Quotes about claim (1996 quotes, page 20)

“There are two separate answers…For people in general, I think they should name themselves in whatever way they wish. The flourishing of the gay movement in America is clearly very necessary and the identity that people could proudly lay claim to is crucial. Lives are lost every day because of bigotry in this country. So I think that should not prevail.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On labelling and sexual orientation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I’m really proud of my family and who they are’” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/01/saffron-burrows-married-to-alison-balian-mozart-in-the-jungle in The Guardian (2014 Dec 01)

Way , Thinking , People , Country

“Hitler in 1919 took a position in the Communist run Bavarian Soviet Republic, wearing in public a red armband, according to a number of historians including Thomas Weber. And a little later after the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Hitler claimed to be a ‘social democrat.’”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 285

“As an aside, I’ve never once claimed to be “offended.””

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Then again, I’m a grown man. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-2012-rap-video_b_1273779

“A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

paraphrased variant:
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.
Source: Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003), Ch. 5 : The Past in the Present, p. 195

Fight , Thinking , People , Evil

“Now as long as the people having their stuff taken away from them are in the minority and the majority feels that they get to benefit from more said taken stuff, you'll always be able to win that decision through a popular vote and claim the moral high ground through democracy.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Democracy , People , Feeling , Decision

“Claiming that a holy book’s claims are undeniable because the book itself claims them to be is convincing only to the convinced.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 64)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Books

“Yes, the claim that sex in humans is not a binary is pretty much a lie, and is made on ideological rather than scientific grounds.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" A defense of the binary in human sex https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/14/a-defense-of-the-binary-in-human-sex/" February 14, 2020

Sex , Lie

“When we claim that "God does not exist," we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over, that God who from nothing created the universe, from chaos matter, that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

God , Personality , Universe , Way

“Many of the novels read in isolation can seem like lumber-rooms of ideas, cluttered and over-complex, as if attempting too much at once. Perhaps the fault lies in market circumstances and the terse Ace format for which Dick wrote. One could also argue that Dick's novels were a quarter the length they ought to have been to contain such complexity and richness. Even so, the marvellous, multi— levelled web of themes and concerns which emerges from this process of condensation gives Dick's work its specific feel, the very thing that makes it unique. Unrevised, eccentric and extravagant — even so, it's not too much to claim that Dick is perhaps the first real genius to have worked in the science-fictional mode since the days of Stapledon, a hybrid of Dickens and Dostoevsky, possessed of the comic delights and tragic depths of both, yet choosing work where his eccentricities were cherished. In any case, like so many SF writers, he learned to love the genre through the magazines long before his literary tastes were formed. He never quite recovered from that first infatuation with the forbidden van Vogtian delights.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Брайан Олдисс, «Кутёж на триллион лет»

Science , Reading , Learning , Idea

“By asserting the objectivity of the physical world, natuaralism identifies the existence and the conditions of existence of the physical world with existence and the conditions of existence in general. It forgets that the world of the physicist necessarily refers back, through its intrinsic meaning, through the subjective world which one tries to exclude from reality as being pure appearance, conditioned by the empirical nature of man, which is incapable of reaching directly to a world of things in themselves. But while the world of the physicist claims to go beyond naive experience, his world really exists only in relation to naive experience.”

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) French philosopher

The Theory Of Intuition In Husserls Phenomenology 1963, 1995 p. 9

Forgetting , Nature , Appearance , Reality

“Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.”

Chief Joseph (1840–1904) Nez Percé Chieftain

Speech rejecting the demands that he lead his people onto a reservation. (1876)

Thinking , Understanding

“The connections among morality, prudence, and religion are complicated and beyond my concerns here. I would like to counter, however, the claim regularly made by religious people that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral or law-abiding than they. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and I suspect whatever average distance there is along the nebulous dimension of morality has the opposite algebraic sign.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Gambling Argument (and Emotions from Prudence to Fear)” (p. 139)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Religion , People , Law

“You would think that the obvious irreligious objection would come to almost anyone’s mind when reading a religious tome or holy book. What if you don’t believe the holy book’s presuppositions and narrative claims and simply ask for independent argument or evidence for God’s existence? What if you’re not persuaded by the argument that God exists because His assertion that He exists and discussion of His various exploits appear in this book about Him that believers say He inspired?”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 63)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

God , Reading , Thinking , Books

“I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

"Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" (1974) in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist.

