Quotes about completion
page 4

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“As geological time goes, it is but a moment since the human race began and only the twinkling of an eye since the arts of civilization were first invented. In spite of some alarmists, it is hardly likely that our species will completely exterminate itself. And so long as man continues to exist, we may be pretty sure that, whatever he may suffer for a time, and whatever brightness may be eclipsed, he will emerge sooner or later, perhaps strengthened and reinvigorated by a period of mental sleep. The universe is vast and men are but tiny specks on an insignificant planet. But the more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"If We are to Survive this Dark Time", The New York Times Magazine (3 September 1950)
1950s

Men, Art, Sleep, Suffering

“When I began the following Work, my only object was to extend and explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry. While engaged in this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the justice of the following maxims of the Abbé de Condillac, in his System of Logic, and some other of his works. "We think only through the medium of words.—Languages are true analytical methods.—Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method.—The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Source: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p.xiii

Justice, Art, Thinking, Science

“Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early what it is impossible to conceal from them permanently. Either their curiosity must never be aroused, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his individual circumstances, the society in which he moves, the position in which he may find himself, etc. Nothing must be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance of the difference between the sexes till he is sixteen, take care you teach him before he is ten.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book IV

Children, Age, Sex, Learning

“Let us therefore join hands, Britons, Burmans and all nations alike, to build up an abiding fruitful peace over the foundations of the hard-won victory that all of us desiring progressive direction in our own affairs and in the world at large, have at long last snatched firmly and completely from the grabbing hands of Fascist barbarians, a peace, as I have said, not of the graveyard, but creative of freedom, progress and prosperity in the world.”

Aung San (1915–1947) Burmese revolutionary leader

Address delivered at the meeting of East and West Association held on August 29, 1945, at the City Hall of Rangoon

World, Peace, Freedom, Victory

“So long as we confine our attention to income from property, and leave out of account any increment or decrement in the value of prospects due to changes in people's own earning power (accumulation or decumulation of “Human Capital”), Income No. 1 ex post is not a subjective affair, like other kinds of income; it is almost completely objective.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

178-9
Value and capital, (1939)

People, Change

“The circumference of earth at equator is 40,000 km and by dividing it with 24 hours (earth completes its rotation in a day), it comes out to 1,667 km. This reverse phenomenon happened at 60 degrees latitude because their jet plane managed a speed of 833.5 km which is half of circumference of the earth.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Speed

“I don’t see anyone better than me. No player does things that I cannot do myself, but I see things others can’t do. There’s no more complete player than me. I’m the best player in history — in the good and the bad moments.”

Cristiano Ronaldo (1985) Portuguese association football player

[Dev, Sarthak, Football Paradise, The Ballon d’Or: It’s time football stopped trying to be Hollywood, 15 December 2017, 4 February 2018, https://www.footballparadise.com/ballon-dor/]
In the wake of winning his fifth Ballon d’Or in December 2017.

History

“Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

106
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Solitude, Drawing, Despair

“The advantages of models are, on one hand, that they force us to present a "complete" theory by which I mean a theory taking into account all relevant phenomena and relations and, on the other hand, the confrontation with observation, that is, reality.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

"The Use of Models: Experience," 1969

Reality

“Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.”

Raymond Williams book The Long Revolution

Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution

Life, Personality

“That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Memory".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Way, Boy, Memory

“The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion.... His wilfulness may only be ego.... The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

as quoted in Gerhard Richter, Doubt and belief in painting, Robert Storr, MOMA, New York, 2003, p. 88, note 17
Quotes of Sol Lewitt

Idea

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. (He appears) as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result. The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth. Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we "may have life, and abundantly."”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Mendel makes several allusions to biblical verses, including John 20:15, Matthew 25:26 and John 10:10.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus erschien den Jüngern nach der Auferstehung in verschiedener Gestalt. Der Maria Magdalena erschien er so, daß sie ihn für einen Gärtner halten mochte. Sehr sinnreich sind diese Erscheinungen Jesu und unser Verstand vermag sie schwer zu durchdringen. (Er erscheint) als Gärtner. Dieser pflanzt den Samen in den zubereiteten Boden. Das Erdreich muss physikalisch-chemisch Einwirkung ausüben, damit der Same aufgeht. Doch reicht das nicht hin, es muß noch Sonnenwärme und Licht hinzukommen nebst Regen, damit das Gedeihen zustandekommt. Das übernatürliche Leben in seinem Keim, der heiligmachenden Gnade wird in die von der Sünde gereinigte, also vorbereitete Seele des Menschen hineingesenkt und es muß der Mensch durch seine guten Werke dieses Leben zu erhalten suchen. Es muss noch die übernatürliche Nahrung dazukommen, der Leib des Herrn, der das Leben weiter erhält, entwickelt und zur Vollendung bringt. So muss Natur und Übernatur sich vereinigen, um das Zustandekommen der Heiligkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch muß sein Scherflein Arbeit hinzugeben, und Gott gibt das Gedeihen. Es ist wahr, den Samen, das Talent, die Gnade gibt der liebe Gott, und der Mensch hat bloß die Arbeit, den Samen aufzunehmen, das Geld zu Wechslern zu tragen. Damit wir »das Leben haben und im Überflusse haben.

Life, God, People, Food

“It’s been an enormous challenge and enormously gratifying. Andrew and I wanted to travel less and the opportunity of living and working in Sydney was irresistible, especially when it came to being able to give our children roots. I also felt drawn to the stimulating kind of environment that the theatre offers in a way that is completely different from film. To direct a company has its own challenges, and there’s nothing like the terror and thrill that comes from performing live in front of an audience. So it’s been a marvellous experience for both of us.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

On running the Sydney Theatre Company with husband Andrew Upton. Quoted in: Cate Blanchett: From 'The Hobbit' to latest thriller 'Carol', Static Multimedia http://staticmultimedia.com/movies/%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BC%EF%BF%BCcate-blanchett-from-the-hobbit-to-latest-thriller-carol,

Children, Way, Travel

“Your comments on the Cuban crisis are, to me, utterly amazing. You say that the way the solution was arrived at was that 'the Russians discontinued their suicidal policy; and President Kennedy by his resolution and farsightedness saved the world'. This seems to me a complete reversal of the truth. Russia and America had policies leading directly to nuclear war. Khrushchev, when he saw the danger, abandoned his policy. Kennedy did not. It was Khrushchev who allowed the human race to continue, not Kennedy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Lord Gladwyn, November 14, 1964.There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.
1960s

War, Truth, World, Way

“Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschen erziehers; sondern den Irrenden zu leiten, ja ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus; er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennenlernen.
Bk. VII, Ch. 9
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

Wisdom, Men, Education, Error

“I have seen very few people. Nessa came again. How painful these meetings are! Let me try to analyse. Perhaps it is that we both feel that we can exist independently of the other. The door shuts between us, and life flows on again and completely removes the trace. That is an absurd exaggeration.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

4 February 1922
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Pain, People, