Quotes about clearing (2839 quotes, page 8)

“When in Italy [Klee stayed in Italy, in 1901], I learned to understand architectural monuments... Even the dullest will understand that the obvious commensurability of parts, to each other and to the whole, corresponds to the hidden numerical proportions that exist in other artificial and natural organisms. It is clear that these figures are not cold and dead, but full of the breath of life; and the importance of measurements as an aid to study and creation becomes evident.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (December 1903), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444
1903 - 1910

Life , Understanding , Nature , Study

“In doubt, the quickest way to clear one's mind is to discuss.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Way

“So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arms race or save their resources for later, more renumerative uses? Will they increase their productivity while we succumb to inflation and its social and economic consequences? Will they live in harmony at home while we remain riven by factionalism and terrorized by crime? Most important of all, will they choose their goals wisely and pursue them relentlessly while we flounder in aimlessness or exhaust ourselves in internecine struggles? These matters are quite as important as the decline of absolute American power in determining the equilibrium of international relations in the 1970s. One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed at the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and for our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Closing words, p. 421-422
Swords and Plowshares (1972)

Home , Future , Dependency

“Could anyone in his right mind speak seriously of any limited nuclear war? It should be quite clear that the aggressor's actions will instantly and inevitably trigger a devastating counterstroke by the other side. None but completely irresponsible people could maintain that a nuclear war may be made to follow rules adopted beforehand, with nuclear missiles exploding in a "gentlemanly manner" over strictly designated targets and sparing the population.”

Dmitriy Ustinov (1908–1984) Soviet military commander and politician

As quoted in Pravda (25 July 1981); also in Russian Roulette : The Superpower Game (1982) by Arthur M. Cox, p. 10.

War , People

“I 've often wish'd that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year;
A handsome house to lodge a friend;
A river at my garden's end;
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land set out to plant a wood.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Imitation of Horace, book ii. Sat. 6.; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Housing

Olivier Blanchard (1948) French economist

Source: Macroeconomics (7th Edition, 2017), Ch. 16 : Expectations, Output, and Policy

People , Thinking , Reality , Time

“The southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination. Segregation is not a badge of racial inferiority, and that it is not is recognized by both races in the Southern States. In fact, segregation is desired and supported by the vast majority of the members of both races in the South, who dwell side by side under harmonious conditions. … Let me make this clear, Mr. President: There is no racial hatred in the South. The Negro race is not an oppressed race. … Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire. Free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference and to build up their own culture, free from governmental interference. These rights are inherent in the Constitution of the United States and in the American system of government, both state and national, to promote and protect this right.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1950s

Men , God , Children , Truth

“This book represents the crown and summit of everything I have to say that anyone who doesn’t know me personally may care to listen to. I’ve written a guide to the Qur’an and a biography of Muhammad, and with this book, the case is complete—that is, the case that there are elements within Islam that pose a challenge to free societies, and that free people need to pay attention to this fact before it is, quite literally, too late. It is necessary for me to repeat yet again that this does not mean that every individual Muslim, or any given Muslim, embodies that challenge and is posing it individually, but as this book makes clear, the Islamic jihad imperative remains regardless of whether or not any Muslim individual decides to take it up.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS (2018)

People , Books , Personality

“The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so simplify; and did we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make it singularly clear.”

Percival Lowell book Mars and its Canals

Preface
Mars and its Canals (1906)

Science

“I decided to say this after it was clear that over several years Saudis have been leaving for jihad. They did this because they are passionate about their religion but they are not wise enough to know right from wrong.”

Abdul-Azeez ibn Abdullaah Aal ash-Shaikh (1943) Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia

Saudi cleric issues warning over Saudi militants, Reuters, 01 Oct 2007 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L01171648.htm,
Saudi Grand Mufti warns against fighting, donations that "damage Muslims" http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2007/10/018343print.html

Religion , Passion

“Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , World , Hope , History

“Her general drift was clear enough: we were all very special, being Hailsham students, and so it was all the more disappointing when we behaved badly.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 4, p. 43

Disappointment

“There is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 346-347)

