Quotes about collection
page 3

“You can go through your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”

Variant: You can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.
Source: For One More Day

Life

“Hercules used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could-" said Percy
"Percy… Chiron's collection!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Source: Not That It Matters

Money, Business

“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”

James Surowiecki The Wisdom of Crowds

Source: The Wisdom of Crowds

Decision

“I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Feeling, Tear

“One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come —it always does. so I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Life, Smile, Spring, Thinking

“The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Dreams, Imagination, History, Effort

“The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

Guy Debord book The Society of the Spectacle

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 4.
Source: The Society of the Spectacle

People

“Rachel, my itchy witch," Al said as he tugged the lace at his cuffs. "We've talked about this. You simply must stop collecting nasty little men. How many do you really need, love?”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Love, Men

“What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“I dont work with collectives. I don't consult, i don't co-operate, I don't collaborate.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.”

Vincent Starrett (1886–1974) American writer

Attributed to Starrett in Michael Dirda, On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling (2012), page 112.

Happiness, Books

“It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited

War, People

“Quite collected at cocktail parties,
meanwhile in my head
I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Variant: Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
Source: Transformations

Heart

“There are two kinds of people I don't trust: people who don't drink and people who collect stickers.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

People, Drink

“Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a
commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Introduction, p. v.
Source: Steal This Book (1971)
Context: Your body is just one in a mass of cuddly humanity. Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn't allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power.

Drink

“I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It’s ever so bourgeois to have two.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

As "Trudy"
Contributions of Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

Reality

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Love, Age

“Relax, having kids is years away. But can you imagine? Your brains, my charm, our collective good looks… then add in the usual physical abilities dhampirs get.

It's really not even fair to everyone else.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Imagination

“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters
Source: On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

Books, Universe

“Good memories are like charms… Each is special. You collect them, one by one, until one day you look back and discover they make a long, colorful bracelet.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Color, Memory

“Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

Lie, Error

“Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.”

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1926–2003) Academic, novelist

Source: Death in a Tenured Position

Books, Way, Literature, Effort

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Future, Relationship

“An active mind didn't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Variant: See, this was his kind of decorating. An active mind don't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers
Source: Lover Unbound

Books

“Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 227

Women, Health, Family, Home

“Collect adventures and experiences to reminisce about…go to far places, meet new people, eat exotic foods, enjoy all varieties of women, look on unfamiliar landscapes, see new things.”

Gary Jennings (1928–1999) Novelist

Women, People, Food

“What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Kudlow & Cramer interview (2003)

People, Freedom

“The entire world is a collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

World

“So I stared out at that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Life, Thinking

“It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Bee

“Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss and Plutarch Heavensbee (p. 379)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: “Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?” I ask.
“Oh, not now. Now we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.”
“What?” I ask.
“The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race. Think about that.“

Stupidity, Thinking, Memory

“Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

Books

“I disconnected as a sleepy Seth stepped out of the bedroom. “Who’s Dante? Was that a collect call to the Inferno?”

“They won’t accept the charges,” I murmured.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

“I'm not sure what I am anymore… Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures… That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

People, Disappointment, Thinking

“- from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Princess

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

"Have You Learned The Most Important Lesson Of All?" http://www.thehypertexts.com/Essays%20Articles%20Reviews%20Prose/Elie_Wiesel_Essay_Have_You_Learned_The_Most_Important_Lesson_Of_All.htm, published in Parade Magazine (24 May 1992)

Faith

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self destruction.
Source: Mockingjay

Stupidity, Thinking, Memory

“True, you're the weakest of us all, but you're still one of the five, and there is power in collecting the complete set."
He paused, then grinned. "The complete Set! That's funny! Now let's consume your energy and entomb your soul, shall we?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Soul

“And what will you do now? You'll collect loves
Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one
Will trade you and you have the damaged ones.”

Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) Israeli poet

Love

“I've never seen such a collection of idiots in my whole life.' Doolittle shook his head. 'If you participate in this lunacy, y'all will get yourselves killed. Then don't come crying to me.'
Now that would be a neat trick.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Life, Cry

“Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Learning

“Dude, got eyes? I'm collecting evidence." […]
"In Ziploc bags."
"I think they're Glad."
"They look impartial to me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Thinking

“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Girl, Time, Country

“The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

“There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't.”

