Quotes about coat (263 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“The path of skullduggery is made easier with a coating of morality, which is aptly applied to an established custom, by the lawyer and the professor of economics. And so, the business of taking what does not belong to you has been well obfuscated by a ‘philosophy’ of taxation’.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 268

Business

“She moved slowly, and her coat, too tight, made her belly stick out more prominently. With the two dollars deep in her purse she wandered off, more uncertain than ever, for now she saw the shining pans and pots and the cloth, so soft to the touch. Her desires grew vast and many, and she left, poorer certainly than when she had come in the store.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.120

Clothes

“By a man’s boots, by his trouser knee, by his cuffs, by his coat tails, by all of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed.’ Words spoken there by Sherlock Holmes, I believe… although it may have been Westlife.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, E4 Mind Control Night

“I remember her standing in the tall grass and cattails
Away from the windows at the end of the day.
Watching the men from the landing in the tall hats & coat-tails.
She'd never look different, but something would change.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

A Mind with a Heart of Its Own, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Full Moon Fever (1989)

Men , Grass , Change

“I should like to shake Eric Coates but I won't. When I meet him he says, "I just love every note you have written." and I believe he does--but--as you say--well!”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

German's exasperation with the perception of fellow composer Coates imitating his own style, in a letter to his sister Rachel (4 January, 1925)

Love

“Now her coat drags through the water,
Bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows
In the magnetic embrace,
Balletic and glacial, of Bear's insatiable shadow.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Monkey & Bear
Ys (2006)

Life , Hunger , Water

“So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,
Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fettered were with ice.
So naked trees get crispèd heads,
And coloured coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigour, youth and spright,
That are but looked on by his light.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Irish Masque at Court (1613)

Youth , Tree , Light , Winter

“Pena
Her little head clinking
Like a barrel of red velvet balls
Full past noise
Treats filled her eyes
Turning them yellow like enamel coated tacks
Soft like butter hard not to pour”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

Pena, sung by Jeff Cotton, better known as Antennae Jimmy Semens
Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Past

“Pitsand used in masonry dries quickly, the stucco coating is permanent, and the walls can support vaultings. I am speaking of sand fresh from the sandpits. For if it lies unused too long after being taken out, it is disintegrated by exposure to sun, moon, or hoar frost, and becomes earthy. So when mixed in masonry, it has no binding power on the rubble, which consequently settles and down comes the load which the walls can no longer support.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IV, Sec. 3

Support , Sun

“As long as I'm the director of Miss Nevada, we will never award fur coats as prizes, and I urge my fellow pageant directors to make the same pledge. Kind people today are taking a stand against cruelty to animals—so a fur coat is no prize for a compassionate, socially-aware woman.”

Shanna Moakler (1975) American actress and model

Statement to PETA, as quoted in "Miss USA Winners Pose Naked in Sexy New PETA Ad", E! Online (June 13, 2013) https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/429232/miss-usa-winners-pose-naked-in-sexy-new-peta-ad-check-it-out.

People , Animals

“I have been a passionate animal activist for many years now. It's something I believe in and I feel strongly that people with a modicum of success should try and bring a voice to help bring more awareness to causes they believe in, and animals have no voice! So it's vitally important that we raise awareness for them. … I think most people love animals and if there was more awareness and less ignorance about what goes into making a fur coat, for example, people wouldn't even consider buying it.”

Charlotte Ross (1968) American actress

"Charlotte Ross Chats About New Role", interview with Female First (8 November 2012) http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/movies/Charlotte+Ross+Interview-265421.html.

Love , People , Feeling , Thinking

“It is in the world of words, amid the dull but perhaps necessary detail of every-day events—that quotations come with a warmth and a welcome upon memory, and like Milton's fish, "Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with gold." …In the dry and laboring essay, amid the windings of many words and the accumulation of antecedents, we hail their sudden and familiar appearances as patches of Nature's green to repose on by the way; their "dulcet and harmonious breath" animates a train of associations that dwell in the most sylvan haunts of emotion and sentiment; to their fountains of "loosened silver" we turn for a refreshing and a pleasant abstraction.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

World , Way , Nature , Fish

“Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 3

God , Winter , Weather

“A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

16 March 1854
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

“When they carried Jack in, Hill threw his coat over Jack's head, and I held his head to throw the coat over it. It wasn't repulsive to me for one moment — nothing was repulsive to me”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

