Quotes about closing
page 16

Carl Sagan photo
Lou Gehrig photo

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.”

Lou Gehrig (1903–1941) American baseball player

Speech made on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee at Yankee Stadium (July 4, 1939)

Theodore Dalrymple photo

“For intellectuals, everyone’s mind is closed but their own.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Les intellos Speak http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_11_10_04td.html (November 10, 2004).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
James Taylor photo
Edward Carpenter photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“As long as the church has the power to close the lips of men, so long and no longer will superstition rule this world.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Eugen Drewermann photo
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
Harold Lloyd photo

“I find that I would like now, best of all, to be a good conversationalist. I know I'm not one at present. Oh, I can sit and talk a little of this and that, but I realize that I haven't any definite or profound knowledge. I won't be satisfied with just a patter, a surface glaze of information. I don't want short-cuts to learning. I want to know all about the thing I study.
I'd like to be able to hold my own, to meet on a common ground, with scientists, inventors, clerics, doctors, athletes, authors.
The most worthwhile thing in life is to store your mind with knowledge.
I wish now that I had been able to go to college, if only so that I might have had appreciations earlier in the game.
People often say to me now that I have my home, my career, fame (if you call it that), there must be nothing left for me to live for. But there is everything left to live for. All the things I don't know about, all the things I want to know about.
Pictures, I've discovered, were practically all I did know about up to very recently. I've had to work so hard, to concentrate so closely, that I never have had time to read or to travel or to think about other things. I'm just at the beginning of living…”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 58 & 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n563/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Merrill McPeak photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Samuel Beckett photo
George Lucas photo
George Steiner photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Hans Reichenbach photo

“The surfaces of three-dimensional space are distinguished from each other not only by their curvature but also by certain more general properties. A spherical surface, for instance, differs from a plane not only by its roundness but also by its finiteness. Finiteness is a holistic property. The sphere as a whole has a character different from that of a plane. A spherical surface made from rubber, such as a balloon, can be twisted so that its geometry changes…. but it cannot be distorted in such a way as that it will cover a plane. All surfaces obtained by distortion of the rubber sphere possess the same holistic properties; they are closed and finite. The plane as a whole has the property of being open; its straight lines are not closed. This feature is mathematically expressed as follows. Every surface can be mapped upon another one by the coordination of each point of one surface to a point of the other surface, as illustrated by the projection of a shadow picture by light rays. For surfaces with the same holistic properties it is possible to carry through this transformation uniquely and continuously in all points. Uniquely means: one and only one point of one surface corresponds to a given point of the other surface, and vice versa. Continuously means: neighborhood relations in infinitesimal domains are preserved; no tearing of the surface or shifting of relative positions of points occur at any place. For surfaces with different holistic properties, such a transformation can be carried through locally, but there is no single transformation for the whole surface.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

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

Marcus Aurelius photo
Lucy Stone photo
Herman Wouk photo
Henrietta Swan Leavitt photo
Dexter S. Kimball photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Mitch Fatel photo
Russell Crowe photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Barbara Boxer photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Ernestine Rose photo

“What rights have women? … [they are] punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance—if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion—parlor puppets…”

Ernestine Rose (1810–1892) American feminist activist

At the Social Reform Convention, Boston (1844), quoted in Kolmerten, Carol A., The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999, p. 49.

Charles Darwin photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Marshall McLuhan photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“To all the politicians, donors and special interests, hear these words from me today: there is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the well-being of the American people. Nothing even comes a close second.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Immigration speech (31 August 2016)
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-address-transcript-227614

Boris Sidis photo

“Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: Nervous Ills their Cause and Cure (1922), p. 311

George Herbert photo

“To a close-shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Cheng Wen-tsan photo

“If they (Mainland China) say we (Mainland China and Taiwan) are close family, they won't repeatedly threaten to use force to settle disputes.”

Cheng Wen-tsan (1967) Taiwan politician

Source: Cheng Wen-tsan (2018) cited in " Taoyuan mayor calls for China to stop threatening Taiwan http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201803070035.aspx", Focus Taiwan (7 March 2018).

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero photo

“You can be completely opposed to an ideological position, and I'm certainly not close to Aznar's ideas, however he was elected by the Spanish people and I demand that respect.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

To Hugo Chavez, who had accused Aznar of being a racist and a fascist in the 17th Iberoamerican Summit.
As President, 2007
Source: El Mundo: El Rey se enfrenta a gritos con Chávez en defensa de Aznar: ¿Por qué no te callas? http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/11/10/internacional/1194711476.html (Spanish)