People , Fear , Beauty , Way

“Nazism … destroys the very soul of our civilization … I have not taken the same grave view of Bolshevism, for it never was clear to me that Bolshevism, in spite of its brutalities and cruelties, really threatened the essentials of our ethical civilization. And after all it was a revolution of a semi-barbarous people against a rotten government and an effete church. Nazi-ism in highly cultured Germany is a very different affair.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 358

People , Soul

“How ‘real’ it is one feels when trying to form other groups…Most people will never get this other grouping as clear, stable, and optically real as the former one.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 143; About group formation

People , Feeling

“Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Birth control is woman's problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place for her children to live.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 8, "Birth Control; A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"

Death , Children , World , Way

“By 1921 it had become clear to all but the more incorrigible optimists that there would be no repetition of October 1917 anywhere else and that for an indeterminate period the revolution would remain confined to Russia and her possessions. The concept of ‘socialism in one country’ was not launched by Stalin in his conflict with Trotsky, but earlier by Lenin himself.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), p. 72

Country

“His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.”

Richard Realf (1832–1878) American poet

Apocalypse.

Love , Life , Men , Truth

“The foundations of the universal value of art are given to us now by psychology. This is the common base that enables us to sink its roots to the origins before man and to discover the primary myths of humanity. The artist must confront these myths and reduce them, by means of amorphous and confused materials, to clear images. Since these are atavistic forces that have their origins in the subconscious, the work of art takes on a magical significance.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 16-17

Art , Universe

“The current provisions in the Bill purporting to promote reconciliation are seriously flawed. There should be clear provisions for those appearing before the reconciliation commission to admit the truth under oath and to divulge all that they know about the events of 2000.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

2 August 2005
Opposition to the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission

Truth , Appearance

“In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)

Imagination , Search , Spring , Water

“Thus, when the lamp that lighted
The traveller at first goes out,
He feels awhile benighted,
And looks around in fear and doubt.
But soon, the prospect clearing,
By cloudless starlight on he treads,
And thinks no lamp so cheering
As that light which Heaven sheds.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

I'd mourn the Hopes.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fear , Travel , Feeling , Thinking

“Have we referred to it with indignation, distance and contempt; and have we made it clear that it is filled only with corruption, vanity and falsehood?”

Louis Tronson (1622–1700) French Roman Catholic priest

En avons-nous parlé avec indignation, éloignement et mépris; et avons-nous fait connaître qu'il n'était plein que de corruption, de vanité et de mensonge?
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets, p. 321 http://books.google.com/books?id=esY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA321 as translated by Mary Ilford in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1968), p. 116
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)

“There were other gurus and other lessons, but not until I met Iyengar did I take up the study regularly. My first meeting with him was like the casting of a spell. We made each other's acquaintance in Mumbai. He appeared in my rooms one morning and straightaway made it clear that the "audition" to follow was mine as much as his. For all my celebrity, to him I was just another Western body knotted through and through.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Yehudi's Yoga http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=3779,hinduismtoday.com

Study , Appearance

“It is not on the table for the simple reason that the constitution is clear: it's one member, one vote.”

Nycole Turmel (1942) Canadian politician

NDP brass to lay ground rules in race to replace Layton http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110908/ndp-leadership-110908/ September 8, 2011.

“The simple point which I am concerned to make is that where ultimate values are irreconcilable, clear-cut solutions cannot, in principle, be found. To decide rationally in such situations is to decide in the light of general ideals, the overall pattern of life pursued by a man or a group or a society.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Introduction (1969)

Life , Light

“We have the ability…and if, with our faith in our future, we exert ourselves with determination, nothing, I am sure, no obstacles, however formidable or insurmountable they may appear at present, can stop our progress…(if) all work unitedly, keeping our vision clear, and with a firm grasp of our problems.”

Bidhan Chandra Roy (1882–1962) Former Chief Minister of West Bengal, India

In page=101
Remembering Our Leaders: Mahadeo Govind Ranade by Pravina Bhim Sain

Faith , Problem , Appearance , Future

“Several features or attributes of organizations can therefore be recognized
# Organizations are social institutions (entities) composed of sets of persons with established patterns of interaction.
# Organizations develop to achieve specific goals. Therefore, organizations are social creations that require order and cooperation.
# Organizations are social instruments possessing relatively identifiable boundaries and existing on a relatively permanent basis. While this final point is perhaps less clear than were those that precede it, the identification of fixed boundaries (for instance, the distinction between members and nonmembers) and continuity (that is, existence and identity over time) provide a conceptual framework for the study of organizational activity.”