“Hunkered down out on the spacious ice / coat-hems touching the snow / she slaps her knees, tries to sweet-talk her dog / but it won't come, does not remember its name, / left it there, / she does not remember her own, either, / and here on the shore I keep shouting, in vain.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Dogs

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Understanding , Housing , Falseness

“If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it;
A chield's aman you takin' notes,
And faith he'll prent it.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland, st. 1 (1793)

Faith

“Story on Story of wonderful hills and streams
Their blue-green haze locked in clouds!
Mists brush my thin cap with moisture
Dew wets my coat of plaited straw
On my feet I wear pilgrim's sandals
My hand holds a stick of old rattan
Though I look down again on the dusty world
What is that land of dreams to me?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

World , Dreams

“South Korea has its most pacifist administration ever… [P]eople here do not identify strongly with their state. No public holiday celebrates it, neither the flag nor the coat of arms nor the anthem conveys republican or non-ethnic values, no statues of presidents stand in major cities. Few people can even tell you the year in which the state was founded. When the average [South Korean] man sees the [South Korean] flag, he feels fraternity with [ethnic] Koreans around the world.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, North Korea's Unification Drive (December 2017)

People , World , Feeling , Holiday

“Glass… is not required for the collection of solar heat. The National Physical Laboratory of Israel… has perfected a highly polished metal surface coated with a molecular-thin black layer of special paint, which absorbs more than 90 percent sunlight. The polished metal radiates very little of the heat it receives. …A south-facing wall fitted out with these plates would really "drink in" solar heat, windows, or no windows.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Drink , Painting , Perfection

“I want to warn young people who lend their ears to radicals and who play around with the music from Lusaka - they will end up inside the bear's fur coat, but they will no longer be able to live.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

At an election meeting in Pietermaritzburg on 30 April 1987, as cited by Andrew Donaldson, Sunday Times, 5 November 2006

People , Music

“He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored coats, and damn Sharpe. […] Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 11
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Trafalgar (2000)

Color

“d'Alembert, who wrote the introduction to the Encyclopédie, resigned his editorship with the scathing remark that the work was like a harlequin's coat: some good stuff, but mostly rags.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

“You are very attractive, but the coat you're wearing makes me think you are either a very rich woman or a very rich man's mistress.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Stated to Ashraf Pahlavi of Iran, as quoted in Faces in a Mirror (1980) by Ashraf Pahlavi, p. 129

Thinking

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988)
Fiction

Life , Men , Hope , Sleep

“I am here to protest against child molesters. For as surely as there are those who lure children with lollypops in order to rape their bodies, so, too, do these lure children with candy-coated lies in order to rape their minds.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Cults Hearing Noisy, Tense http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/misc/hearing2.htm, By Marjorie Hyer, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, February 6, 1979; Page A14, The Washington Post

Children

“You are either the man in the white coat or you are the monkey. Susan sees herself as the monkey.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 4 “Foxy Lady” (p. 82)

“To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. …If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat.”

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

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared light.

Color , Support , Light , Appearance

“On the top of the wall lay a structure of burnt brick, about a foot and a half in height, under the tiles and projecting like a coping. …when the tiles on the roof are broken or thrown down by the wind so that rain-water can leak through, this burnt brick coating will prevent the crude brick from being damaged, and the cornice-like projection will throw off the drops beyond the vertical face, and thus the walls, though of crude brick structure, will be preserved intact.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 18

Water

“I reminisce on park jams, my man was shot for his sheep coat
chocolate blunts will make me see him drop in my weed smoke”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

Memory Lane (Sittin' in Da Park)
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

“It is seen as the application of a systematic “scientific method” involving wearing a white coat and being dull. I feel that too many young people come into science with this view, and that too many fields degenerate into the kind of work which results: automatic crank-turning and data-collecting of the sort which Kuhn calls “normal science” and Rutherford “stamp-collecting”. In fact, the creation of new science is a creative act, literally, and people who are not creative are not very good at it.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

in Some ideas on the Aesthetics of Science, address presented by Philip W. Anderson as the Nishina Memorial Lecture at the 50th Anniversary Seminar of the Faculty of Science&Technology, at Keio University (Tokyo), on May 18, 1989.

