Quotes about common
page 16

“It makes me ashamed as a man, as a citizen, as a Christian, to see the prejudice that is acted against the colored citizens of America because of his colour. As to the substance, the colored man is equal to the white man; he has a like intellect, the same blood courses in their veins; they are both equally the children of a common Father, who is in heaven.”

John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop

Sermon at St. Augustine Catholic Church (1890)

Children, Color

“In Taoist thought, the good life comes spontaneously; but spontaneity is far from simply acting on the impulses that occur to us. In Western traditions such as Romanticism, spontaneity is linked with subjectivity. In Taoism it means acting dispassionately, on the basis of an objective view of the situation at hand. The common man cannot see things objectively, because his mind is clouded by anxiety about achieving his goals. Seeing clearly means not projecting our goals into the world; acting spontaneously means acting according to the needs of the situation. Western moralists will ask what is the purpose of such action, but for Taoists the good life has no purpose. It is like swimming in a whirlpool, responding to the currents as they come and go. 'I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water, and do not impose my selfishness upon it. This is how I stay afloat in it,' says the Chuang-Tzu. In this view, ethics is simply a practical skill, like fishing or swimming. The core of ethics is not choice or conscious awareness, but the knack of knowing what to do. It is a skill that comes with practice and an empty mind.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Animal virtues (p. 113)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Life, World, Way, Fish

“There are no historic or legal precedents to which I can turn in this matter, none that precisely fit the circumstances of a private citizen who has resigned the Presidency of the United States. But it is common knowledge that serious allegations and accusations hang like a sword over our former President's head, threatening his health as he tries to reshape his life, a great part of which was spent in the service of this country and by the mandate of its people.
After years of bitter controversy and divisive national debate, I have been advised, and I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States under governing decisions of the Supreme Court.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Remarks on pardoning Nixon (1974)

Life, People, Health, Knowledge

“Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot; where he is, there are in the first place no laws common to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end.”

Euripidés The Suppliants

Suppliants (tr. Edward P. Coleridge)

Hostility, Law

“Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

On not attending an EEC meeting in order to attend a Labour rally (12 December 1975), quoted in 'Mr Benn delays EEC meeting', The Times (13 December, 1975), p. 1
1970s

“The planted seed consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay;
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales.”

Anne Lynch Botta (1815–1891) writer, poet, socialite

Aspiration

Life, Flowers, Light

“Organization always hinges on the creation of shared meanings and shared understandings, because there have to be common reference points if people are to shape an align their activities in an organized way.”

Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 11; as cited in: Malcolm Warner, Morgen Witzel (2004) Managing in virtual organizations. p. 24

People, Way, Understanding

“I don't want Cambodia to be a carbon copy of the Philippines, Formosa, South Vietnam or South Korea. I don't even want a Cambodia which exports cameras like Japan. I want a decent Cambodia, a Cambodia like China. If that makes it a bit too austere, too bad. If this takes away the happiness I cultivated with my films and my songs, too bad. But, they say, there's the problem of individual freedom, freedom of thought. Yes, that's true. But where's the alternative? Nowhere. Let's use our common sense here: even if there was another solution, the Cambodian communists would never relenquish power.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 128.
Interviews

Happiness, Problem, Sense, Freedom

“The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penological theories…. Common criminals…can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that’s all.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

“Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man — the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings. … The value of words help to define the feeling itself. … The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: The Cult of Sincerity (1969), p. 16

Feeling, Failure, Memory, Help

“There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Life, Study, Silence, Appearance

“If dialectical logic understands contradiction as “necessity” belonging to the very “nature of thought,” … it does so because contradiction belongs to the very nature of the object of thought, to reality, where Reason is still Unreason, and the irrational still the rational. Conversely, all established reality militates against the logic of contradictions — it favors the modes of thought which sustain the established forms of life and the modes of behavior which reproduce and improve them. The given reality has its own logic and its own truth; the effort to comprehend them as such and to transcend them presupposes a different logic, a contradicting truth. They belong to modes of thought which are non-operational in their very structure; they are alien to scientific as well as common-sense operationalism. … These modes of thought appear to be a relic of the past, like all non-scientific and non-empirical philosophy. They recede before a more effective theory and practice of Reason.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 142

Life, Truth, Behavior, Understanding

“Luther's Qualifications. Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther's version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Women, Men, God, Children

“What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Socialist or Fascist?" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell061212.php3#.XEZfbc2E6Mp, Jewish World Review (June 12, 2012) 2010s Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

People, Decision

“If we work to (make) the welfare of the people our goal based on the concept that both sides (Taiwan and Mainland China) belong to one family, increase the exchange and cooperation between the two sides so as to construct a cross-strait community of a common destiny and to pursue a better future for people on the both sides, then certain deadlock we're facing at the moment can be broken.”