Will Eisner photo

“”Jewish Peril” exposed.
Historic “Fake.”
Details of the forgery.
More parallels.
We published yesterday an article from our Constantinople Correspondent, which showed that the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – one of the mysteries of politics since 1905 – were a clumsy forgery, the text being based on a book published in French in 1865. The book, without title page, was obtained by our correspondent from a Russian source, and we were able to identify it with a complete copy in the British Museum.
The disclosure, which naturally aroused the greatest interest among those familiar with Jewish questions, finally disposes of the “Protocols” as credible evidence of a Jewish plot against civilization.
We publish below a second article, which gives further close parallels between the language of the Protocols and that attributed to Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the volume dated from Geneva.
Plagiarism at Work.
(From our Constantinople Correspondent.)
While the Geneva Dialogue open with an exchange of compliments between Monsequieu and Machiavelli, which covers seven pages, the author of the Protocols plunges at once in medias res.
One can imagine him hastily turning over those first seven pages of the book which he has been ordered to paraphrase against time, and angrily ejaculating, “Nothing here.” But on page 8 of the Dialogues he finds what he wants.
Publisher: Good work Graves…we finally paid your émigré £ 300 for it…now if we can find Golovinski and get his confession…
Graves: He joined the Bolsheviks.
Golovinski became a party ‘’’activist’’’ and rose to be an adviser to Trotsky. But he ‘’’died’’’ last year!
Publisher: Well, that’s that!
Publisher: Oh but Graves, “The Times” is influential… after our expose we’ll probably hear no more of this fraud!
Graves: I’m not sure!
Anti-Bolsheviks, White Russians, published thousands of copies! Here’s a page from Nilus’ “The Great in the Small.”
Publisher: Astonishing…mystical symbols…eh?
The “Protocols” quickly began to circulate around the world.
A French edition this year…and in America Henry Ford, the auto magnate, has been serializing it in his paper, the “Dearborn independent”!
Publisher: When did it first appear in Europe?
Graves: The German edition…dated 1919, was the first!
This is an evil book…a fake designed to malign a whole group of people.
Publisher: I know, I know! …Ugly stuff, Graves.
Graves: Well, what are we to do about it?
Publisher: Your report exposed it as a foul fraud!
Publisher: Y’forget the power of the press, graves! “The Times” has tremendous worldwide influence.
This fraud will soon be well known everywhere…so, my boy, ‘’’what harm can the “protocols” possibly do now?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 91-94

Hiram Price photo

“The Republican Party is strong enough to dare to do right and cannot afford to shirk a duty. The colored men North and South were loyal to the Government in the days of its greatest peril. There was not a rebel or a traitor to be found among them. They ask the privilege of citizenship now that slavery has been forever banished from our country. Why should the great freedom-loving State of Iowa longer deny them this right? No one reason can be given that has not been used to bolster up slavery for the last hundred years. The war that has just closed has swept that relic of barbarism from our land; let the Republican Party have the courage to do justice…I have no fear of the result in a contest of this kind. We shall carry the election and have the satisfaction of wiping out the last vestige of the black code that has long been a disgrace to our State.”

Hiram Price (1814–1901) American politician

As quoted in History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century https://books.google.com/books?id=gTdAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22With+proper+safeguards+to+the+purity+of+the+ballot+box,+the+elective+franchise+should+be+based+upon+loyalty+to+the+Constitution+and+the+Union+recognizing+and+affirming+the+equality+of+all+men+before+the+law%22&source=bl&ots=z_M1ul7IWl&sig=8CNmDX4D9Q3cLBaZ1hxR_MgATZE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI7_W07L7UAhVMcT4KHT1uDXAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22With%20proper%20safeguards%20to%20the%20purity%20of%20the%20ballot%20box%2C%20the%20elective%20franchise%20should%20be%20based%20upon%20loyalty%20to%20the%20Constitution%20and%20the%20Union%20recognizing%20and%20affirming%20the%20equality%20of%20all%20men%20before%20the%20law%22&f=false (1903), by Benjamin F. Gue, Volume III, Chapter 1

Vytautas Juozapaitis photo
Charles Sumner photo

“With me, sir, there is no alternative. Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery; profoundly believing that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the fathers, it can find no place under our National Government — that it is in every respect sectional, and in no respect national — that it is always and everywhere the creature and dependent of the States, and never anywhere the creature or dependent of the Nation, and that the Nation can never, by legislative or other act, impart to it any support, under the Constitution of the United States; with these convictions, I could not allow this session to reach its close, without making or seizing an- opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty, of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Full well I know, sir, the difficulties of this discussion, arising from prejudices of opinion and from adverse conclusions, strong and sincere as my own. Full well I know that I am in a small minority, with few here to whom I may look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful — possessing a power to shake the whole land with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But, while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget myself, and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren of the Senate, sir, — grateful to me as it justly is — I am ready, if required, to sacrifice. All that I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852).

Dashiell Hammett photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“His heart is like a maggot-eaten nut:
There's nothing in it; but 'tis closely shut.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1st October 1831) Epigram of a Miser
The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Edgar Guest photo
Tom Petty photo

“And for one desperate moment
There he crept back in her memory.
God it's so painful, something that's so close
Is still so far out of reach.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

American Girl
Lyrics, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1974)

Hillary Clinton photo

“You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States. And that is truly remarkable.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Concession speech http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=572270, Washington D.C., June 7, 2008.
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Bruce Springsteen photo
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus photo

“But many are driven to utmost peril by the mere dread of coming danger. He is truly brave, who is both quick to endure the ordeal, if it be close and pressing, and willing also to let it wait.”
Multos in summa pericula misit<br/>venturi timor ipse mali. Fortissimus ille est qui, promptus metuenda pati, si comminus instent, et differre potest.