People , Feeling , Science

“She was an appetising woman with a full-cheeked smile, about thirty, a Nordic blonde but not icy, though ice was suggested in its tamed winter-sport aspects : the flush after skating, log-fires and hot rum and butter, fine heavy thighs, that would warm your hand like a muff, under a skirt that had swirled in a rink waltz. Her beaver lamb coat was thrust back from a green suit : solid charms, thoroughly wholesome, were indicated.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Smile , Sport , Winter

“Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st," appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XI

Love , Wisdom , Men , God

“The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Death , Reality , Water , Summer

“For a decade, feminists have drilled their disciples to say, “Rape is a crime of violence but not of sex.” This sugar-coated Shirley Temple nonsense has exposed young women to disaster. Misled by feminism, they do not expect rape from the nice boys from good homes who sit next to them in class.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 51

Women , Sex , Home , Boy

“Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest.
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle,
No flowers no wedding dress.That night we went down to the river.
And into the river we'd dive.
Oh down to the river we did ride.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The River"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Smile , Flowers , Birthday , Wedding

“I would not have taken off my coat and gone to work had I not known that we were laying the foundations by this movement for the recovery of our legislative independence.”

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) Irish politician

Galway speech (1880)

“I would make the profession of every man, the rule by which to fashion his crest or coat of arms!… To the petifogger (sic), three links of a convict's chain, with the Penitentiary in the distance! To the Bank Director a Widow's Coffin, with a weeping Orphan on either side by way of heraldic supporters! Pah! There is no single word of contempt in the whole language, too bitter, to express my opinion of this magnificent Pretension - the Aristocracy of the Quaker City!”

George Lippard (1822–1854) Novelist, journalist

The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall, part 2, chapter 4 "Dora Livingstone at Home" (1844)

Way , Fashion , Support

“Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about a modern battlefield is the desolation and emptiness of it all…one cannot emphasize too much. Nothing is to be seen of war or soldiers--only the split and shattered trees and the burst of an occasional shell reveal anything of the truth. One can look for miles and see no human being. But in those miles of country lurk (like moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men, planning against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing themselves, they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo and shell. And somewhere too (on the German side we know of their existence opposite us) are the little cylinders of gas, waiting only for the moment to spit forth their nauseous and destroying fumes. And yet the landscape shows nothing of all this--nothing but a few shattered trees and three or four lines of earth and sandbags, these and the ruins of towns and villages are the only signs of war anywhere visible. The glamour of red coats--the martial tunes of flag and drum--aide-de-camps scurrying hither and thither on splendid chargers--lances glittering and swords flashing--how different the old wars must have been!”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

letter to his mother, May 13, 1916
1910s

Death , Men , War , Truth

“Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere;
cartouche and tweed, all silver shot —
and everything that could remind you
of how easy I was not.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Have One On Me (2010)

“I bought a fur coat with my first pay cheque and it lived better than I did for years.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Financial Times Interview (July 14, 2017)

“The Multitude will hardly believe the excessive Force of Education, and in the difference of Modesty between Men and Women ascribe that to Nature, which is altogether owing to early Instruction: Miss is scarce Three years old, but she is spoke to every Day to hide her Leg, and rebuk'd in good Earnest if she shews it; while Little Master at the same Age is bid to take up his Coats, and piss like a Man.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 63
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Women , Men , Age , Education

“Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an “Uncle Tom;” disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro.”

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

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

War , Justice , Nature , Thinking

“My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.”

David Sedaris Naked

Naked (1997)

Hate , People

“We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place. Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.…Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this, culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, "And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?"”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Diary entry for July 25, 1985, p. 144.
Writing Home (1994)

Imagination , Boy , Fish , Future

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Life , Men , Money , World

“It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy…Does anybody seriously suppose that the members of the United Nations, or of the Security Council, have been actuated in their decisions on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by a pure desire to see right done and wrong reversed? That was the last thing on their minds. Everyone of them, from the United States to Peru, calculated its own interests and consulted its own ambitions. What moral authority can attach a summation of self-interest and prejudice? I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests; they ought and, in any case, they will. What I am saying is that those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up altogether. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs. Its only redeeming feature is its impotence…The United Nations is a colossal coating of humbug poured, like icing over a birthday cake, over the naked ambitions and hostilities of the nations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'We have the will, we don't need the humbug', The Times (12 June 1982), p. 12
1980s

God , Hostility , Justice , Democracy

“Research is something that everyone can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking systematically about it. The word ‘research’ carries overtones of abstruse statistics and complex methods, white coats and computers. Some social research is highly specialised but most is not; much of the best research is logically very straightforward. Useful research on many problems can be done with small resources, and should be a regular part of the life of any thoughtful person involved in social action.”