Ko Wen-je (1959) Taiwanese politician and physician

Ko Wen-je (2017) cited in " UPDATED: Ko meets China's Taiwan chief but eases up on rhetoric http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/china-taiwan-relations/2017/07/03/499165/updated-ko.htm" on The China Post, 3 July 2017.

People, Family, Communication, Future

“If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that. Instead of only one religion leading to one ultimate truth, we have many different religions with no common origin, all constantly sharding into ever more deeply-divided denominations, seeking conflicting truths, and each somehow claiming divine guidance despite their ongoing divergence in every direction.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Wisdom, God, Truth, Books

“The Benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness" was that which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiar with an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in an unpublished dialogue on Government, written by my father on the Platonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapter in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "the law of nature," "right reason," "the moral sense," "natural rectitude," and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason. It had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 3: Last Stage of Education and First of Self-Education (pp. 45-46)

Happiness, Law, Feeling, Nature

“For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!"”

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

answers the other: "To all the Three; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion."
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Religion, Nature, Teachers, Time

“Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

People, Secret, World

“What we mean by the laws of nature, are those laws which are deduced from that series of events, which, by divine appointment, follow each other in the moral and physical world; the former of which we shall here have occasion principally to consider, the present question altogether, respecting the moral government of God — a consideration which our author has entirely neglected, in his estimation of the credibility of miracles. Examining the question therefore upon this principle, it is manifest, that the extraordinary nature of the fact is no ground for disbelief, provided such a fact, in, a moral point of view, was, from the condition of man, become necessary; for in that case, the Deky, by dispensing his assistance in proportion to our wants, acted upon the same principle as in his more 'ordinary operations. For however ' opposite the physical effects may be, if their moral tendency be the same, they form a part of the jmoral law. Now in those actions which are called miracles, the Deity is directed by the same moral principle as in his usual dispensations; and therefore being influenced by the same motive to accomplish the same end, the laws of God's moral government are not violated, such laws being established by the motives and the ends produced, and not by the means employed. To prove therefore the moral laws to be the same in those actions called miraculous, as in common events, it is not the actions thetnselves which are to be considered, but the principles by which they were directed, and their consequences, for if these be the same, the Deity acts by the same laws. And here, moral analogy will be found to confirm the truth of the miracles recorded in scripture. But as the moral government of God is directed by motives which lie beyond the reach of human investigation, we have no principles by which we can judge concerning the probability of the happening of any new event which respects the moral world; we cannot therefore pronounce any extraordinary event of that nature to be a violation of the moral law of God's dispensations; but we can nevertheless judge of its agreement with that law, so far as it has fallen under our observation. But our author leaves out the consideration of God's moral government, and reasons simply -on the facts which arc said to have nappened, without any reference to an end; we will therefore examine how far his conclusions are just upon this principle.
He defines miracles to be "a violation of the laws of nature;" he undoubtedly means the physical laws, as no part of his reasoning has any reference to them in a moral point of view. Now these laws must be deduced, either from his own view of events only, or from that, and testimony jojntly; and if testimony beallowed on one part, it ought also to be admitted on the other, granting that there is no impossibility in the fact attested. But the laws by which the Deity governs the universe can, at best, only be inferred from the whole series of his dispensations from the beginning of the world; testimony must therefore necessarily be admitted in establishing these laws. Now our author, in deducing the laws of nature, rejects all well authenticated miraculous events, granted to be possible, and therefore not altogether incredible and to be rejected without examination, and thence establishes a law to prove against their credibility; but the proof of a position ought to proceed upon principles which are totally independent of any supposition of its being either true or falser. His conclusion therefore is not deduced by just reasoning from acknowledged principles, but it is a necessary consequence of his own arbitrary supposition. "Tis a miracle," says he, "that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country." Now, testimony, confirmed by every proof which can tend to establish a true matter of fact, asserts that such an event; has happened. But our author argues against the credibility of this, because it is contrary to the laws of nature; and in establishing these laws, he rejects all such extraordinary facts, although they are authenticated by all the evidence which such facts can possibly admit of; taking thereby into consideration, events of that kind only which have fallen within the sphere of his own observations, as if the whole series of God's dispensations were necessarily included in the course of a few years. But who shall thus circumscribe the operations of divine power and infinite wisdom, and say, "Hitherto shall thou go, and no further."”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Before he rejected circumstances of this kind in establishing the laws of nature, he should, at least, have shewn, that we have not all that evidence for them which we might "have had" upon supposition that they were true ; he should also have shewn, in a moral point of view, that the events were inconsistent with the ordinary operations of Providence ; and that there was no end to justify the means. Whereas, on the contrary, there is all the evidence for them which a real matter of fact can possibly have ; they are perfectly consistent with all the moral dispensations of Providence and at the same time that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most unexceptionably attested, we discover a moral intention in the miracle, which very satisfactorily accounts for that exertion of divine power? Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 48; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA259," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 259-261

