the Bat Out of Hell records are this: it’s a big wheel, and everybody is a spoke in that wheel… and, at different times as that wheel’s turning, different people have more input than others. It’s, like, as a wheel turns, the bottom spokes take more than the top spokes…but, pretty soon, those are gonna be the bottom spokes, and their import is more. And, so, that’s how that goes with the Bat Out of Hell records… and that’s exactly Bat Out of Hell III.”

Meat Loaf (1947) American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor

On credit for the Bat out of Hell albums.
A chat with Meat Loaf (2006)

People, Hell, Understanding, Time

“I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

Life, Angels, Light, Christ

“I'm gonna run to you.
Yeah - I'm gonna run to you.
Cause when the feelin's right, I'm gonna stay all night.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Run to You
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Night

“A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Time

“Mr. Trump has said very clearly for months now a policy that's been ignored, which is that he believes that we need to have a temporary suspension to stop refugees from coming in from countries where terrorist activities are rampant or in a war. That's the issue, not the Khan family loss which we all regret, not the loss of many other American families which we all regret. The issue is how to protect the homeland. And the second part of the issue which is being ignored is the cause of these losses, because it forced our American military to go back into Iraq, to go into Syria and that cause was the policies that were put together in January of 2009 by President Clinton and Secretary Obama that caused ISIS to rise.”

Paul Manafort (1949) American political consultant

Interview on NBC News' Meet The Press (July 31, 2016)

War, Family, Loss, Parting

“Well, then, the moment there is a patent case one can see it before the case is opened, or called in the list. How can we see it? We can see it by a pile of books as high as this invariably… Now, what is the result of all this? Why that a man had better have his patent infringed, or have anything happen to him in this world, short of losing all his family by influenza, than have a dispute about a patent. His patent is swallowed up, and he is ruined. Whose fault is it? It is really not the fault of the law; it is the fault of the mode of conducting the law in a patent case. This is what causes all this mischief.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

Ungar, v. Sugg (1892) 9 RPC 113, at 116

Books, World, Family, Law

“Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of "Mormonism"; [it is designed] to revolutionize and civilize the world, and cause wars and contentions to cease and men to become friends and brothers.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 5:517 (23 July 1843)
1840s

Men, Friendship, War, World

“Instead of inquiring after the nature of the cause of the condensation of nebulous matter, it would indeed be sufficient for the present purpose to call it merely a condensing principle; but since we are already acquainted with the centripetal force of attraction which gives a globular figure to planets, keeps them from flying out of their orbits in tangents, and makes one star revolve around another, why should we not look up to the universal gravitation of matter as the cause of every condensation, accumulation, compression, and concentration of the nebulous matter?”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Star, Nature, Universe, Flying

“Aryabhata conceived the earth as a rotating sphere in space, which causes the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Varahamihira disagreed and Brahmagupta derided Aryabhata — but unlike medieval Europe, the intellectual climate in India was free and tolerant of dissent.”

Michel Danino (1956) Indian writer

On ancient Indian astronomers, as quoted in " Unlike medieval Europe, India’s intellectual climate was free and tolerant: Michel Danino http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-interviews-blog/unlike-medieval-europe-indias-intellectual-climate-was-free-and-tolerant-michel-danino/", The Times of India (9 February 2015)

Sun

“They bombed innocent people trying to murder Saddam
When they gave 'em those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran
This is the information they hold back from Peter Jennings 'cause Condoleeza Rice is just a new-age Sally Hemmings.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

War, People, Age

“It is true that lack of rain causes famine but it is also true that the people of India have not the strength to fight the evil. The poverty of India is wholly due to the present rule. India is being bled till only the skeleton remains…all the vitality of the people is being sapped and we are left in an emaciated state of slavery.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

[Bhagwat, A.K., Pradhan, G.P., Lokmanya Tilak – A Biography, http://books.google.com/books?id=bYfMbCXyc3kC&pg=PT167, 1958, Jaico Publishing House, 978-81-7992-846-2, 167–]

People, Evil, Fight

“I don't need you to worry for me cause I'm alright.
I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home.
I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life.
Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

My Life.
Song lyrics, 52nd Street (1978)

Life, Home, Time

“It is important that we continue to strengthen our economic and political progress. We can achieve this only if we can make an effort to face our past to allow relief and dignity for those who have experienced violations and to ensure that that pain is acknowledged. The root cause to our experience must also be effectively dealt with. This will involve all of us right across our society.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Fiji Day address, 10 October 2005 (excerpts)

Pain, Effort, Past

“I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it… So that it achieves its maximum flavor potential.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

“The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.”

Honoré de Balzac book Le Pere Goriot

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.
Part II
A variant, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime," has appeared as a quotation of Balzac; but it may have originated in a paraphrase in The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur (1971) by Richard O'Connor, p. 47: "Balzac maintained that behind every great fortune there is a great crime." It also appears at the beginning of the novel "The Godfather," published two years earlier.
Le Père Goriot (1835)

Secret

“At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought: this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself.”