Arthur G. Bedeian (1946) American business theorist

Source: Organizations: Theory and Analysis, 1984, p. 3-4 (1984: 2-3)

Study , Time , Personality

“The standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our minds and it is against that standard that we must test all contemporary thought. In fact, we must at all costs not move with the times.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"Christian Apologetics" (1945), p. 92
God in the Dock (1970)

Time

“It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation.”

Agatha Christie book Third Girl

Third Girl (1966)

“The example of the five (daily) prayers is like that of a clear-water river flowing in front of your houses in which a person washes himself five times a day – cleansing him from all dirt.”

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

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 18931
Shi'ite Hadith

Water , Time , Housing , Personality

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World , Faith , Way , Optimism

“London is the clearing-house of the world.”

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

Speech at Guildhall, London, Jan. 19, 1904.
1900s

World , Housing

“As we turn over the pages of nineteenth century literature, we are constantly confronted with the question of alienation. Baudelaire, Marx, Kierkegaard, Chateaubriand, Cardinal Newman — it does not matter whether the voice comes from the Left or the Right; all are agreed in their rejection of the values of the prevailing ethic. Yet we never get a clear definition of alienation: what is man alienated from, and why? Perhaps it is precisely the democratic society, the growing affluence and education, that have revealed the natural state of man — much as the development of medicine has enabled greater accuracy of diagnosis, with the resultant tremendous increase in the record of certain diseases. Perhaps the discovery of human self-alienation was simply a statistical refinement made possible by the spread of the privileges of culture to the middle classes.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Gustave Flaubert: A Sentimental Education (p. 187)
Classics Revisited (1968)

Education , Disease , Literature , Question

“This one is too elegant, too shiny, like jewelry. It seeks applause. This is clear to me, but difficult to explain, which is what makes abstraction so fascinating. In one sense, abstract art is absolutely nothing, stupid. In 100 years, maybe people will just think it's garbage. But somehow we see something in it; we have a sense of quality. [searching for an illustration of his point, Richter leafs through a catalog to find some of his 'gray monochromes']. I was doing these [monochromes] when I was getting divorced. When you feel totally empty, you do this - but then I saw that one picture was actually better than another. Both were miserable, but the difference was interesting. I loved this: that there must be something, some higher faculty, some progressive sensibility that we find in abstraction. But it is impossible to describe.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love , People , Stupidity , Art

“Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

(1741), Ch. I, General Rules for the Improvement of Knowlege, Rule X "Avoid a dogmatical spirit".
1720s, The Improvement of the Mind (1727)

Time

“In the same directive he raised the question – this was in the middle of 1934 – that now that Hitler had come to power it was quite clear that his, Trotsky’s line on the impossibility of building up socialism in one country alone had been completely justified, that war was inevitable, and that if we Trotskyites wished to preserve ourselves as a political force of some sort, we must in advance, having adopted a defeatist position, not merely passively observe and contemplate, but actively prepare the way for this defeat. But in order to do so, cadres must be formed, and cadres could not be formed by talk alone. Therefore the necessary wrecking activities must be carried on now. I recall that Trotsky said in this directive that without the necessary support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could neither come to power nor hold power. It was therefore a question of arriving at the necessary preliminary agreement with the most aggressive foreign states, like Germany and Japan, and the he, Trotsky, on his part had already taken the necessary steps in establishing contacts both with the Japanese and the German governments.”

Georgy Pyatakov (1890–1937) Bolshevik revolutionary leader

Georgy Pyatakov at the Moscow trial. As quoted in Mario Sousas Klasskampen under 1930-talet i Sovjetunionen, pg 28.