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

“All life on earth - everything from bacteria to mushrooms to hippos - shares an astonishing range of detailed biochemical similarities, including the structure of heredity in DNA and RNA, and the universal use of ATP as an energy-storing compound. Two possible scenarios, with markedly different implications for the nature of life, might explain these regularities: either all earthly life shares these features because no other chemistry can work, or these similarities only record the common descent of all organisms on earth from a single origin that happened to feature this chemistry as one possibility among many.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"War of the Worldviews", p. 352
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Nature, Universe

“From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 69
(1819)

Life, Heart

“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

The teachings about this society are called socialism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/1.htm
To the Rural Poor
1903
Collected Works
6
366
Lenin
Vladimir Ilich
Marxists.
1900s

People

“The importance of a seat in the Prussian legislature was not overlooked by anyone. But it was looked upon as more important that the representatives of the party should depend exclusively upon the strength of the party, and not upon an alliance with parties which might have momentarily a common interest with us, but which in their political make-up are hostile to us and will remain permanently hostile.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Hostility, Dependency

“There is an enormous pressure placed on gay novelists because they are the only spokespeople. The novelist's first obligation is to be true to his own vision, not to be some sort of common denominator or public relations man to all gay people.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

Quoted by William Goldstein, "Edmund White," Publishers Weekly, (24 September 1982)
Articles and Interviews

People

“Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

People, Dogs, Thinking, Time

“When it comes to scouts, heroes are just people who confuse cowardice with common sense.”

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

Source: Time Scout (1995), Chapter 7 (p. 119)

People, Sense, Scouting

“I had sampled several such brotherhoods, including the Rosey Cross and the Orange Lodge, during the period in which I examined the Supernatural and found it not merely uninstructive but damnably dull, its members possessing nothing in the way of individual imagination and a great need to seek confirmation in numbers for the merits of miserable little madnesses…. Such people as a rule were lonely, confounded misfits, attempting to alter the surrounding evidence of Nature by inventing abstractions to explain why common facts were false and ordinary reality a poor illusion.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 210; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

People, Way, Imagination, Nature

“"I'll sue you and the Sheriff's Department," he said, sounding more sulky than anything else. "Questioning me like a common criminal! And with an FBI agent standing over me in a threatening manner!"
Since Bishop was across the room leaning rather negligently against the filing cabinet, that was such an obvious exaggeration that Miranda could only admire it for a moment in silence.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Out Of The Shadows (2000)

Question, Silence

“I would like to testify that you did more than any former British Statesman to make a true friendship between the peoples of our two countries possible, and, if the task has not been completed, that it has not been for want of goodwill on your part. I hope that you may still be able to work for, and that we may both be spared to see, the realisation of our dreams,—to see our two peoples living side by side with a deep neighbourly sense of their value one to another, and with a friendship which will make possible whole-hearted co-operation between them in all matters of common interest.”

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

Eamon de Valera to Chamberlain (15 May 1940), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 311.
About

Friendship, People, Dreams, Hope

“To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on
The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart
That is the common, the bravest fundament, This is a facile exercise”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

Men, Feeling, Exercises, Singing

“National loyalty is founded in the love of place, of the customs and traditions that have been inscribed in the landscape and of the desire to protect these good things through a common law and a common loyalty.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Love, Law, Loyalty

“If the Bible is interpreted literally, then it is clear that its authors believed that the world was a flat disc, which was originally said to be covered by a giant crystal dome. It was a common belief at the time in all the neighboring regions. But it was still wrong. The Biblical authors obviously knew nothing about the real state of this world nor the worlds beyond this one either. But we know what lies outside our atmosphere. And that proves that there is no water above where the firmament isn't, and no windows to let it drain in -if there was either water or firmament there.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

World, Water, Time

“In every human soul there is a socialist and an individualist, an authoritarian and a fanatic for liberty, as in each there is a Catholic and a Protestant. The same is true of the mass movements in which men marshal themselves for common action.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 2
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Men, Soul

“I was talking earlier — about anarchy and fascism being the two poles of politics. On one hand you’ve got fascism, with the bound bundle of twigs, the idea that in unity and uniformity there is strength; on the other you have anarchy, which is completely determined by the individual, and where the individual determines his or her own life. Now if you move that into the spiritual domain, then in religion, I find very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. The word “religion” comes from the root word ligare, which is the same root word as ligature, and ligament, and basically means “bound together in one belief.” It’s basically the same as the idea behind fascism; there’s not even necessarily a spiritual component it. Everything from the Republican Party to the Girl Guides could be seen as a religion, in that they are bound together in one belief. So to me, like I said, religion becomes very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. And by the same token, magic becomes the spiritual equivalent of anarchy, in that it is purely about self-determination, with the magician simply a human being writ large, and in more dramatic terms, standing at the center of his or her own universe. Which I think is a kind of a spiritual statement of the basic anarchist position. I find an awful lot in common between anarchist politics and the pursuit of magic, that there’s a great sympathy there.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)

Life, Religion, Girl, Idea

“Many T. V. channels show astrology. Astrology is not to be confused with astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and whether a person will die at the age of 50 years or 80 years, or whether he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On astrology, as quoted in "Justice Markandey Katju on the role of media in India" http://www.thehindu.com/news/justice-markandey-katju-on-the-role-of-media-in-india/article2600319.ece, The Hindu (5 November 2011)

Age, Star, Sense, Science

“The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 17.