Émile Durkheim book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Source: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 9

Life, Idea, Understanding, Universe

“Then the theory of relativity came and explained the cause of the failure. Electric action requires time to travel from one point of space to another, the simplest instance of this being the finite speed of travel of light… Thus electromagnetic action may be said to travel through space and time jointly. But by filling space and space alone [excluding time] with an ether, the pictorial representations had all supposed a clear-cut distinction between space and time.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Travel, Failure, Light, Time

“To unstable money are to be traced nearly all our economic troubles since 1918: the unemployment of the inter-war period; the over-employment and scarcity of labour since the Second World War; the labour unrest incidental to perpetual wage demands; the hardships and dislocation caused by the declining value of small savings, annuities and endowments; the vexation of continual price rises even for those whose incomes on the whole keep pace with them; the collapse of the prices of Government securities through distrust of the unit in which they are valued.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

‘Foreword’ (1961) to A Century of Bank Rate (1962, 2nd ed.), p. xxii.
A Century of Bank Rate (1938)

Money, War, World

“Art imitates nature not in its effects as such, but in its causes, in its ‘manner,’ in its process, which are nothing but a participation in and a derivation of actual objects, of the Art of God himself.”

Paul Claudel (1868–1955) French diplomat

as quoted in "The man who got it right," The New York Review of Books, Volume 60, Number 13, August 15, 2013, p. 72

God, Art, Nature

“'Cause I’m gonna lose you. Yes, I’m gonna lose you. If I’m gonna lose you. I’ll lose you now for good. ~ "Lose You"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

“It is willingly granted that by cultivation the origination of new varieties is favored, and that by man's labor many varieties are acquired which, under natural conditions, would be lost; but nothing justifies the assumption that the tendency to formation of varieties is so extraordinarily increased that the species speedily lose all stability, and their offspring diverge into an endless series of extremely variable forms. Were the change in the conditions the sole cause of variability we might expect that those cultivated plants which are grown for centuries under almost identical conditions would again attain constancy.”

Gregor Mendel book Experiments in plant-hybridisation

Experiments with Hybrids of Other Species of Plants
Experiments in plant-hybridisation (1865)

Nature, Change

“We’ve got to find a way to make the world work for everyone. Climate change is an issue that impacts [sic] that greatly by making it harder for people to live where they live, by causing disruptions, and lack of resources.”

Ron Klain (1961) American lawyer

Interviewed, together with his wife, at Georgetown University gotnews http://gotnews.com/ebola-czar-called-overpopulation-top-leadership-issue/ (2008)

People, World, Way, Change

“Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.
Blessed be God's name?
Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Death, God, Children, Tree

“Did you cling to the things they sold you?
Did you cover your eyes when they told you
That he can't come back, 'cause he has no children
To come back for”

George Michael (1963–2016) English singer-songwriter, musician, producer

Praying for Time
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)

Children

“The fundamental, all-pervasive cause of world instability is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses. The technological acceleration of transportation, communication and weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than existing political structures.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

World, Communication

“The crucial role of psychological and environmental factors in causing pain in a significant number of patients only recently received attention. As a consequence, there has emerged a sketch plan of pain apparatus with its receptors, conducting fibers, and its standard function which is to be applicable to all circumstances. But… in doing so, medicine has overlooked the fact that the activity of this apparatus is subject to the a constantly changing influence of the mind.”

John Bonica (1917–1994) Anesthesiologist; pioneer in pain management

The Management of Pain (1954) Preface to 1st edition

Pain, Change

“The world's got a nosebleed, it said
And we're flooding, but we keep on cutting the trees and the forests!
And we keep on paying those freaks on the TV
Who claim they will save us, but want to enslave us, and
Sweating like demons, they scream through our speakers
But we leave the sound on 'cause silence is harder, and
No one's the killer and no one's the martyr
The world that has made us can no longer contain us
And prophets are silent and rotting away.”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

"Consequence of Sounds"
Songs (2002)

World, Tree, Silence

“The sex-energy is the greatest power of the mind and the body. This is the supreme strength in the human body, embodying all powers and assuming all forms. The mind and the body receive their strength and life from this sex-energy. Instead of allowing this Shakti or energy to become the gross seminal fluid, it is to be conserved, it is to be converted into a form of subtle energy called “Ojas” and thus made a source of spiritual life instead of the cause of physical death. With the extinction of sexual desires, the mind is released of its most powerful bond. Sex-energy moves towards two main directions, viz., one is downward and the other is upward. It takes the downward course in the form of gross sexual enjoyment; but when one tries to observe Brahmacharya (celibacy) in thought, word and deed, it takes the upward course. When the sex-energy always takes the downward course in a person, such a person becomes weak mentally and physically. From such a man or woman we cannot expect anything great and original. Sexual life dissipates the powers of the mind and the body.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

The Mysteries of Man, Mind and Mind-Functions (1951), p. 483f (2001 edition)

Life, Death, Sex, Personality

“Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 82)

Happiness, Pleasure

“On why our features sag, It is by the natural and unaffected movements of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man's character would in some measure be written in his face, by the time he arrives at forty years of age.”