Time

“We will and concede for us and all our heirs and successors, by the common counsel, assent and consent of the prelates, magnates, earls and barons and communities of our realm in our parliament that the Kingdom of Scotland, shall remain for ever separate in all respects from the Kingdom of England, in its entirety, free and in peace, without any kind of subjection, servitude, claim or demand.”

Edward III of England (1312–1377) King of England

Letters-patent (1 March 1328), quoted in G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 333–334

Peace , Communication

“I am not antagonistic to the rightful claims of capital; I am far from wanting to flourish a hostile flag; but I am of opinion that the masses, too, have rights which should be considered.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Speech to the Reichstag (14 June 1882), quoted in W. H. Dawson, Bismarck and State Socialism: An Exposition of the Social and Economic Legislation of Germany since 1870 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891), p. 32
1880s

Hostility

“One way or another, today's debts will not be paid.... As long as savings mainly by the 1% takes the form of debt claims on the rest of society, they will grow exponentially to hold the 99% in deepening debt.... If debts to creditors are paid by forced privatization, the public domain and infrastructure will be turned into rent-extraction tollbooth opportunities and economies will be impoverished by rentier austerity.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

pp 418-419
Dr. Michael Hudson, KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT BONDAGE DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, Islet 2015

Way

“I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the entirely hypothetical character of the dates I ventured to assign to the first three periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Max Muller. (Preface to the text of the Rigveda, Vol.4, p.xiii). Quoted in https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european_27.html

Literature

“I perceive... a dearth of voices speaking out against the modern anti-vaccination movement. Their false claims and public statements more often than not go unchallenged. I hope that this book might serve as a clarion call for other scientists and physicians to speak out on behalf of science.”

Peter Hotez Introduction

Introduction
Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism (2018)

Science , Falseness , Books , Hope

“[T]he claim that suffering is bad for those who experience it and thus ought in general to be prevented when possible cannot be seriously doubted.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

Jeff McMahan, " The Meat Eaters https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/", The New York Times, 19 Sept. 2010

Bad luck , Suffering

“Over three million Jews were killed in Poland and Poles will not be the heirs of Polish Jews. We will never allow it (...) They will hear about it from us as long as Poland exists. If Poland fails to fulfill Jewish claims, it will be "publicly attacked and humiliated" on an international forum.”

Israel Singer (1942) American Jewish activist

Fragment of a message from the Reuter agency from Buenos Aires, broadcast on Friday, April 19, 1996, dedicated to The World Jews Congress. ISBN 9788360335130, page 29.

“[W]hen our country shall have got a good and cheap government, we can, with clear consciences, recommend the paring of their nails, and the making of them bow to that power which, freed from infernal boroughmongering, will again claim and enforce her dominion of the seas. No American that ever conversed with me upon this subject will deny, that I always said, that I should never die in peace without making them again bow to England; and that bow to her again they should, whenever we shook off the power of the hellish boroughmongers. ... ENGLAND is my country: I must share in all her glory and in all her disgrace; and when it is a question of her honour and well-being, I must cast aside all private recollections and feelings. ... I always said...I never would rest until I saw the Americans acknowledge, explicitly our right to dominion on the seas. I wish them all the happiness that men can enjoy in this world; but a nation may be very happy without being permitted to swagger about and be saucy to England.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (2 June 1832), p. 545
1830s

Peace , Question , Country , Happiness

“[G]overnments are not producers, they have no commodities on their road to the market, and can have no claim whatever to issue paper-money. Even exchequer bills are wrong,…”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 212

Money

“I hate corruption. (I'm not claiming to be clean. I also stole a lot, but it's all used up. So, it's gone.) ...corruption is really out during my term.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Hindi ako nagmamakalinis. Marami rin akong nanakaw pero naubos na. So, wala na.

Livestream: 140th founding anniversary of the Philippine Chinese Charitable Association, Inc. (PCCAI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHdEnLY1GtQ&t=3993 (Jun 28, 2017)

Hate

“The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every claim for protection given by citizenship — on the issue. Victory, or the conditions imposed by the conqueror — must be the result.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 16

Strong , Victory , People , Nature

“..the art-reviews on my work in the French and English magazines.. ..[are] enough to claim that I already have reached a prominent position among today's marine painters. I would also like to take this fact into consideration when determining my prices.”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..de critieken op mijn werk in de Fransche, Engelsche bladen [zijn].. ..voldoende om te kunen beweren dat ik reeds nu onder de tegenwoordige marine schilders een voorname plaats inneem. Dit wil ik ook bij het stellen [bepalen] mijner prijzen in aanmerking genomen hebben.