Education, Nature

“One way to clarify the origin and character, if not the justification, of the ideal inspiring our programmatic institutional ideas is to say that our program arises from the generalization of aims broadly shared by the great secular doctrines of emancipation of the recent past—both liberal and socialist—and by the social theories that supported them. At the heart of each of these doctrines lay the belief that the weakening of social divisions and hierarchies would reveal deeper commonalities and liberate productive and creative powers. The theoretical and practical consequences of this belief were drastically constricted by dogmatic assumptions about the possible forms of social change and their possible institutional expressions. We have attacked the second set of constraints and therefore, by implication, the first. The result is a more generalized or radicalized version of the social ideal. Our attack on these constraints has led us to rethink the content of the progressive cause.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: The Critical Legal Studies Movementː Another Time, A Greater Task (2015), p. 104-5

Way, Idea, Support, Change

“Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 29
The English Constitution (1867)

People, World, Nature, Change

“The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose. He does not play cricket because it is a good game, but because it creates good citizens. He does not love motor-races for their own sake, but for the advantages they bring to the engineering firms of his country. And it is common knowledge that the devoted persons who conduct and regularly attend horse-races do not do so because they like it, but for the benefit of the breed of the English horse.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"Is Fox-Hunting Fun?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Love, Game, Knowledge, Horse

“We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (23 October 2000) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/2000/oct/23/election-of-speaker, cited in Adam Tomkins, "What is Parliament for?" in Bamforth N. and Leyland P. (eds.), Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, Oxford, Hart, 2003, p. 53. 2000s

War, Business, Time

“I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 2 (p. 15, quoting Bertrand Russell)

Life, Fear, Question, Appearance

“For what do we now see in the country? We see a man who, as Senator of the United States, voted to tamper with the public mails for the benefit of slavery, sitting in the President's chair. Two days after he is seated we see a judge rising in the place of John Jay — who said, 'Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God' — to declare that a seventh of the population not only have no original rights as men, but no legal rights as citizens. We see every great office of State held by ministers of slavery; our foreign ambassadors not the representatives of our distinctive principle, but the eager advocates of the bitter anomaly in our system, so that the world sneers as it listens and laughs at liberty. We see the majority of every important committee of each house of Congress carefully devoted to slavery. We see throughout the vast ramification of the Federal system every little postmaster in every little town professing loyalty to slavery or sadly holding his tongue as the price of his salary, which is taxed to propagate the faith. We see every small Custom-House officer expected to carry primary meetings in his pocket and to insult at Fourth-of-July dinners men who quote the Declaration of Independence. We see the slave-trade in fact, though not yet in law, reopened — the slave-law of Virginia contesting the freedom of the soil of New York We see slave-holders in South Carolina and Louisiana enacting laws to imprison and sell the free citizens of other States. Yes, and on the way to these results, at once symptoms and causes, we have seen the public mails robbed — the right of petition denied — the appeal to the public conscience made by the abolitionists in 1833 and onward derided and denounced, and their very name become a byword and a hissing. We have seen free speech in public and in private suppressed, and a Senator of the United States struck down in his place for defending liberty. We have heard Mr. Edward Everett, succeeding brave John Hancock and grand old Samuel Adams as governor of the freest State in history, say in his inaugural address in 1836 that all discussion of the subject which tends to excite insurrection among the slaves, as if all discussion of it would not be so construed, 'has been held by highly respectable legal authorities an offence against the peace of the commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law'. We have heard Daniel Webster, who had once declared that the future of the slave was 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death', now declaring it to be 'an affair of high morals' to drive back into that doom any innocent victim appealing to God and man, and flying for life and liberty. We have heard clergymen in their pulpits preaching implicit obedience to the powers that be, whether they are of God or the Devil — insisting that God's tribute should be paid to Caesar, and, by sneering at the scruples of the private conscience, denouncing every mother of Judea who saved her child from the sword of Herod's soldiers.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life, Death, Men, God

“We developed a shorthand language of our own which we fell into for the rest of our lives whenever we met, no holds barred — all a matter of past reference, a common language, but basically affection, along with humor, and appreciation of each other’s minds, and of Krazy Kat. Faced with England, and the New World, and Freud and all, we always managed to relax, and go back to the kidding, and bad punning, and drinking, to the end. It really was marvelous.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

On his friendship with T. S. Eliot
The Paris Review interview (1963)

World, Drink, Past

“Individually, workingmen are weak, and, when separated, each one follows a different course, without accomplishing anything for himself or his fellow man; but when combined in one common bond of brotherhood, they become as the cable, each strand of which, though weak and insignificant enough in itself, is assisted and strengthened by being joined with others, and the work that one could not perform alone is easily accomplished by a combination of strands.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Organization of Labor," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Organization%20of%20Labor;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0122;idno=nora0135-2;node=nora0135-2%3A2 North American Review, vol. 135, no. 2, whole no. 309 (Aug. 1882), pp. 119.