War , Way , Question , Support

“It seems like cloud cuckoo land… If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the pound sterling – no! … We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed on us.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

To the media immediately after the EEC Rome summit meeting (28 October, 1990); as reported in A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher (1992) by Alan Watkins.
Third term as Prime Minister

“I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Time

“When we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look. Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

World , Understanding , Teachers

“At our meeting in Vienna and subsequently, I expressed our readiness and desire to find, through peaceful negotiation, a solution to any and all problems that divide us. At the same time. I made clear that in view of the objectives of the ideology to which you adhere, the United States could not tolerate any action on your part which in a major way disturbed the existing over-all balance of power in the world. I stated that an attempt to force abandonment of our responsibilities and commitments in Berlin would constitute such an action and that the United States would resist with all the power at its command.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

World , Peace , Way , Problem

“Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Campaign address before the Republican-for-Roosevelt League, New York City (3 November 1932), reported in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1928–1932 (1938), p. 857
1930s

History , Time

“The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Quoted in "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression" - by International Military Tribunal - 1946

“Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=12m28s
2010s

Way

“It proved to be essential to clear the site for the new building. This idea was a forerunner of futurism which exposed the relentless nature of its motivating power. Revolutions had started undercover, everything grew more complicated. Painting economical in its creative output was still very complicated and uneconomical in its expression. cubism and futurism seized upon the purity of form treatment and colour and built a complicated and extensive system with them combining them without any regard for harmony. The rebuilding of life cast aside the old concept of nations classes patriotism and imperialism which had been completely discredited.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Life , Motivation , Idea , Nature

“When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 12

Secret , Flowers , Lying , Sleep

“The result of [the] cumulative efforts to investigate the cell—to investigate life at the molecular level—is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. 232-233.

Life , History , Intelligence , Effort

“The Economic definition of Wealth is subtle and diflicult to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential to our study to get it clear at the outset and keep it firmly in mind.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Economics for Helen (1924), Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

Study , Wealth

“It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: My personal theology is described in the Gifford lectures that I gave at Aberdeen in Scotland in 1985, published under the title, Infinite In All Directions. Here is a brief summary of my thinking. The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.

God , Law , Nature , Universe

“…the most influential journeys I have had have been with Ayahuasca, the vine from the Amazon, the combination of that and mushrooms. They give me the trots and such! It's very much a medicine woman, medicine man's journey drug, where you go inside. It's not a social thing. It's an internal experience. I experiment with things that are usually an internal experience, because that's just what excites me. And yes, it does sometimes give me visions. But my intention when I am doing it is very different than recreational. I don't do it recreationally. I do it to go do inner work, and I'm very clear before I do it what I'm searching for. That way, there's no abuse suffered and I don't rely on it. It's just one more tool that I use sometimes.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Interview, 9/11/94, for Internet by Michael Pearce

Way , Search , Suffering

“Wall Street won’t change until we make it clear that no bank is too big to fail and no CEO is too big to jail.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Wells Fargo’s Business Model is Fraud https://medium.com/@SenSanders/wells-fargos-business-model-is-fraud-d19fb6fbe0a8#.pu31ehcy2, Medium (22 September 2016)
2010s, 2016

Change

“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man." We are particularly far from having any qualms with regard to the enemy, whose moral degradation is universally admitted here.But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier.”

Yitzhak Shamir (1915–2012) prime minister of Israel

Hehazit [The Front] (Summer 1943).

War , World , Law , Universe

“I don't think there is any doubt, if there ever was... that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction. Biological weapons that they discovered were very clear evidence of not only the fact that he had them, but that he had lied and that he is continuing to lie.”

Paul Martin (1938) 21st Prime Minister of Canada

Calgary Herald, March 7, 2003

Lie , Thinking

“When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood — a truly free society.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)

Lie , Universe

“Trump took the elements of an independent candidacy — the lack of clear ideology, the name recognition of a national celebrity and the personal fortune needed to fund a presidential campaign — and then did what no one seemed to have thought of before. He staged a hostile takeover of an existing major party. He had the best of both worlds, an outsider candidacy with crosscutting ideological appeal and the platform of a major party to wage the general election. By the time he had finished, he had taken down two political dynasties: the Bush dynasty in the primaries and the Clinton dynasty in the general election.”