In a letter to art-sellers Goupil in The Hague, 1870's; as cited in De Copieboeken of De Wording van de Haagsche School, Johan Poort; Mesdag Documentatie Centrum, Wassenaar, 1996, pp. 89-90
before 1880

Art

“But are you so sure...that when Ulster, or the corner of Ulster knows that Great Britain has made up its mind that there is to be an effective, a real self-government in Ireland—are you so sure Ulster will turn its back upon Ireland and claim to be excluded from such Government? (“No.”) I do not believe it. ... I say that a good deal of this zeal for Ulster is artificial.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech to the National Reform Union in Manchester (6 July 1887), quoted in The Times (7 July 1887), p. 7
1880s

Self-confidence

“Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

"Summary of Principles". 1.5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“If the medieval chronicler cries out "Jihad" it is not heard, but if he cries out persistently, it is claimed that he never meant it.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Source: Studies in Medieval Indian History (1966)

“It's nonsense to talk about the war on Islamic terrorism as a clash of civilisations. The distinction is between civilisation and chaos. Whatever people may claim - and the desire to cut through the political processes can be very powerful - there is never any justification for violence.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

As quoted in “Michael Burleigh: The reluctant guru,” John Crace, The Guardian, March 10, 2008 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/mar/11/academicexperts.highereducationprofile

War , People

“[Greek voices] must not only be heard claiming their due but also contributing to the European Union.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

On EU aid to Greece, quoted in The Times (21 December 1993), p. 13
President of the European Commission

“Offences committed by people’s representatives should be severely and promptly punished. No one has the right to claim to be more inviolable than other citizens.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Original: (fr) XXXIII. Les délits des mandataires du peuple doivent être sévèrement et facilement punis. Nul n'a le droit de se prétendre plus inviolable que les autres citoyens.
Source: "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)

People

“However, efilism's claim that all life, human and non-human, should be ceased is a hubris I am not convinced humans have a right to exert. While the cessation of suffering humans cause is already manipulated in a way that could come under an efilist rubric, these 'management' tools usually come in the form of culling populations of nonhumans to redress an imagined environmental balance most usually caused by humans in the first place. Domestic efilism such a neutering rescue animals is necessary, especially when rescuing can involve the speciesism of feeding one slaughtered animal to sustain another, and neutering humans is the logical way to prevent the perpetuation of this practice as well”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, p. 153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Imagination , Suffering , Animals , Way

“The continuation of diachrony in perceptions of life and death spreads across a form of antinatalism essentially co-opted from a kind of Western fetishism of Buddhism, namely efilism. Coming etymologically from the reverse of 'life', efilism claims it is better never to have been. Efilist philosophers such as David Benatar hinge their arguments on basic binaries of pleasure and pain which roughly correlate to good and bad and extend to a vindication of life and death. Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism's greater good. Both are absolute in their perception of the capacity to evaluate which is which, making both dependent on economic measure of value as an either/or, and to an extent both on (anthropocentric) determinism. Efilism's redeeming feature is that it promotes antinatalism, and often veganism, in its aspirations to a reduction in suffering, and this attitude promises potentials for opening the world through the cessation of the human.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 152-153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Pain , Dependency , Making love , Bad luck

“Claiming all power for the purpose of prosperity and justice in society is conflicting to its own cause, rather authorizing individual authority is the just way toward a better society, because each individual has the right to decide about himself, and for collective decision making in society, all individual has the right to provide their input in it, after that majorities’ rule and minorities’ rights is the key to move forward, otherwise its destruction of society.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

Source: https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=co3AzQEACAAJ&dq=inauthor:%22Zaman+Ali%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVi-2e57jtAhWToVwKHUj0D3kQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg

Way , Making love , Justice , Decision

“A man must be either conscientiously scientific in his approach or frankly speculative. What he must not do is present his speculative untested ideas in a manner and style of dogmatic certainty that they are not entitled to claim. This is being pseudo-scientific.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 11, p. 271

Idea

“What a fine thing it would be if the North were as loyal to what it claims to be its principles as the South to its views?”