Raewyn Connell (1944) Australian sociologist

Raewyn Connell et al. (1975). How to do small surveys – a guide for students in sociology, kindred industries and allied trades. School of Social Sciences. Flinders University. p. 1.

Life , Problem , Thinking , Parting

“The only way which this ruling sees out of what it calls “the communal strife” is that Hindu history should be substantially diluted and tailored to the needs of Islamic imperialism, and that Muslim history should be given a liberal coat of whitewash or even made to pass muster as national history. This has been the main plank in the platform for “national integration”. Hitherto this Experiment with Untruth was confined mainly to Muslim and Communist “historians” who have come to control the Indian History Congress, the Indian Council of Historical Research, and even the University Grants Commission. Now it has been taken up by the National Integration Council. The Ministry of Education of the Government of India has directed the education departments in the States to extend this experiment to school-level text-books of history. And this perverse programme of suppressing truth and spreading falsehood is being sponsored by a state which inscribes Satyameva Jayate on its emblem.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Truth , Books , Education , School

“BALTHAZAR: I have a private coat for Italian stilettos, I can be treacherous with the Walloon, drunk with the Dutch, a chimney-sweeper with the Irish, a gentleman with the Welsh and true arrant thief with the English. What then is my country to me?”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

Country

“Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Spoken to Ginger Rogers in the film, The Major and the Minor (1942)

“Yesterday we fought a great battle and gained a great victory, for which all the glory is due to God alone. Although under a heavy fire for several continuous hours I received only one wound, the breaking of the longest finger of my left hand; but the doctor says the finger may be saved. It was broken about midway between the hand and knuckle, the ball passing on the side next to the forefinger. Had it struck the centre, I should have lost the finger. My horse was wounded, but not killed. Your coat got an ugly wound near the hip, but my servant, who is very handy, has so far repaired it that it doesn't show very much. My preservation was entirely due, as was the glorious victory, to our God, to whom be all the honor, praise, and glory. The battle was the hardest that I have ever been in, but not near so hot in its fire.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Letter to his wife after the First Battle of Bull Run (22 July 1861); as quoted in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (1895) http://books.google.com/books?id=bG2vg5cH004C, Ch. XI : The First Battle of Manassas, p. 178

God , Victory , Horse

“Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams
Blue green vistas locked in white clouds
The mist makes my bandana wet
Dew coats my grass cape
My feet climb in straw sandals
My hand holds an old wooden stick
When I gaze down again on the dusty world
It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Beauty , Dreams , Mountain

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World , Dogs , Way , Imagination

“I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 215)

Fashion

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile , History , Idea , Tree

“…men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild (1903)

Men , Dogs , Strong

“Then - being in two minds - in my father's courtyard, I counted the buttons of my coat: soldier or painter, soldier, painter, soldier, painter.... the last button told me: painter. So it was decided by chance that I would become a painter”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

c. 1831
version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Toen telde ik, op de binnenplaats mijns vaders in tweestrijd, de knoopen van mijn jas: soldaat of schilder, soldaat, schilder, soldaat, schilder.. ..de laatste knoop zei schilder, en zoo besliste het toeval, dat ik schilder zou worden [c. 1831].
J.W. Bilders was fighting as a Dutch volunteer in the Belgium Independents War against The Netherlands. 1830
Source: 1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900), p. 78

Chance

“Its history is soaked in blood of the supposed enemies of Islam. But all this is denied by Marxists who always try to cover up the black spots of Muslim rule with thick coats of whitewash.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 3

History

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Death , Men , Dreams , Color

“It was just a coat hanger, and … it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn.”

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

Attributed by Gary Trudeau (2004-07-14) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5439743
Attributed, Private/attributed

Hurt

“Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks!… But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Sanders Supporters are Pathetic Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI, February 2016

Love , Women , Money , Bad luck

“Adolf is a swine. He will give us all away. He only associates with reactionaries now. His old friends aren't good enough for him. Getting matey with the East Prussian generals. They're his cronies now. Adolf is turning into a gentleman. He's got himself a tail-coat now. Adolf knows exactly what I want. I've told him often enough. Not a second edition of the old imperial army. Are we revolutionaries or aren't we? Allons, enfants de la patrie! If we are, then something new must arise out of our élan, like the mass armies of the French Revolution. If we're not, then we'll go to the dogs. We've got to produce something new, don't you see? A new discipline. A new principle of organization. The generals are a lot of old fogeys. They never had a new idea.”