Multos in summa pericula misit
venturi timor ipse mali. Fortissimus ille est
qui, promptus metuenda pati, si comminus instent,
et differre potest.
Book VII, line 104 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Patrick Modiano photo
J. C. R. Licklider photo

“Present-day computers are designed primarily to solve preformulated problems or to process data according to predetermined procedures. The course of the computation may be conditional upon results obtained during the computation, but all the alternatives must be foreseen in advance. … The requirement for preformulation or predetermination is sometimes no great disadvantage. It is often said that programming for a computing machine forces one to think clearly, that it disciplines the thought process. If the user can think his problem through in advance, symbiotic association with a computing machine is not necessary.
However, many problems that can be thought through in advance are very difficult to think through in advance. They would be easier to solve, and they could be solved faster, through an intuitively guided trial-and-error procedure in which the computer cooperated, turning up flaws in the reasoning or revealing unexpected turns in the solution. Other problems simply cannot be formulated without computing-machine aid. … One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems.
The other main aim is closely related. It is to bring computing machines effectively into processes of thinking that must go on in "real time," time that moves too fast to permit using computers in conventional ways. Imagine trying, for example, to direct a battle with the aid of a computer on such a schedule as this. You formulate your problem today. Tomorrow you spend with a programmer. Next week the computer devotes 5 minutes to assembling your program and 47 seconds to calculating the answer to your problem. You get a sheet of paper 20 feet long, full of numbers that, instead of providing a final solution, only suggest a tactic that should be explored by simulation. Obviously, the battle would be over before the second step in its planning was begun. To think in interaction with a computer in the same way that you think with a colleague whose competence supplements your own will require much tighter coupling between man and machine than is suggested by the example and than is possible today.”

Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Tommy Franks photo
Anne Brontë photo
John Gray photo
Toby Keith photo

“You shouldn't kiss me like this
Unless you mean it like that
Cause I'll just close my eyes
And I won't know where I'm at.
We'll get lost on this dance floor,
Spinnin' around
And around
And around
And around.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This.
Song lyrics, How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

“What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his AdhAra (receptivity) and adhikAra (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

John G. Schmitz photo

“I may not be Hispanic, but I'm close. I'm Catholic with a mustache.”

John G. Schmitz (1930–2001) American politician

http://www.nndb.com/people/041/000087777/

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani photo
Clement Attlee photo
Peter Atkins photo
Samuel Butler photo
Bill Bryson photo
Anastas Mikoyan photo

“We are watching the Germans closely; we are not forgetting what they did to us during the war.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

As quoted in "Soviet Foreign Policy Toward Western Europe" (1978) by George Ginsburgs and Alvin Z. Rubinstein, p. 105

Chris Hedges photo
Frederik Pohl photo
Frans de Waal photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Akeel Bilgrami photo

“I was attracted to studies of cancer families because epidemiological studies show that virtually all cancers manifest a tendency to aggregate in families. Close relatives of a cancer patient are at increased risk of that neoplasm, and perhaps other forms of cancer. The excess site-specific cancer risk is exceptionally high for carriers of certain cancer genes, in whom the attack rate can approach 100 percent. In candidate cancer families, the possibility that clustering is on the basis of chance must be excluded through epidemiological studies that establish the presence of an excess cancer risk. Predisposed families are candidates for laboratory studies to identify the inherited susceptibility factors. These investigations have led to the identification and isolation of human cancer genes, the tumor suppressor genes. These cancer genes are among more than 200 single-gene traits associated with the development of cancer. Approximately a dozen inherited susceptibility genes have been definitively identified, and many more are being sought. From studies of retinoblastoma and other rare cancers, important new information was generated about the fundamental biology of cancers that arise in many patients. Isolation of an inherited cancer susceptibility gene provides opportunities for presymptomatic testing of at-risk relatives. However, testing of healthy individuals also raise important issues regarding informed consent, confidentiality and potential for adverse psychological, social and economic effects.”

Frederick Pei Li (1940–2015) American physician

Frederick Li - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/frederick-li/.

Henry Rollins photo
Adam Schaff photo
John Roberts photo

“Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law… Just who do we think we are?”

John Roberts (1955) Chief Justice of the United States

Dissent on Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling — Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015)

Charles Lyell photo
Lana Turner photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo
Yanis Varoufakis photo

“Why did they force us to close the banks? To instil fear in people.
And spreading fear is called terrorism.”

Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister

Source: Chris Johnston and agencies. " Yanis Varoufakis accuses creditors of terrorism ahead of Greek referendum http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/04/greece-crisis-varoufakis-accuses-creditors-terrorism-referendum," in: theguardian.com, 4 July 2015; Quoted in Yanis Varoufakis: some of his best quotes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-some-of-his-best-quotes, on theguardian.com, 6 July 2015, 15.32 BST.

Jerry Pournelle photo
Stig Dagerman photo
Edmund Husserl photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“If God in his wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Kris Kristofferson photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo
Van Morrison photo
Michael Crichton photo