Sarah Vowell book The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Source: The Partly Cloudy Patriot

People, World

“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Cats, Lovers, Past

“My love is a thousand French poets puking black blood on your Cure CD collection.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Eye Scream

Love

“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

People, Light

“We are always dying, all the time. That's what living is; living is dying, little by little. It is a sequenced collection of individualized deaths.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Death, Time

“Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Pain

“In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Love, Way, Feeling, Hurt

“Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Reading

“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Personality

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Source: Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances: Three Short Novels

Travel, Cats, Solitude, Time

“Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life

“Words are the source of all power. And names are more than just a collection of letters.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“[T]he only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

Memory

“[The information available within a system constitutes what Boulding (1978) calls the noosphere. It is constituted by the collection of plans, of representations, of procedures, of ideas for the construction of objects or of instructions to realize certain interaction patterns, including] the totality of the cognitive content, including values, of all human nervous systems, plus the prostatic devices by which the system is extended and integrated in the form of libraries, computers, telephones, post offices, and so on.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 122, cited in: Jorge Reina Schement, Brent D. Ruben (1993) Information and Behavior - Volume 4. p. 517<br>Robert A. Solo (1994) " Kenneth Ewart Boulding: 1910-1993. An Appreciation http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226892" commented: "The image appears as crucial in Boulding's treatment of societal evolution. Here the record is in human artifacts, not only in material structures such as buildings and machines, telephones and radios, but also in organizations including the extended family, the tribe, the nation, and the corporation. All such artifacts originate in and are sustained by images in the human mind. Civilization and civilized man, in the language that he knows, the skills he acquires, the whole heritage of tradition and manners he has learned, are human artifacts."

Idea

“In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics, Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?"

Hope, Democracy, History

“Mathematics because of its nature and structure is peculiarly fitted for high school instruction [Gymnasiallehrfach]. Especially the higher mathematics, even if presented only in its elements, combines within itself all those qualities which are demanded of a secondary subject. It engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things. Mathematics, therefore, above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.

Truth, World, School, Law

“In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

Future

“The ‘novel’ is a publishing convention that deforms the story. If more attention were given to form there would be fewer novels and better stories. There's no reason a publisher can’t put out a story that's a hundred or even seventy pages long. But a publisher will look at a story like that as defective novel, ineligible for shortlists. It should be in a collection. Or pumped full of air, turned into a novel… It's a pity. You see some good writers behaving like performing monkeys.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

“I do a dance to make the rain come,
Smile to keep the sky from falling down, down, down, down.
Collect the love that I've been given
Build a nest for us to sleep in here
You know it's real.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"All My Stars Aligned"
Marry Me (2007)

Love, Smile, Sleep, Dance

“The great British Library — an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"The Art of Book-Making".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Age, Literature, Reading, Drawing

“First of all, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Chapter 1

Way

“What this book is about is a kind of analysis that is characteristic of a large part of the social sciences, especially the more theoretical part. That kind of analysis explores the relation between the behavior of individuals who compromise some social aggregate, and the characteristics of the aggregate.These situations, in which people's behavior or people's choices depend on the behavior or choices of other people, are the ones that usually don't permit any simple summation or extrapolation of the aggregates. To make that connection we usually have to look at the system of interaction between individuals and their environment, that is, between individuals and other individuals or between individuals and the collectivity.”

Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) American economist

Micromotives and Microbehavior (1978).

People, Books, Behavior, Science

“Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context – which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from Richter's letter to Jean-Christophe Ammann, February 1973; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6 <br class="br">1970's

Idea

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth, Hope, Business, Freedom

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

God, War, Way, Home

“The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas: they ought to be his daily life. If so – this is the view of Christianity – then you, too, will have eloquence enough and precisely that which is needed when you speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is fallacious eloquence if someone, without otherwise occupying himself with, without living in these thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, perhaps in the field of literature, and then works them into a well-composed discourse, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and gestures.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 10
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Life, Literature, Idea, Memory