Ernst Röhm (1887–1934) German Nazi and military officer

To Hermann Rauschning about Adolf Hitler in May, 1933. Quoted in "Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?" - Page 82 to Page 83 - by Martyn Housden - History - 2000

Dogs , Idea , Swine

“O city ladies'
Your coats wrapped,
Your hips a possession
Your shoes arched
Your walk is sharp
Your breasts
Pertain to lingerie”

George Oppen (1908–1984) American poet

from "Discrete Series", 1934; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002, ISBN 0-811-21488-5

Shoe

“Sometimes in his last years they’d take him out after maybe seven innings and put in Sammy Byrd or some other right fielder for defensive purposes because he was getting pretty out of shape. And we kids, we knew better, we knew the rule, but we’d yell “We want the Babe! We want the Babe!” from the seventh inning until the ninth inning. Once in a while he’d come out of the dugout and he’d lift up his cap or do something like that. We knew he couldn’t come back into the lineup, but that didn’t stop us. That’s the way we were. We loved him, and he loved us, which was very nice. A great combination. I’d see him in his great polo coat on Broadway sometimes, with his jaunty cap, and his wife and daughter walking along. He was just wonderful.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

As quoted in "Bronx Banter Interview: Arnold Hano, Part I" http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2009/09/25/bronx-banter-interview-arnold-hano/
Sports-related

Love , Way , Daughters

“The [Progressive Labor] leaders became so paranoid over the issue of their public ‘image’ that they told members to shave their moustaches, wear coats and ties, forget the cowboy boots, be careful with whom they are seen, stay away from people who take dope, date only certain girls, attend classes regularly, and watch their language in public. Strange concepts, indeed, for Communists who at times attempted to pose as libertines.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: Road to Revolution: Communist Guerilla Warfare in the U.S.A. (1967), pp. 3-4

People , Girl , Time , Forgetting

“How many thousands, tens of thousands [of prisoners], are in for petty theft, while the 'robber barons' of our day get away with murder. Literally murder, accessories to murder. "Property is Theft." Proudhon wrote--The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. The early Fathers wrote--The house you don't live in, your empty buildings (novitiates, seminaries) belong to the poor. Property is Theft.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1971)

Housing

“Three jolly huntsmen,
In coats of red,
Rode their horses
Up to bed.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Huntsmen.

Horse

“Avoid deceit, and do not be afraid to contradict all your environment and face the truth; cease seeking for pleasure and luxury, renounce your advantages, and live like the working people and among them; labor with all your being in the struggle for bread; sacrifice yourself consciously for the good of others, considering not rights but duties; do not have more than one coat, and do not possess land or money, but further the brotherly equalization of property; make the welfare of mankind your religion, professing Christ's true teaching and tearing down the superstitions of false Christianity; refuse to take part in any form of government activity; and through it all, everywhere and at all times, love your brother men.”

Sheldon Warren Cheney (1886–1980) American writer and art critic

"The Value of Tolstoy's What Is To Be Done? to the Present Re-building of the Social Structure" Tuxton Beale Prize Essay (1912)

Love , Men , Money , People

“There were entertaining, impassioned, or witty lectures on Goethe, say, in which he would be depicted descending from a post chaise wearing a blue frock-coat to seduce some Strassburg or Wetzlar girl; or on Arabic culture; in all of them a number of fashionable phrases were shaken up like dice in a cup and everyone was delighted if he dimly recognized one or two catchwords.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Girl , Fashion

“On John Edwards, U. S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.'”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line.
" It's the war, stupid http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/steyn030104.asp", 1 March 2004

Hope , Girl , Boy , Laughter

“You don’t have to kill an animal because you want to be hot and fly. It’s not the 16th century anymore. We’ve got central heating for God’s sake. And you can get a fake fur coat. I have one. It’s fabulous.”

Taraji P. Henson (1970) American actress

At a party held at Stella McCartney’s Boutique in New York; quoted in "New York Fashion Week: Tim Gunn, Taraji Henson make the case against animal cruelty" http://www.nola.com/fashion/index.ssf/2011/02/new_york_fashion_week_tim_gunn.html, NOLA.com (10 February 2011).