Dan Balz (1946) American journalist

Donald Trump, America’s first independent president (November 19, 2016)

Hostility , World , Time , Personality

“I couldn't tell anyone about it. I didn't want anyone to know. It's only now that I've survived, I'm able to speak about it. As far as I know I'm clear and completely well - but it never leaves you completely. It's made me learn a lot about myself. When you're on your own, you've just got to get on with it, grit your teeth and think, 'Right, I'm going to beat this.' I did have my dear friend and, without him, I don't know what I would have done.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding Paige's battle with cancer; as quoted in "Elaine's close curtain call" by Rebecca Hardy in The Daily Mail (8 May 2004)

Thinking , Learning

“GTD 2.0 = what to do with your head, once it's clear.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

8 January 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/23815709830156288
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“Among a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams
Here lives an idle man
In the daytime wandering over green mountains
At night coming home to sleep by the cliff
Swiftly springs and autumns pass
But my mind is at peace, clear and free
By now I need nothing to lean on
To be still as the waters of the autumn river”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Peace , Home , Mountain , Spring

“E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

"Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent"
Poems (1817)

Angels , Tear

“The point I am trying to make clear is the fact that if we are to see a resurgence of life and power in our beloved Society we must open the way for vital, kindling, inspiring persons to visit, or better still to live in, the communities where there are, or ought to be, meetings.”

Rufus M. Jones (1863–1948) American writer

What Will Get Us Ready (1944)

Life , Way , Communication , Personality

“She began to speak, but waited a moment for the maid to clear away the tea. In the waning light her room seemed gentle and grey, and there hung about it an odour (I do not write ‘the odour’) of Roman Catholicism, which is assuredly among the gracious things of the world. It was the room of a woman who had found time to be good to herself as well as to others; who had brought forth fruit, spiritual and temporal; who had borne a mysterious tragedy not only with patience but actually with joy.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

The rock
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

World , Light , Time , Waiting

“No straight lines make up my life;
And all my roads have bends;
There's no clear-cut beginnings;
And so far no dead-ends.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Circle
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Life , Dead

“What we have here is clear-cut evidence that illegitimacy—something I've always said we should talk about in terms of not having it—leads to drug abuse.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Remarks (20 May 1992), quoted in Esquire (August 1992) and Ann Beatts (23 November 1997) "ABSURDUM; Murphy Brown's Got Dan All Fired Up Again," Los Angeles Times
Attributed

“It has become clear that America’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long – relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world.”

Robert M. Gates (1943) CIA director, U.S. Secretary of Defense, and university president

Speech to U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (Washington, D.C.) http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1262, 2008-07-15.

World

“damn gentlemen, there is not such a set of enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance.... They think (and so may you for a while) that they reward your merit by their Company and notice.... if they don't stand clear, know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept 1767; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 380 (Appendix A - Letter II)
1755 - 1769

World , Thinking , Heart , Parting

“I cannot but add that I have always been a supporter and defender of your policy when you were Prime Minister. I am sure that it was right. In view of the attitude of France and of the unreadiness of this country for which you were in no way to be blamed, it would have been folly to precipitate then a war with Germany. It was your strength of will and purpose and self-restraint that saved us from that mistake. When the time to meet the challenge of Hitler came, you had made it plain to the whole impartial world that you had done everything possible to keep Europe from war, and to fix the blame for that calamity on the unbridled ambition of Hitler. You enabled your country to enter the war with a clear conscience and a united will.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang to Chamberlain (6 October 1940), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 462-463.
About

War , World , Way , Support

“I have always been strong for a large increase of labour representation in the House of Commons…Now, I dare say the day may come—it may come sooner than some think—when the Liberal party will be transformed or superseded by some new party; but before the working population of this country have their destinies in their own hands, as they will assuredly do within a measurable distance of time, there is enough ground to be cleared which only the Liberal party is capable of clearing. The ideal of the Liberal party is that view of things which believes that the welfare of all is bound up with injustice being done to none. Above all, according to the ideal of the Liberal party—that party from which I beseech you, not for my sake, but for your own, not to sever yourselves—the ideal of the Liberal party is this—that in the mass of the toilers on land all the fountains of national life abide and the strongest and most irresistible currents flow.”