“As a noun, design is the named (although sometimes unnamable) structure or behavior of a system whose presence resolves or contributes to the resolution of a force or forces on that system. A design thus represents one point in a potential decision space. A design may be singular (representing a leaf decision) or it may be collective (representing a set of other decisions).
As a verb, design is the activity of making such decisions. Given a large set of forces, a relatively malleable set of materials, and a large landscape upon which to play, the resulting decision space may be large and complex. As such, there is a science associated with design (empirical analysis can point us to optimal regions or exact points in this design space) as well as an art (within the degrees of freedom that range beyond an empirical decision; there are opportunities for elegance, beauty, simplicity, novelty, and cleverness).
All architecture is design but not all design is architecture. Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significant is measured by cost of change.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Grady Booch (2006) " On design https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch/entry/on_design?lang=en" cited in: Frank Buschmann, ‎Kevlin Henney, ‎Douglas C. Schmidt (2007) Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, On Patterns and Pattern Languages. p. 214

Beauty, Art, Behavior, Optimism

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Men, War, Secret, Communication

“We have survived bitter divisions in our society. Reconciliation requires us to put aside our differences and forgive the injuries done to us just as justice is essential to that equation. Those who have done wrong and broken the law must be punished. There can be no setting to rights or settling of accounts without that element. Until that is done there will be no finality to our collective nightmare. Until we all accept that simple fact the sense of hurt and betrayal continue.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Our Country at the Crossroads - 2001 Parkinson Memorial Lecture Series, 15 August 2001 http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/wansol1508013.html.

Justice, Law, Forgiveness, Sense

“Strange though this may sound, not knowing where one is going – being lost, being a loser – reveals the greatest possible faith and optimism, as against collective security and collective significance. To believe, one must have lost God; to paint, one must have lost art.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

God, Faith, Art, Optimism

“Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women, Law, Way, Failure

“It this terrible simplification that there is one Africa, and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that, it is not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. And so it is in Africa, it's a lot of difference.What do we think it would be concurrency? And what is concurrency? In Sweden, we have no concurrency. We have serial monogamy. Vodka New Year's Eve, new partner for the spring, vodka Midsummer Eve, new partner for the fall, vodka, and it goes on like this, you know, and you collect a big number of ex's, and we've got a terrible chlamydia epidemic.”

Hans Rosling (1948–2017) Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker

On the HIV epidemic http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv.html

Way, Spring, Thinking, Time

“The idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. We have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them. But the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group - there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent. If you really want to know more about that sort of thing, you should read about the Kulaks in the Soviet Union in the 1920's. They were farmers who were very productive. They were the most productive element of the agricultural strata in Russia. And they were virtually all killed, raped, and robbed by the collectivists who insisted that because they showed signs of wealth, they were criminals and robbers. One of the consequences of the prosecution of the Kulaks was the death of six million Ukrainians from a famine in the 1930's. The idea of collectively held guilt at the level of the individual as a legal or philosophical principle is dangerous. It's precisely this sort of danger that people who are really looking for trouble would push. Just a cursory glance at 20th century history should teach anyone who wants to know exactly how unacceptable that is.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Death, People, History, Idea

“Free markets induce a natural collective reaction by society.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 5, Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Marxian Alternatives, p. 136

Nature

“The nation state is the product of that logic. In England … it was worked out to its final conclusion at the Henrician reformation, the event by which the English nation state was fully realised. All exertion of authority, whether the making or the enforcement of law, the taking of collective decisions of an executive (i. e. not legislable) character, the imposition and collection of taxes, the judgment of causes—in short, all duress brought to bear by the society upon the individual—proceeds from one source, and that source an internal and native one. The England of Henry VIII found it impossible that its laws should be made, that its causes should be judged, or that a revenue should be procured from it by an external authority. In other words, there was no such thing as external authority: the expression was a contradiction in terms… There is a name for appealing over the head of the Crown to an authority outside the realm, and that name is treason. The word may be disused, but the thing is not; and the penalties of praemunire, which those guilty of it formerly incurred, were not disproportionate to its seriousness.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Lancaster (8 November 1980), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 59, p. 61.