“Resolution of conflict, easing of stress must come from the penetration into many groups of wide and common interests which, by a process of dilution, will weaken other groups often artificially maintained.
It is of considerable importance, then, to look for large groups of individuals bound together not by temporal ties of tradition or political artificiality, but by tested ties of common interest so world-wide, indeed so universal, as to be recognized by any individual.”

John H. Manley (1907–1990) American physicist, group leader during the Manhattan Project

in Science in Crisis, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar 1959, Vol. 15, No. 3 (p. 114), ISSN 0096-3402, published by Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc.

World, Universe

“We will have nothing to do with Imperialist or capitalist wars. If the time comes, as we hope it will, when the workers of this country own England as they do not own England to-day; if their policy is a policy of international socialism, then it may be that we may have to defend the system and the country against the marauders of some capitalist Power…the majority of the workers would be prepared to defend the system, but so long as they were being asked to defend something with which they profoundly disagreed, something which they believed to lie at the root of the dangers of the world to-day, then it was their duty to say that they would have nothing to do with the armed forces or with war. It was no exaggeration to say that to-day we were far more in danger of a holocaust than we were in 1913…in 1931 Lombard Street determined that it was time to finish the life of the Labour Government. It was finished not by the traditional method of a hostile vote in the Commons, but by means which [I] dared to mention in Nottingham—and caused a considerable uproar in the Press—the Buckingham Palace influence.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech to the Socialist League in Nottingham (6 July 1935), quoted in The Times (8 July 1935), p. 21.

Life, Hostility, War, Lie

“He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it.
Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 290)

Change, Time, Speed

“When some French were assembling an encyclopedia of paranormal experiences, they decided to leave déjà vu out, because it was so common it could not be considered paranormal.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 284

“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things. First, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether', gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the south was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.”

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

About Abraham Lincoln https://web.archive.org/web/20150302203311/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4071#_ftnref57. 1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

God, Hate, War, People

“Two small and rather unappealing animals possess patterns of behaviour that have great relevance for the student of intelligent systems. These are the wood louse and the maggot of the common housefly, and it is the difference in their behaviour which is so illuminating. It has to do with the way in which they orient themselves to their environment. Wood lice like moist places and succeed in aggregating there by the simple device of slowing down their otherwise random movements as the humidity increases. The maggot, which, during a certain stage of its development needs to come out of the dark, finds light by a slightly more sophisticated system. It has a single, non-directional light-sensing organ at the forward end of its body and as it moves along it swings this end left and right, allowing the amount of light gathered during each swing to determine the extent of its forward motion. In this way it keeps altering its course until the amounts of light sensed are equal for both sides, by which time it must be heading straight for the light.”

Edward Ihnatowicz (1926–1988) Cybernetic sculptor

Edward Ihnatowicz. " MAGGOTY INTELLIGENCE http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/articles/maggoty_intelligence.pdf," Unpublished. Date unknown: pre 1988. at senster.com, 2015

Way, Intelligence, Sense, Light

“If in two ellipses having a common major axis we take two such arcs that their chords are equal, and that also the sums of the radii vectores, drawn respectively from the foci to the extremities of these arcs, are equal to each other, then the sectors formed in each ellipse by the arc and the two radii vectores are to each other as the square roots of the parameters of the ellipses.”

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) German mathematician, physicist and astronomer

Sect. 4, Lemma 26, Insigniores orbitae cometarum proprietates (1761) [Notable properties of comets' orbits] translated by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=kqQPAAAAYAAJ (1906) p. 259, from the German of Michel Chasles, Geschichte der Geometrie, haupsächlich mit Bezug auf die neuern Methoden https://books.google.com/books?id=NgYHAAAAcAAJ (1839) p. 183.