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

Speech in Newcastle (21 May 1894), quoted in 'Mr. Morley At Newcastle', The Times (22 May 1894), p. 11.

Life , Thinking , Strong , Time

“That abject, squalid, shameless avowal…It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom…My mind turns across the narrow waters of Channel and the North Sea, where great nations stand determined to defend their national glories or national existence with their lives. I think of Germany, with its splendid clear-eyed youths marching forward on all the roads of the Reich singing their ancient songs, demanding to be conscripted into an army; eagerly seeking the most terrible weapons of war; burning to suffer and die for their fatherland. I think of Italy, with her ardent Fascisti, her renowned Chief, and stern sense of national duty. I think of France, anxious, peace-loving, pacifist to the core, but armed to the teeth and determined to survive as a great nation in the world. One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of all these people when they read this message sent out by Oxford University in the name of young England.”

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

Speech to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union (17 February 1933) after the Oxford Union passed the motion "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country", quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 456
The 1930s

Love , War , People , Youth

“Let me say a little bit about the Reform party because I want you to be very clear on what the Reform party is and is not… The Reform party is very much a leader-driven party.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

“The American settlers came to take and shape the land. The first occupants of the land — the "Indians" whom the European migrants encountered — would not be treated, in the pattern of the Romans, as people to be incorporated into an empire. Instead, they were treated as part of the landscape. Most of them were simply cleared away, like the forest, or pushed back, like the wilderness.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Republic of Technology (1978), p. 38.

People , Parting

“For Christians, the rules are clear. They are under order to forgive. We must follow those orders, no matter how difficult they appear. If we do not forgive, God will not forgive us. That is the beginning and the end of it.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, Address to the nation at the National Day of Prayer in Fiji combined church service http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4615.shtml, Post Fiji Stadium, Suva, 15 May 2005

God , Forgiveness , Appearance

“It's time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest, which is the Israelis' real goal, but which is impossible for them to achieve. They're not simply war criminals; they're fools.”

Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) British politician

Speech to the House of Commons, Jan 2009

War , Peace , Fools , Time

“How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them.”

Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund

Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

Life , Water

“Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure in double stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it's clear to the listener without being pedantic - one can't fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.”

Hilary Hahn (1979) American violinist

Hilary Hahn on Saint Paul Sunday http://saintpaulsunday.publicradio.org/featured_artists/hahn.html

Music , Way , Singing

“It is known that the mathematics prescribed for the high school [Gymnasien] is essentially Euclidean, while it is modern mathematics, the theory of functions and the infinitesimal calculus, which has secured for us an insight into the mechanism and laws of nature. Euclidean mathematics is indeed, a prerequisite for the theory of functions, but just as one, though he has learned the inflections of Latin nouns and verbs, will not thereby be enabled to read a Latin author much less to appreciate the beauties of a Horace, so Euclidean mathematics, that is the mathematics of the high school, is unable to unlock nature and her laws. Euclidean mathematics assumes the completeness and invariability of mathematical forms; these forms it describes with appropriate accuracy and enumerates their inherent and related properties with perfect clearness, order, and completeness, that is, Euclidean mathematics operates on forms after the manner that anatomy operates on the dead body and its members.
On the other hand, the mathematics of variable magnitudes—function theory or analysis—considers mathematical forms in their genesis. By writing the equation of the parabola, we express its law of generation, the law according to which the variable point moves. The path, produced before the eyes of the 113 student by a point moving in accordance to this law, is the parabola.
If, then, Euclidean mathematics treats space and number forms after the manner in which anatomy treats the dead body, modern mathematics deals, as it were, with the living body, with growing and changing forms, and thus furnishes an insight, not only into nature as she is and appears, but also into nature as she generates and creates,—reveals her transition steps and in so doing creates a mind for and understanding of the laws of becoming. Thus modern mathematics bears the same relation to Euclidean mathematics that physiology or biology … bears to anatomy. But it is exactly in this respect that our view of nature is so far above that of the ancients; that we no longer look on nature as a quiescent complete whole, which compels admiration by its sublimity and wealth of forms, but that we conceive of her as a vigorous growing organism, unfolding according to definite, as delicate as far-reaching, laws; that we are able to lay hold of the permanent amidst the transitory, of law amidst fleeting phenomena, and to be able to give these their simplest and truest expression through the mathematical formulas”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 37.