Law, Penalty, Decision

“God made Homo sapiens a problem-solving creature. The trouble is that He gave us too many resources: too many languages, too many phases of life, too many levels of complexity, too many ways to solve problems, too many contexts in which to solve them, and too many values to balance.
First came the law, accounting, and history which looks backward in time for their values and decision-making criteria, but their paradigm (casuistry) cannot look forward to predict future consequences. Casuistry is overly rigid and does not account for statistical phenomena. To look forward man used two thousand years to evolve scientific method - which can predict the future when it discovers the laws of nature. In parallel, man evolved engineering, and later, systems engineering, which also anticipates future conditions. It took man to the moon, but it often did, and does, a poor job of understanding social systems, and also often ignores the secondary effects of its artifacts on the environment.
Environmental impact analysis was promoted by governments to patch over the weakness of engineering - with modest success - and it does not ignore history; but by not integrating with system design, it is also an incomplete philosophy. System design and architecture, or simply design, like science and engineering is forward-looking, and provides man with comforts and conveniences - if someone will tell them what problems to solve, and which requirements to meet. It rarely collects wisdom from the backward-looking methodologies, often overlooks ordinary operating problems in designing its artifacts, whether autos or buildings, and often ignores the principles of good teamwork.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p.xi cited in Philip McShane (2004) Cantower VII http://www.philipmcshane.ca/cantower7.pdf

Life, Wisdom, God, Law

“Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On biopiracy, from the booklet " No Patents on Seeds: A Handbook For Activists https://books.google.co.in/books/about/No_Patents_on_Seeds_a_Handbook_for_Activ.html?id=F0mftgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y" (2005)

“The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 32, An Unlucky Bend in the Road

Life, People, Fashion, Time

“Sri Ram Sharma reproduces Aurangzeb's order about the imposition and collection of Jiziyah dated 26th July, 1696. It says that "Jiziyah lapses on death and on acceptance of Islam". During the course of the year some people used to die and some used to convert, but the amount of Jiziyah for the place remained unaltered. In view of this the first type of payment was disadvantageous to Hindus. The last paragraph of the order reads: "The nonMuslim should himself bring the Jiziyah; if he sends it through his deputy it should not be accepted. At the time of payment the non-Muslim should keep standing, while the chief should keep sitting. The hand of the non-Muslim should be below and that of the chief above it and he should say. 'Make payment of Jiziyah, O! non-Muslim' and should not say, 'O! infidel'."”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Aurangzeb thus imposed it in the true spirit and letter of the tax.
Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 4

Death, People, Time, Reading

“Thus the inertia of "progress" today leads swiftly downhill; while the attempt while the attempt to achieve stabilization by collective compulsion and social arrest likewise leads to the same destination--death. Only one road lies open to those who would remain human: the road of renewal. Each one of us must dedicate himself, at whatever effort, with whatever willing sacrifice, to such a transformation of himself and all teh groups and associations of in which he participates, as will lead to law and order, to peace and cooperation, to love and brotherhood, throughout the planet.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

CHALLENGE: Alternatives to Catastrophe
The Conduct Of Life (1951)

Love, Death, Peace, Law

“The reason why the foreign producer gets his produce to market cheaper, relatively, is this — that foreign produce is collected and brought in such large quantities and is sent in great masses to the market. That is the secret of cheap carriage… We must try to make our pounds of produce into tons — or must bring together a number of producers. If you small agriculturists can collectively offer a great bulk of merchandise to the railway companies, they will give you good terms.”

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

Speech at Hawarden (5 January 1884), quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 258
1880s

Secret

“We have collected all the wagons in our power, and sent over. Our people have had extreme hard duty; the common guards, common fatigue, and the extraordinary guards and extraordinary fatigue, for the removal of the stores, and forwarding the provisions, have kept every man on duty.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 October 1776)

People

“The city is not just a collection of ramparts with houses, but also a a spiritual power. … It is capable of directing and changing a man's spiritual life. It brings its power to bear in him and changes his life.”

Jacques Ellul book The Meaning of the City

Source: The Meaning of the City (1951), p. 9

Life, Change, Housing

“My favourite painting is often the one or the collection that I am currently working on. This is probably due to the fact that I don’t yet know where it will take me.”

Joseph Pisani (1971) American artist and photographer

As quoted in "The Conceptual Artist" Inside Switzerland magazine Individuals (Summer 2006), p. 23

Painting

“I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is a much wider one. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression.
It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the League of Nations (1936)

Confidence, Question, Problem

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a… collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[Mann, Adam, Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/elon-musk-hangout/, 18 August 2012, Wired, 26 April 2012]

Communication

“Let the sacrifices of our heroes serve as an example and inspire us to come together, and teach us that our personal interests and well-being should always give way to the collective good of the Filipino people and the betterment of the country we all love.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Official Website of the Senate of the Philippines http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2009/0405_escudero3.asp <br class="br">2009, Statement: A Call for Heroism

Love, People, Way, Personality