“The problem you have put me will remain a problem till the globe of the world and the globe of the sun meet in their common center and the one consumes the other. This answer I have proposed, however, humanity will know and forget, know and forget, know and forget again. And that knowing and forgetting will approximate the peaks and depths of civilization as closely as the quotient of your tosses approximates that number which, rationally, we know is not there.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 12, “Of Models, Monsters, Night, and the Numinous” (p. 358)

World, Problem, Sun, Forgetting

“[Aphrodite] set out, and after searching up and down Olympus for her boy, found him far away in the fruit-laden orchard of Zeus. With him was Ganymede, whose beauty had so captivated Zeus that he took him up to heaven to live with the immortals. The two lads, who had much in common, were playing with golden knuckle-bones. Eros, the greedy boy, was standing there with a whole handful of them clutched to his breast and a happy flush mantling his cheeks. Near by sat Ganymede, hunched up, silent and disconsolate, with only two left. He threw these for what they were worth in quick succession and was furious when Eros laughed. Of course he lost them both immediately – they joined the rest. So he went off in despair with empty hands and did not notice the goddess's approach. Aphrodite came up to her boy, took his chin in her hand, and said: 'Why this triumphant smile, you rascal?”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

I do believe you won the game unfairly by cheating a beginner…
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea

Happiness, Smile, Beauty, Search

“Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Rainy Day

"The Rainy Day", Bentley's Miscellany ( December 1841 http://books.google.com/books?id=pW8AAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Thy+fate+is+the+common+fate+of+all+Into+each+life+some+rain+must+fall+some+days+must+be+dark+and+dreary%22&pg=PA626#v=onepage).

Life, Fate

“It was a common saying among the Puritans, "Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare."”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Isaiah 30.
Commentaries

“On examination, I have found [Hinduism] to be the most tolerant of all religions known to me. Its freedom from dogma makes a forcible appeal to me in as much as it gives the votary the largest scope for self-expression. Not being an exclusive religion, it enables the followers of the faith not merely to respect all the other religions, but it also enables them to admire and assimilate whatever may be good in the other faiths. Non-violence is common to all religions, but it has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism. (I do not regard Jainism or Buddhism as separate from Hinduism.) Hinduism believes in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

October 1927. The Collected Works, Volume 35, New Delhi, 1968, pp. 166-67. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
1920s

Life, Faith, Religion, Freedom

“When I was a small boy, following the affairs of the House of Commons as closely as I could, I asked my father what a Royal Commission was. He said, "It is a broody hen sitting on a china egg."”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/dec/03/schedule-7-commencement-transitional in the House of Commons (3 December 1964) 1960s

Boy, Housing

“Many fields use patterns in various ways: In music and literature, a pattern is the coherent structure or design of a song or book. In art, a pattern is the composition or plan of a work of graphic or plastic art. In architecture, a pattern is an architectural design or style. In psychology, a pattern is a thinking mechanism that is basic to the brain's operation, helping one to perceive things quickly. In archeology, a pattern is a group of phases having several distinguishing and fundamental features in common. In linguistics, a pattern is the manner in which smaller units of language are grouped into larger units…”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

Books, Art, Music, Way

“I don't know why I'm here. Everything before our eyes is ridiculous. The light is wrong, the shadows are wrong. When I enter in the studio I feel like I am entering a tomb [in the studio of their common art-teacher Thoman Couture ]. I know we can't make a model undress in the street. But there are fields, and at least in the summer we could do studies of the nude in the country, since the nude appears to be the first and the last word in art.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Manet's early quote in 1850, spoken to his friend Antonin Proust; as quoted in Manet, Nathalia Brodskaya, Parkstone International, 2011, ISBN 978-1-78042-029-5, p. 12
1850 - 1875

Art, Feeling, Study, Light

“Aristotle was guided by that which appears to be the nature of things. The Ashariyah refused to ascribe to God ignorance about anything… they preferred to admit the above-mentioned absurdities. The Mu'tazilites refused to assume that God does what is wrong and unjust; on the other hand, they would not contradict common sense and say that it was not wrong to inflict pain on the guiltless, or that the mission of the Prophets and the giving of the Law had no intelligible reason. They likewise preferred to admit the above-named absurdities. But they even contradicted themselves, because they believe on the one hand that God knows everything, and on the other that man has free will. By a little consideration we discover the contradiction.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

God, Pain, Law, Intelligence

“A man who possesses common sense and the use of reason must not expect to learn from treatises or lectures on textual criticism anything that he could not, with leisure and industry, find out for himself. What the lectures and treatises can do for him is to save him time and trouble by presenting to him immediately considerations which would in any case occur to him sooner or later.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

Sense, Learning, Time

“To adequately understand evolution, you not only have to understand how to be scientific, (which is the real trick for most people) but you also have to know something about cellular biology, genetics, and anatomy, geology, particularly paleontology, as well as environmental systems, tectonics, atomic chemistry, and especially taxonomy, which most people don’t know squat about at all. Most people who accept evolution also tend to know a whole lot about cosmology, geography, history, sociology, politics, and of course, religion. But to believe in creationism, you don’t have to know anything about anything, and its better if you don’t! Because creationism relies on ignorance. It is not honest research! It is a scam, a con job exploiting the common folk, and preying on their deepest beliefs and fears. Creationist apologetics depends on misrepresented data and misquoted authorities, out-of-date and out-of-context, and uses distorted definitions if it uses definitions at all.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, Youtube (November 11, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