School , Law , Beauty , Mathematics

“At that time I was very friendly with Picasso. Our temperaments were very different, but we had the same idea. Later on it became clear, Picasso is Spanish and I am French; as everyone knows that mean a lot of differences, but during those days the differences did not count… We were living in Montmartre, we used to meet every day, we used to talk... In those years Picasso and I said things to each other that nobody will ever say again, that nobody could say any more... It was rather like a pair of climbers roped together.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, In conversation with Dora Vallier' (1954), p. 264 - Braque's quote is referring to the early common starting years of Cubism in Paris with Picasso, ca. 1907 -1910

Idea , Time

“Weigh then your wealth, and judge if it’s more dear
To you than life. If not, your course is clear.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 4, “The Goddess in Glass,” Chapter 10 (p. 285)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Life , Wealth

“Of course, it remains to be seen what the effect of the Great Recession will be on resistance to globalization. It seems clear, however, that if the recession grows deeper and extends over a long period of time, it will spur much greater resistance to globalization.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 16, Dealing with, Resisting, and the Futures of Globalization, p. 499

Time

“I have read and re-read the Arusha Declaration and found nothing wrong with it except perhaps replacing a few commas here and there… it was clear for some of us that it would only be a mad man who would stand up and defend the Arusha Declaration.”

Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) Tanzanian politician and writer, first Prime Minister and President of Tanzania

Defending the Arusha Declaration, 1995. Culture of submission killing Africa - Soyinka http://thecitizen.co.tz/newe.php?id=12004

Reading , Madness

“Do nine tenants in a residential building have the right to place the dumpsters in front of the tenth tenant's door? Seemingly, they enjoy a clear majority. But the role of democracy is not only to assure the governance of the majority, but to protect the rights of the minority.”

Yoel Esteron (1954) Israeli journalist

About the tyranny of the majority.
Who's for destroying democracy? (14-02-2016)

Democracy

“And Hindu society which constitutes the nation has been driven into a corner. Hindu leaders have been made to cry that they are not communalists, that they have renounced revivalism, that they cherish Islam as a great religion, that they regard Islamic heroes as their own heroes, that they have no use for people who regard the prevalent mode of secularism as perverse, and that they are fed up with that ‘lunatic fringe’ which still continues to take pride in the national heritage. …. The nation will never be able to get out of this tight corner till it clears up the terminological confusion, stops making use of meaningless words like communalism and revivalism, and rewrites its books of history, politics, and sociology in an exact and appropriate language. This exact language will substitute Nationalism for Hindu Communalism, National Resurgence for Hindu Revivalism, Islamic Atavism for Muslim Revivalism, and Islamic Imperialism for Muslim Communalism. Then alone the various elements and forces struggling for supremacy in the country at present will fall into their proper places, and come out in their true colours.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

People , Books , Religion , History

“It was clear to me that men and women were equal — if not more so.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

A joke used during his campaign speeches, about childhood impressions of hearing his parents arguing; as quoted in "Gore Campaign, Trailing Among Women, Sharpens Its Pitch to Them" by Melinda Henneberger in The New York Times (6 July 1999) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DE1E3DF935A35754C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
As quoted in "The 2000 Campaign : The Vice President" by David Barstow in The New York Times (12 August 2000) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404EFD6153FF931A2575BC0A9669C8B63.
Variant: When my sister and I were growing up, there was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so.

Women , Men

“The state is taking action against people who have peacefully demonstrated their ideas. They are writers—all they did is to express their minds through the Internet. So the pattern is very clear. The state tries to maintain stability by crushing any thought of making change. It could happen to me, because I did the same thing and in many cases I went much further and deeper. But I always think the government can learn from their mistakes—they should learn and understand; they should be just as intelligent as anyone else.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, I have to speak for people who are afraid, 2010

People , Intelligence , Idea , Understanding

“When I joined City Lights in 1971 and started working with Lawrence, it was clear that it had been very much a center of protest, for people with revolutionary ideas and people who wanted to change society. And when I first began working at the little editorial office up on Filbert and Grant, people that Lawrence had known through the whole decade of the '60s were dropping in all the time, like Paul Krassner, Tim Leary, people who were working with underground presses and trying to provide an alternative to mainstream media. This was a period of persecution, and FBI infiltration of those presses.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.
2000s

