Quotes about completion
page 19

Margaret Fuller photo

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Roald Amundsen photo
Peter Thiel photo

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

“Chairman White, and the other Trustees that are present today, faculty and staff and alumni, distinguished guests, cadets, and friends of Hargrave: It's been a great run. It really has. I look out over the congregation gathered here today, and I see faculty, staff, cadets, parents, members of the Parent Council that we work closely with, other colleagues in the same business- and it makes me reflect on on fifteen years here, what all we've accomplished. I can also state that we wouldn't have accomplished much without the leadership of the Board of Trustees. And I'd like to thank all of the Board that's here- the Chairman, past Chairmen, and other members of the Board- that've A, put their trust in my leadership, put up with me at times, and set the guidance and the tone to keep the school on a straight path. Not an easy task. And the Board has done a magnificent job. I would also be remiss if I didn't recognize- I wish I could recognize every member of our faculty and staff, which is the heart and soul of an independent school. Our faculty is the best- best in the nation- very dedication people, that work constant hours with the cadets here, proven by our great success we've had over the past, what… hundred and- we graduated 102nd class last May. It's been really an honor for me to be part of Hargrave's history. But we're not done. We've completed 102 years, and now we've hired Brigadier General Broome, who's the right person to take the helm at Hargrave. And I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that General Broome is ready, willing, and dedicated to take Hargrave to the next level. It's a great school- I would tell you, in my mind, it's the best school in the country, because of the cadets and the folks we have here. I've been spending a lot of time with General Broome and his wife, and they are really gonna be a great fit for Hargrave, and I think Hargrave's gonna have a super next one hundred years. I wish we could all be here a hundred years from now to open our time capsule, but unfortunately, I don't think anybody in this room is gonna see what's in the time capsule… Anyhow, thank you for coming, it's been an honor to be part of this, and I will sincerely miss it. I'm not the type to watch things from the sidelines, but, in this case, I will. Thank you very much.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Baker's speech at the change-of-command ceremony in Hargrave's chapel on June 24, 2011.

John McCain photo

“I am reminded of the words of Chairman Mao: It's always darkest before it goes completely black.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

As quoted in "McCain Wraps It Up" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mccain-wraps-it-up/ (5 March 2008), by Andante Higgins, CBS News
2000s

William L. Shirer photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Enoch Powell photo

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

“One should not only be truthful, but as complete as possible. It does not suffice to be truthful while leaving unpleasant or unpopular facts unsaid.”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

[Stacy McGaugh, http://astroweb.case.edu/ssm/mond/inthon.html, "Intellectual Honesty, The Mond Pages"] at astroweb.case.edu. Accessed 2014.

Arthur Koestler photo
Grigori Sokolnikov photo
David Eugene Smith photo

“Unforeseen technological inventions can completely upset the most careful predictions.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Abul A'la Maududi photo
Richard Rumelt photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it … The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

In a speech in Milan, while heading a coallition which includes parties with fascist roots, as quoted in "Berlusconi praises Mussolini on Holocaust Memorial Day" at BBC News (27 January 2013) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21222341
2013

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Carl von Clausewitz photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Sun Ra photo

“I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

Interview with Jennifer Rycenga (2 November 1988) http://www.plonsey.com/beanbenders/SUNRA-interview.html

Godfrey Bloom photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“Agriculture is a trade with the purpose… to produce profit or to gain money. The higher this benefit in the long run, the more complete this purpose is fulfilled.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Thaer (1810) cited in: Martin Frielinghaus and Claus Dalchow. " Thaer 200 years at Möglin (Germany) http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/ed-06-08/010039833.pdf." in documentation.ird.fr. (2007): 259-267.
Opening sentence of Thaer's four-volume Grundsatze der rationellen Landwirthschaft (Principles of Efficient Agriculture, 1809-1812).

Marie-Louise von Franz photo
John Von Neumann photo

“If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

As quoted in Proportions, Prices, and Planning (1970) by András Bródy

Dave Eggers photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Albert Einstein photo
Bernhard Riemann photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Rene Balcer photo

“Beauty, brains, and a complete psycho. My dream girl.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Det. Mike Logan in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Ken Livingstone photo

“When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Criticising Londoners who drive 4x4s in an interview with GMTV (broadcast 23 May 2004), as quoted in "Drivers of 4X4s in London are idiots, says Livingstone" by Ross Lydall in Evening Standard (21 May 2004)

Kodo Sawaki photo

“Religion means living your own life, completely fresh and new, without being taken in by anyone.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Source: Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)

Neal Stephenson photo

“.. no true artist ends with the style that he expected to have when he began,... it is only by giving oneself up completely to the painting medium that one finds oneself and one's own style.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
1950s

Nouri al-Maliki photo
P. Chidambaram photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Frank Wilczek photo
U.G. Krishnamurti photo
Anirvan photo

“My aim? Simply to inspire people and give them the most complete freedom to live their own life. No glamour, no fame, no institution - nothing. To live simply and die luminously.”