People, Fear, Religion, History

“In every saint there lurks an arrant knave, the marrow of all holyness being absolute hellishness. That is why our Saviours are of no awail, their remedies being too strong for common man, who is the puppet of his fleshly appetite and not a sinner.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Source: Ma confession (1975), p. 91

Strong

“The tenement – the name derives from a fifteenth-century legal term for a multiple dwelling – always seemed to me a “ship afloat in concrete.” After all didn’t the building carry passengers on a voyage through life? No. 55 sat at the corner of Dropsie avenue near the elevated train, or the elevated as we called it in those days. It was a treasure house of stories that illustrated tenement life as I remembered it, stories that needed to be told before they faded from memory. Within its “railroad flats,” with rooms strung together train-like lived low-paid city employees or laborers and their turbulent families. Most were recent immigrants, intent n their own survival. They kept busy raising children and dreaming of the better lie they knew existed “uptown.” Hallways were filled with a rich stew of cooking aromas, sounds of arguments and the tinny wail from Victrolas. What community spirit there was stemmed from the common hostility of tenants to the landlord or his surrogate superintendent. Typically, the buildings tenants came and went with regularity, depending on the vagaries of their fortunes But many remained for a lifetime, imprisoned by poverty or old age. There was no real privacy or anonymity. Everybody knew about everybody. Human dramas, both good and bad, instantly gathered witness like ants swarming around a piece of dropped food. From window to window or on the stoop below, the tenants analyzed, evaluated and critiqued each happening, following an obligatory admission that it was really none of their business.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XV-XVI, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life, Hostility, Children, Lie

“If we're serious about keeping our country safe, we also can't afford to have a President who's in the pocket of the gun lobby. I'm not here to repeal the 2nd Amendment. I'm not here to take away your guns. I just don't want you to be shot by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place. We should be working with responsible gun owners to pass common-sense reforms and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and all others who would do us harm.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Sense, Country

“"Saving the biosphere" depends first and foremost on human beings reaching mutual understanding and unforced agreement as to common ends. And that intersubjective accord occurs only in the noosphere. Anything short of that noospheric accord will continue to destroy the biosphere.”

Ken Wilber book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995, 2000)

Understanding, Dependency

“What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.

World, Feeling, Understanding, Knowledge

“I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose. I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

"Veto of the Texas Seed Bill" (16 February 1887)

People, Feeling, Support, Thinking

“While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 3, The Physiology of Thought and Morals, Introduction, p. 111.

Way, Communication

“There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Preface
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

Hope

“Arithmetic and geometry, according to Plato, are the two wings of the mathematician. The object indeed of all mathematical questions, is to determine the ratios of numbers, or of magnitudes; and it may even be said, to continue the comparison of the ancient philosopher, that arithmetic is the mathematician's right wing; for it is an incontestable truth, that geometrical determinations would, for the most part, present nothing satisfactory to the mind, if the ratios thus determined could not be reduced to numerical ratios. This justifies the common practice, which we shall here follow, of beginning with arithmetic.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Source: Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, (1803), p. 2

Truth, Mathematics, Question, Parting

“But speaking of rules, you've been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what's common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law?
"Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma."”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Salon interview (3 February 2003) http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index_np.html 2000s

Life, Law, Change, Time

“(The staff common room) was real boredom, not just modish ennui. Boredom, the numbing annual predictability of life, hung over the staff like a cloud. From it flowed cant, hypocrisy, and the impotent rage of the old who know they have failed and the young who suspect they will fail. The senior masters stood like Gallows sermons; with some of them one had a sort of vertigo, a glimpse of the bottomless pit of human futility…a sere notifier of what is.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Life, Rage

“Mr. Parnell said the other night, that Ireland is a "nation". Well, if a nation only means a certain number of individuals collected between certain latitudes and longitudes, I admit in that sense Ireland is a nation. But if there is anything further necessary— if to make a nation you require a past united history, traditions in which you can all join, achievements of which you all are proud, interests which you share in common, and sympathies which belong to all— then emphatically Ireland is not a nation; Ireland is two nations.”

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

Source: Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6

History, Sense, Past, Night

“Obama's now conducting the world's greatest international terrorist campaign – the drones and special forces campaign. It's also a terror-generating campaign. The common understanding at the highest level [is] that these actions generate potential terrorists. I'll quote General Stanley McChrystal, Petraeus' predecessor. He says that "for every innocent person you kill", and there are plenty of them, "you create ten new enemies."”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2010s, 2013, Speech at DW Global Media Forum

World, Quotes, Understanding, Personality

“What then is the content of the concept of God common to all monotheistic religions? What remains, it seems, is only the emotional content: the highest enthusiasm and respect, humility and submissiveness”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Source: Problems and theories of philosophy, 1949, p. 152, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.

God, Religion

“Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities) connected with guilds, these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence.”