People , Idea , Light , Change

“How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

“I did speak extensively — often quite critically — about the reviled work of Richard Goldschmidt, particularly about aspects of his thought that might merit a rehearing. This material has often been confused with punctuated equlibrium by people who miss the crucial issue of scaling, and therefore regard all statements about rapidity at any level as necessarily unitary, and necessarily flowing from punctuated equilibrium. In fact, as the long treatment in Chapter 5 of this book should make clear, my interest in Goldschmidt resides in issues bearing little relationship with punctuated equilibrium, but invested instead in developmental questions that prompted my first book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny. The two subjects, after all, are quite separate, and rooted in different scales of rapidity — hopeful monsters in genuine saltation, and punctuated equilibrium in macroevolutionary punctuation”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

produced by ordinary allopatric speciation
Source: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), p. 1005

People , Books , Hope , Question

“You see, some mathematicians have clear and far-ranging. "programs". For instance, Grothendieck had such a program for algebraic geometry; now Langlands has one for representation theory, in relation to modular forms and arithmetic. I never had such a program, not even a small size one.”

Jean-Pierre Serre (1926) French mathematician

An Interview with Jean-Pierre Serre - Singapore Mathematical Society https://sms.math.nus.edu.sg/smsmedley/Vol-13-1/An%20interview%20with%20Jean-Pierre%20Serre(CT%20Chong%20&%20YK%20Leong).pdf

“Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Clear After Rain" (雨晴), as translated by Kenneth Rexroth in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1971), p. 16

Mountain , Business , Autumn , Tree

“The great attraction of cultural anthropology in the past was precisely that it seemed to offer such a richness of independent natural experiments; but unfortunately it is now clear that there has been a great deal of historical continuity and exchange among those "independent" experiments, most of which have felt the strong effect of contact with societies organized as modern states. More important, there has never been a human society with unlimited resources, of three sexes, or the power to read other people's minds, or to be transported great distances at the speed of light. How then are we to know the effect on human social organization and history of the need to scrabble for a living, or of the existence of males and females, or of the power to make our tongues drop manna and so to make the worse appear the better reason? A solution to the epistemological impotence of social theory has been to create a literature of imagination and logic in which the consequences of radical alterations in the conditions of human existence are deduced. It is the literature of science fiction. … [S]cience fiction is the laboratory in which extraordinary social conditions, never possible in actuality, are used to illumine the social and historical norm. … Science fiction stories are the Gedanken experiments of social science.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" The Last of the Nasties? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/feb/29/the-last-of-the-nasties," The New York Review of Books, 29 February 1996;
Review of The Lost World by Michael Crichton

People , Sex , Imagination , History

“It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of Negroes themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don't solve, answers that don't answer and explanations that don't explain.”

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

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Life , Support , Freedom , Change

“Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man — a noble man — frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.

God , Truth , Freedom , Christ

“Plato, too, at the end of the thirteenth book of the Laws, to which some give the title The Philosopher… adds: "Every diagram, system of numbers, every scheme of harmony, and every law of the movement of the stars, ought to appear one to him who studies rightly; and what we say will properly appear if one studies all things looking to one principle, for there will be seen to be one bond for all these things, and if anyone attempts philosophy in any other way he must call on Fortune to assist him. For there is never a path without these… The one who has attained all these things in the way I describe, him I for my part call wisest, and this I maintain through thick and thin." For it is clear that these studies are like ladders and bridges that carry our minds from things apprehended by sense and opinion to those comprehended by the mind and understanding, and from those material, physical things, our foster-brethren known to us from childhood, to the things with which we are unacquainted, foreign to our senses, but in their immateriality and eternity more akin to our souls, and above all to the reason which is in our souls.”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Footnote: The Epinomis, from which Nicomachus here quotes 991 D ff., is now recognized as not genuinely Platonic. Nicomachus doubtless cited the passage from memory, for he does not give it exactly...
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Books , Law , Way , Soul