Anirvan (1896–1978) Indian Hindu philosopher

Inner yoga (antaryoga): Anirvan. (1988). New Delhi: Voice of India. From the Introduction by Ram Swarup.

Salvador Dalí photo
Arthur Koestler photo
Henry Moore photo

“The Negroes.... their unique claim for admiration is their power to produce form completely in the round... Negro sculpture is completely in the round, fully-conceived air-surrounded form.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Henri Moore in 'Unpublished notes', c. 1925-1926, HMF archive; as cited in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, p. 96
1925 - 1940

David Bohm photo
Kancha Ilaiah photo
Joseph Massad photo
El Lissitsky photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Murasaki Shikibu photo
Peter Ackroyd photo
Brandy Norwood photo

“I think cooking completes you as a woman. … I woke up one morning and said, I can't do this [eating meat] to myself anymore. I didn't feel good. I was constipated all the time. … I used to live to eat. Now I eat to live.”

Brandy Norwood (1979) American singer and actress

About her vegan lifestyle. “ Brandy: Baby Baby Baby Baby Talks About Growing Up, Becoming A Vegan And Keeping Her Marriage A Big Secret https://books.google.se/books?id=1SUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA0,” in Vibe (April 2002), p. 104.

Ben Croshaw photo
George Steiner photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), pp. 33-34

Mark Strand photo

“I don't know where it comes from. I think some of it comes from the unconscious. Sometimes it is more complete than other times.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Paris Review Interview (1998)

Rupert Murdoch photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Chuck Klosterman photo
Arthur Scargill photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun. Well, I actually don't feel a day older than 89!”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

James Jeans photo
Theodore Zeldin photo

“No history of the world can be complete which does not mention Mary Helen Keller… whose overcoming of her blindness and deafness were arguably victories more important than those of Alexander the Great, because they have implications still for every living person.”

Theodore Zeldin (1933) English academic

Theodore Zeldin in An Intimate History of Humanity (1994) This quote seems to obviously refer to Helen Adams Keller, but why she is referred to as "Mary Helen Keller" is not clear.
An Intimate History of Humanity (1994)

Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
John Ruskin photo
William Lane Craig photo

“There is one important aspect of my answer that I would change, however. I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God’s command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land. It was the land that was (and remains today!) paramount in the minds of these Ancient Near Eastern peoples. The Canaanite tribal kingdoms which occupied the land were to be destroyed as nation states, not as individuals. The judgment of God upon these tribal groups, which had become so incredibly debauched by that time, is that they were being divested of their land. Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
It is therefore completely misleading to characterize God’s command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. There may have been no non-combatants killed at all. That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined. Such scenes may have never taken place, since it was the soldiers who remained to fight. It is also why there were plenty of Canaanite people around after the conquest of the land, as the biblical record attests.”

[Subject: The “Slaughter” of the Canaanites Re-visited, Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8973, 2011-10-20], quoted in [Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig, Richard, Dawkins, Guardian, 2011-10-20, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig, 2011-10-20]

Calvin Coolidge photo

“The social aspect in city building is now completely overlooked.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 5, The road to Entopia, p. 60

George Holmes Howison photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Alex Jones photo

“Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”

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

This video, posted by RWW Blogs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=D7k7iowgPF4&ab_channel=RWWBlog and posted on their site: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-hillary-clinton-has-personally-murdered-and-chopped-up-and-raped-children/ by Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch (8 December 2016)
2016

William Faulkner photo
Carole King photo

“Tonight you're mine completely,
You give your love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow?”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1960), Co-written with Gerry Goffin, first recorded by The Shirelles, later by Carole King
Song lyrics, Singles

Gottfried Schatz photo

“I am tired of hearing that the DNA in my cells nucleus is the complete blueprint of what is, or could be, me. There is more to me than that. The sequence of my nuclear DNA is not "My Genome."”

Gottfried Schatz (1936–2015) biochemist

Jeff's view on science and scientists (Amsterdam, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006, ISBN 0-444-52133-X, pbk.), Ch. 4: "My other genomes" (p. 33).

Gustave de Molinari photo
Susannah Constantine photo
Francis Escudero photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Taking the points in order, it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy's bad guy. He's not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others. While he survives not only are the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples compelled to live in misery and fear (the sheerly moral case for regime-change is unimpeachable on its own), but their neighbors are compelled to live in fear as well.

However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi'a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2002-11-07
Machiavelli in Mesopotamia
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2002/11/machiavelli_in_mesopotamia.html: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2002

Fernando Alonso photo
Thomas Little Heath photo