God , Animals , Flying

“I say I like your coat
Her thank-you tugs my heart afloat
I nearly didn't hear for
Seagulls screaming kiss her, kiss her”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Seagulls screaming kiss her, kiss her".
The Big Express (1984)

Kiss , Heart

“(In 1985, Jordan broke his foot and the management, namely Jerry Krause, wanted to limit his return for fear of worsening the injury - the idea was to play seven minutes in each half) The [Bulls] came up with this whole theory you can play seven minutes a game when I'm practicing two hours a day… I didn’t agree with that math. I wanted to play. I wanted to make the playoffs. […] Jerry [Reinsdorf] said, "Let me ask if you had a headache and" - there was a 10 percent chance then I’d reinjure my ankle - "and you've got 10 tablets and one of them is coated with cyanide, would you take it?" I looked at him and said, "How bad is the headache?" Jerry looked at me and said, "I guess that's a good answer, you can go back and play."”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Hall of Fame induction address, 2009 http://www.nba.com/bulls/news/jordanhof_speech_090912.html

Fear , Game , Idea , Chance

“Do you remember stormy winter?
Well button up your coat, one's comin' soon”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

The Last Dance
29 (2005)

Winter

“And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!”

Henry Newbolt (1862–1938) English poet and writer

Describing a game of cricket.
Vitai Lampada http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/influences/vitai.html

Hope , Game , Selfishness , Season

“Even if we accept the basic logic of the natural law argument against homosexuality, we have to ask just how wicked a sin it could really be. People sometimes use metal coat hangers as impromptu TV aerials, a purpose for which they were not designed. Likewise, children sometimes climb up slides instead of sliding down them. Are these activities heinous infractions of the moral law? Are they an insult to the people who designed the coat hangers or the slides?”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 247

Children , People , Law , Nature

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

Pleasure , Tear

“A doctor is the conjunction of a white coat, a stethoscope, and a jargon.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"Un médico es la conjunción de un guardapolvo, un estetoscópio y una jerga."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.

“Some French ran for help to the British infantry. The red ranks opened up, helped them in, because all infantry feared that moment when the cavalry hit them at full charge. The British soldiers shouted at the French, told them to run to the British lines, and the red-coated men watched in awe what the Heavy Dragoons were doing and knew Fate could have decreed it otherwise and so they helped their enemy to escape the common enemy of all infantry.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, describing the effect of a successful British cavalry charge, p. 249
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Men , Fate , Fear , Help

“You don't know what I'm up against. Because it's full of, of, of things that are only correct because they're grammatical, but they're tough on the ear, you see. This is a very wearying one. It's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. "Because Findus freeze the cod at sea, and then add a crumb-crisp" Ooh, "crumb-crisp coating." Ahh, that's tough, "crumb-crisp coating." I think, no, because of the way it's written, you need to break it up, because it's not, it's not as conversationally written.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

Way , Thinking , Reading , Sea

“Myelin is a fatty substance that coats the axons, speeding up synaptic transmission. Myelanation… is generally completed by age twenty. Multiple sclerosis is one of several degenerative diseases that can affect the myelin sheath…”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Age , Disease , Speed

“Since the great French Revolution all colour has been gradually dying out of the male costume, until we have got reduced to our present gamut of brown, black and neutral tint; which, combined with the chimney-pot hat and the swallow-tailed coat, form a costume by no means particularly adapted to refresh the eye seeking for form or colour.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 8

“Most of the fascist functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty's ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans, all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in armored cars and jets are just as reachable. Anyone who will come out of his bomb shelter can be had. Imagine what Nixon's armored car would look like if I stepped out of the alley and hit it with the anti-tank rocket launcher under my coat—a ball of fire. Hell will be their reward.”

Jonathan P. Jackson (1953–1970) American kidnapper

Source: From Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 46

Cars , Imagination , Hell

“One insidious practice which sugar-coats the dose of Federal intrusion is the division of expense for public improvements or services between State and National treasuries. The ardent States-rights advocate sees in this practice a vicious weakening of the State system. The extreme federalist is apt to look upon it in cynical fashion as bribing the States into subordination. The average American, believing in our dual-sovereignty system, must feel that the policy of national doles to the States is bad and may become disastrous. We may go on yet for a time with the easy assumption that 'if the States will not, the Nation must'. But that way lies trouble. When the National Treasury contributes half, there is temptation to extravagance by the State. We have seen some examples in connection with the Federal contributions to road building. Yet there are constant demands for more Federal contributions. Whenever by that plan we take something from one group of States and give it to another group, there is grave danger that we do an economic injustice on one side and a political injury on the other. We impose unfairly on the strength of the strong, and we encourage the weak to indulge their weakness.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Way , Feeling , Fashion , Strong

“Outside the building, she started to walk west to Lexington to catch the bus. Between Third and Lexington, she reached into her coat pocket for her purse and found the sandwich half. She took it out and started to bring her arm down, to drop the sandwich into the street, but instead she put it back into her pocket. A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket.”