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) African Americans' rights activist

Source: p. 290

“If we assume the viewpoint claimed as his own by Lenin and we fear the influence of intellectuals in the proletarian movement, we can conceive of no greater danger to the Russian party than Lenin's plan of organization. Nothing will more surely enslave a young labor movement to an intellectual elite hungry for power than this bureaucratic straightjacket, which will immobilize the movement and turn it into an automaton manipulated by a Central Committee. On the other hand there is no more effective guarantee against opportunist intrigue and personal ambition than the independent revolutionary action of the proletariat, as a result of which the workers acquire the sense of political responsibility and self-reliance.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

Sense , Self-confidence , Fear , Personality

“The American Communist Party is not an autonomous body. Its members, who claim their rights under the American Constitution have already relinquished every personal right to an international, actually Russian, body. Their claim to participate in the political life of America is as preposterous as would be the claim of the Jugoslav Communist Party to participate, because the American, Russian, Jugoslav, Bulgarian, etc., parties are all the same organization.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 2

Personality , Life

“The Communists and Fascists are engaged in a sham struggle of ideas. The actual forms of government under which Fascists and Communists live are almost identical. One claims to abolish private property and attacks the other as its defender. But the property of Russia is not controlled by the people, but by the bureaucracy, operating in the name of the people, just as it is in Germany, where you get your head cut off if you try to hold your property in gold or in anything except German paper.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 62

Idea , People

“[On postmodernism] We historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories – even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction – can prove fatal.”

Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) historian

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, Return to Essentials (2002)

Fight , Truth , Way , People

“I must painfully record my opinion that grave injury has been done to religion in many minds — not in instructed minds, but in those which are ill-instructed or partially instructed, which have a large claim on our consideration — in consequence of steps which have, unhappily, been taken. Great mischief has been done in many minds through the resistance offered to the man elected by the constituency of Northampton, which a portion of the community believe to be unjust. When they see the profession of religion and the interests of religion ostensibly associated with what they are deeply convinced is injustice, they are led to questions about religion itself, which they see to be associated with injustice. Unbelief attracts a sympathy which it would not otherwise enjoy; and the upshot is to impair those convictions and that religious faith, the loss of which I believe to be the most inexpressible calamity which can fall either upon a man or upon a nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1880s
Source: Except from a speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1883/apr/26/second-reading-adjourned-debate-second in the House of Commons (26 April 1883) in support of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh being permitted to take his seat in Parliament.

Loss , Faith , Religion , Question

“[I]n dealing with such money as you possess, I have no doubt that here in Brighton you will not differ from me that the first claim is the naval defence of England. (Loud and continued cheers.) ... It is our business to be quite sure in respect to this island-home of ours, whose inaccessibility is the source of our greatness, that no improvement of foreign fleets and no combination of foreign alliances should be able for a moment to threaten its safety.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Defending increased naval expenditure; speech in Brighton (19 November 1895), quoted in The Times (20 November 1895), p. 7

Business , Home , Money

“If a man who claims to see the future is a fool,
how much more so, the man who believes he can control it?
We think we steer the ship of fate,
but all of us are guided by unseen stars.”

Megan Whalen Turner book Thick as Thieves

Enoclitus (Epigraph)
Thick as Thieves

Fate , Future , Star , Fools

“To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans aren’t “at home” in the world. We’re everywhere, remarkably well funded and well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion: thank the troops for their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just don’t imagine that we’re the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many good guys left.”

Tom Engelhardt (1944) American writer

We’re Not the Good Guys, CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/04/were-not-the-good-guys/ (4 July 2019)

Home , Imagination , Business , Season

“God, at least in the West, is often represented as a man with a flowing beard and sandals… if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel, a man who matches that description to a T. Mr. Postel's claim to cyber-divinity, besides his appearance, is that he is the chairman and, in effect, the sole member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the organization that coordinates almost all Internet addresses.”

Jon Postel (1943–1998) American computer scientist

The Economist (1997-02-08).