William Hogarth book The Analysis of Beauty

The Analysis of Beauty (1753)

Age, Nature, Passion, Time

“We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. For too many years we have been treated like the lowest of the low. Our wages and working conditions have been determined from above, because irresponsible legislators who could have helped us, have supported the rancher's argument that the plight of the Farm Worker was a "special case." They saw the obvious effects of an unjust system, starvation wages, contractors, day hauls, forced migration, sickness, illiteracy, camps and sub-human living conditions, and acted as if they were irremediable causes. The farm worker has been abandoned to his own fate — without representation, without power — subject to mercy and caprice of the rancher. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference. To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. From this movement shall spring leaders who shall understand us, lead us, be faithful to us, and we shall elect them to represent us. We shall be heard.”

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

The Plan of Delano (1965)

Fate, Faith, Spring, Understanding

“The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child; and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle dews in one summer, that will not cause as much remark as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who are more struck by those passages of the Bible that announce the indignation of God than by those that announce His affection.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 30.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

God, Parent, Summer, Night

“One of the most important presuppositions of Darwin's entire thesis is gradualism, the idea that mutations to the genome can cause minor variations in the organism's properties, which can be accumulated piecemeal, bit by bit, over the eons to create the complex order found in the organisms we observe.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

Source: At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1996), p.151. as cited in: A. Kay (2006) The Dynamics of Public Policy: Theory and Evidence. p.43

Idea

“They choose what you’re watching and you don’t mind
They choose what you’re watching ‘cause they’re so kind
They choose what you’re watching and you don’t mind
Dunno what you’re watching and you don’t mind”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Choose what you’re watching
Lyrics, You Are Here (2008)

“If the question is do people (in the Liberal Party) believe that human beings are the main cause of the planet warming, then I'd say a majority don't accept that position”

Nick Minchin (1953) Australian politician

Xinhua News Agency http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/10/content_12423488.htm

People, Question

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Non-Violence in Peace and War (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton Google Books link http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AIrLed2w1lkC ISBN 0811200973 1940s

Truth

“But what is the use of this history, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon one another's extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.”

Jean Henri Fabre (1823–1915) French entomologist and author

In 'Minotaurus typhoeus'

Life, People, Books, History

“Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.
The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Way, Nature, Memory, Speed

“John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything.
Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that.
Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus?
Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning.
Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because…
Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs].
Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed.
Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't…
Major: The real problem is this…
Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it?
Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is…
Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away.
Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party.
Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and…
Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now.
Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'.
Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them.
Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim?
Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.

People, Age, Way, Fashion

“Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the city.”
Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis [sic, instead of ""tumultuantes""] Roma expulit.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis [sic, instead of "tumultuantes"] Roma expulit.
Chrestus may be a mis-spelling of Christus, Christ.
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Claudius, Ch. 25

“I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Self-written epitaph on her tombstone in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati Ohio (c. 1850)

Life, Wedding

“Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved (2000), p. 14

Life, Death, World, Feeling

“This enlarged view of the radical cause … allows us to connect leftism and modernism, the radical politics of institutional reform and the radical politics of personal relations, a political vision obsessed with issues of dependence and domination and a moral vision concerned with the inability of the individual to gain practical, emotional, or even cognitive access to other people without forfeiting his independence.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 7

People, Dependency, Personality

“My foreign policy has three fundamental branches: first, confidence in our cause, a recognition that the principles America was based upon are not something we shrink from or apologize for, that we stand for those principles; the second is clarity in our purpose, which is that when we have a foreign policy objective, we describe it honestly and clearly to the American people, to Congress and to the people of the world; and number three is resolve in our might, that in those rare circumstances, those rare circumstances where we decide it's essential for us to apply military might, that we do so with overwhelming force, that we do so in the clarity of a mission, understanding the nature of the U. S. interest involved, understanding when the mission would be complete, what will be left when it is -- what will be left behind us when that mission has been -- has been terminated.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

televised remarks, , quoted in * 2012-09-12
What They Said, Before and After the Attack in Libya
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/12/us/politics/libya-statements.html
2012-09-18
2012

People, World, Confidence, Understanding

“Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180

Fear

“Every Iraqi atrocity has confirmed the justice and the urgency of our cause. [applause] Against this enemy we will accept no outcome except complete victory.”

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

The East Room of the White House, March 28, 2003 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030328-6.html 2000s, 2003

Justice, Victory

“In Wing Chun if you throw two fast punches to someone's head they'll be knocked out. The first punch causes the brain to go to one side of the skull. If a quick second hit comes, the person is knocked out. If you withdraw the hand to give the second punch, then the brain can recover (will have more time to recover), but if you don't give this time then a knockout results.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wong Shun Leung Comments on the Chain Punches in Wing Chun Punching Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

Time, Personality

“What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.
My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis we have these contests, and engage in spirited disagreement over the shape and course of our government.
We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, and promote the general welfare. But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other.
We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always. Let us argue our differences. But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them.
Our adversaries are weaker than us in arms and men, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity.
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We're Americans.
We're Americans, and we'll never surrender.
They will.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, Men, War, Fear

Quotes about cause page 32

Quotes about cause
page 32