Jerome David Salinger book Nine Stories

Nine Stories (1953), Just Before the War with the Eskimos (1948)

Dead

“Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Diary, 9 February 1897
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

People , Lying , Drink , Freedom

“I shall wear my best black and my white alpacka coat to keep off the dust and flies replied Mr Salteena.
I shall put some red ruge on my face said Ethel because I am very pale owing to the drains in this house.”

Daisy Ashford book The Young Visiters

Source: The Young Visiters (1919), Chapter 2

Housing

“The interlacedness of the two heterogeneous origins [Remark: This refers to the origins of governance: (1) necessity to work cooperatively, (2) the fight between man and man] prevails as the fundamental characteristic of governance. Therefore even any true community, being successful somewhere between boundaries for a common purpose, elsewhere becomes in theory a means for misleading, used to interpret and cover-up actually existing power. Again and again things are named by their contrary and are hidden. In that manner, under the pretense of communication - the open discussion - people are interrogated and commands are given, under the pretense of freedom and voluntariness behavior is enforced, in the coat of pure ethics the evil is carried out, under the pretense of truth lies and fraud are committed, and all values valid at any one time are, depending on the situation, either applied or ignored. [Remarks: "Herrschaft" = "governance" or "leadership", "Gewalt" = "power" or "violence"]”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On Truth (1948), Pt 2, Ch. 3, II, B, 3, b)

People , Truth , Behavior , Communication

“No matter how you look at it,” Margo muttered, “when you get down to it, human beings aren’t really much better than killer plains apes, are they? Just a thin sugar-coating of civilization to make ’em look prettier.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Ripping Time (2000), Chapter 12 (p. 364)

“The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Poem: At the Fishhouses

Beauty , Fish

“The first documentary I saw as a child was Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) broadcast one Sunday afternoon. Nanook enchanted me by his courage to smile in a frozen wasteland, and by the simple fact that he wore a fur coat rather than a military uniform: this gentle hunter wasn’t a conqueror. Later, I understood how great Flaherty was: he told a timeless story without using commentary or pedagogues, and he didn’t interview Nanook like a celebrity or an aggressive talk-show host. He remained off-screen, observing and listening to create that exceptional complicity we feel in this documentary that eschews didacticism. The emotion of life found its counterpart in the emotion of art - a rare and precious achievement in a genre that is often limited to the emotion of the informational narrative.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On documentary influences, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Life , Smile , Art , Feeling

“I think what I need might be a full-length leather coat
Somebody just asked me
If I registered to vote”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Time Out of Mind (1997), Highlands

Thinking

“This reckless Tory Budget would not be possible without the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems denounced early cuts; now they are backing them. They denounced VAT increases; now they are voting for them. How could they support everything they fought against? How could they let down everyone who voted for them? How could they let the Tories so exploit them? Do they not see that they are just a fig leaf? The Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary is just the Chancellor's fig leaf. The Deputy Prime Minister is just the Prime Minister's fig leaf. The Lib Dems' leaders have sacrificed everything they ever stood for to ride in ministerial cars and to ride on the coat tails of the Tory Government. Twenty-two Liberal Democrat ministerial jobs have been bought at the cost of tens of thousands of other people's. The Liberal Democrats used to stand up for people's jobs, but now they only stand up for their own. Look at the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Twickenham. Mr Speaker, the House has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from national treasure to Treasury poodle.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

They have no mandate for this Budget; this Budget has no legitimacy. Even if the Lib Dems will not speak up for jobs, we will. Even if they will not fight for fairness, we will, and even if they will not protest against Tory broken promises, we will.
Reaction to the Coalition's budget http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100622/debtext/100622-0007.htm#10062245000003, 22 June, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6VJSaFB_E&feature=related

People , Cars , Business , Support