God , Appearance

“It's so ironic they [the Democratic Party] spent four years claiming they are fighting fascism and authoritarianism, and what are they trying to do now? They're trying to harness corporate and monopoly power to silence everyone who disagrees with them, the very hallmark, the epitome of the fascism they claim to be fighting, but which in reality they embody.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"Greenwald: Democratic Party the epitome of fascism they claim to fight" https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/greenwald-democratic-party-the-epitome-of-fascism-they-claim-to-fight, Fox News, 25 January 2021.

Fight , Silence , Reality

“There are many measures of legislative and administrative importance which in themselves would be desirable and which in other circumstances I should have recommended to the immediate attention of the electorate. But I do not feel that they can, at this moment, claim precedence over the nation's first need, which is, in every walk of life, to get on with its work with the minimum of interference at home and of disturbance abroad.”

Bonar Law (1858–1923) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Election manifesto (4 November 1922), quoted in Robert Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858–1923 (1955), p. 466

Home , Life , Feeling

“A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder. Eating is not the harmless activity it is to one who sits down to fruit and grains. The carnivore must kill somebody, or have somebody else do it for him, in order to eat. It cannot be otherwise. And an animal whose life is one unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even of tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects — may preach the Golden Rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich — but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life. Flesh is a painful form of nutrition for any organism, but it is especially so for man, because it is unnecessary, and because man makes so many pretensions and occupies a position in the world of such exceptional responsibility.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, pp. 131–132

Money , Pain , Success , War

“A Liberal is one who seeks to secure for everyone the same rights, political, social or religious, which he claims for himself.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Undated manuscript, quoted in Ian Bradley, The Optimists: Themes and Personalities in Victorian Liberalism (1980), p. 76

“The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.
The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life ; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Life , Death , Learning

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.”

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

Letter to Benjamin Rush (12 April 1803) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0178-0001
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Sense , Sincerity

“I am not slow to claim the name of Scotchman, and undoubtedly, even if I were slow to claim it, there is the fact staring me in the face that not a drop of blood runs in my veins except what is derived from a Scottish ancestry.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Dundee (29 October 1890), quoted in The Times (30 october 1890), p. 4
1890s

“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

Elizabeth Cheney (1966) American lawyer

[Alex Rogers and Manu Raju, https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/liz-cheney-criticism-trump-big-lie/index.html, Cheney calls out Trump's latest attempt to promote 'BIG LIE' amid criticism from within her own party, cnn.com, May 3, 2021, May 7, 2021]

Lie , Law

“Lord yes, in a certain sense it was a preventive war, [motivated by] the constant threat of attack, the greater likelihood of its inevitability in the future, and by the military's claim: today war is still possible without defeat, but not in two years! Yes, the generals. It could only have been avoided by a rapprochement with England, that is still my conviction. But after we had decided for a [common] policy with Austria, we could not desert her in such danger.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Remarks to Conrad Haussmann (24 February 1918), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 48

Motivation , War , Future , Sense

“Freedom of conscience and freedom of choice are not the same; where conscience dictates, choice decides. Where freedom of conscience is at stake, the relevant right is to perform a duty, not to make a choice. This was the issue for Madison and Jefferson. Religious liberty addressed the problem of encumbered selves, claimed by duties they cannot renounce, even in the face of civil obligations that may conflict.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

Freedom , Problem

“For me, the most important thing in education is to instill a sense of responsibility. Because when you are responsible for your words, it will be very easy for you to live in this life later. If you live all the time with the claim that everyone owes you, it is very stupid.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in Чулпан Хаматова и ее 17-летняя дочь дали первое совместное интервью (18 October 2019) https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/sobchak_zhivem/chulpan_khamatova_ya_by_vybrala_severnuyu_koreyu_a_ne_revolyutsiyu-286479/

Stupidity , Education , Time , Sense

“People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters.”
“So it is like believing in God.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty.”
Epilogue (p. 860)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

God , People , Motivation

“I wouldn’t claim to have mastered my craft, part of the fun is that you are continually learning and reinventing yourself.”

Nick Brimble (1944) British actor

Nick Brimble Interview https://trainwreckdsociety.com/2017/07/19/nick-brimble-interview/ (July 19, 2017)

Learning , Parting

“We’ve lost so much to this devastating — this devastating pandemic that continues to claim lives around the world and impact so much on our existence.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, September 2021

World

“Some people confess guilt to claim credit for the sin.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

As quoted in John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More (2016) by Norman Macrae, p. 352 in response to Oppenheimer's 'destroyer of worlds' quote.

People