Peter Kropotkin book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)

Men, Art, Communication, Support

“The servicemen of the 1939 - 45 war could not be disillusioned because they held not illusions to start with, the most common mood found everywhere was one of dour resolution, skeptical, resigned.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Introductory Essay 'Setting the Scene'
Not Without Glory, 1976

War, Mood

“Scotland and Ireland were virtually disfranchised; Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two largest cities of Scotland, had each a constituency of only thirty-three members. A majority of the members of the House of Commons were elected by six thousand voters. This state of affairs afforded ready opportunities for the moneyed aristocracy to buy seats in Parliament, by the purchase of a few voters in rotten boroughs; and also enabled the ministry to secure a servile majority in the Commons. The corruption resulting from these conditions, as exhibited in the latter half of the eighteenth century, can hardly be realized by the present generation. They afford, however, an illustration of the universal truth, that a government which does not draw its inspiration of liberty, justice, and morality from the people will soon become both tyrannical and corrupt.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Money, People, Truth, Justice

“The gospel proceeds on the basis of universal depravity; the gospel assimilates all varieties of human nature into one common experience of guilt and need and helplessness; and this is just what you do not like about it.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 189.

Nature, Universe

“The notion that there might be any need for, or possibility of, profound changes in the institutions that shape American life work, family, technology, the primacy of the car and the single-family house — is foreign to the mainstream media that define our common sense. And so conflicts that cannot be addressed politically have expressed themselves by other means. From public psychodramas like the O. J. Simpson trial, the Lewinsky scandal and Columbine to disaster movies, talk shows and "reality TV," popular culture carries the burden of our emotions about race, feminism, sexual morality, youth culture, wealth, competition, exclusion, a physical and social environment that feels out of control.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Dreaming of War," The Nation (15 October 2001)

Life, Youth, Family, Cars

“The character, or tone, of a society depends on what the society regards as the most respectable or most worthy of admiration. But by regarding certain habits or attitudes as most respectable, a society admits the superiority, the superior dignity, of those human beings who most perfectly embody the habits or attitudes in question. That is to say, every society regards a specific human type (or a specific mixture of human types) as authoritative. When the authoritative type is the common man, everything has to justify itself before the tribunal of the common man; everything which cannot be justified before that tribunal becomes, at best, merely tolerated, if not despised or suspect. And even those who do not recognize that tribunal are, willy-nilly, molded by its verdicts.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 137

Question, Dependency

“Religion is essentially universal. If God is our common Father, His truth is our common property. But the religious world may be likened to a vast market, where every religious sect sells only a portion of truth. Religion is many-sided; but each individual, each nation, oftentimes adopts and represents only one side of religion. In different times and in different countries, therefore, we see not the entire religious life of humanity, but only partial religious life.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London on 20th July 1870. See Universal Religion for full speech.

Life, God, Truth, World

“If there is one law for the Government and another for it's subjects, one for noble and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law does not guarantee liberty for all.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter II, The Elements of Liberalism, p. 17.

Law

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books, Change, Time, Sun

“Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other the theory is common to all scholars.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

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

Men, Art, Training

“Commencement speakers have a good deal in common with grandfather clocks: Standing usually some six feet tall, typically ponderous in construction, more traditional than functional, their distinction is largely their noisy communication of essentially commonplace information.”

W. Willard Wirtz (1912–2010) American Secretary of Labor

Commencement address at University of Iowa. Commencement address, University of Iowa http://www.bartleby.com/63/48/2748.html, Time (June 19, 1965)

Communication, Universe

“It would look very strange, when the Commons of England are so fond of their right of sending representatives to Parliament, that it should be in the power of a sheriff, or other officer, to deprive them of that right, and yet that they should have no remedy; it is a thing to be admired at by all mankind.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

2 Raym. Rep. 954.
Ashby v. White (1703)

“The religious sense planted within the human heart leads us to meet the needs of others and to search for concrete ways to contribute to the common good. Religion has a special role in this regard, for it teaches people that authentic service requires sacrifice and self-discipline, which in turn must be cultivated through self-denial, temperance and a moderate use of the world's goods.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Inter-religious Meeting (17 July 2008)

People, World, Religion, Way

““But a second afterthought would follow, and I should ask: What must be the nature of this life dissevered from Nature,—bodiless, void of all sense-perception? What would be left in it except the pure elements of reason, the pure elements of perception, the pure formularies of science, and pure imagination? But what are these, altogether, but the common equipment, not of my mind or of some other individual mind, but of the universal human nature? And what is that universal nature but just the nature of the eternal Cosmic Consciousness? Yes, my personality has vanished; and death, in dissolving the tie to Nature under the alluring prospect of an existence for me wholly self-referred and self-sustaining, has resolved me back into the infinite Vague of the Cosmic Mind, as this might, perchance, be fancied to be in itself, apart from Nature and creation,””

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.118-9

Life, Death, Imagination, Nature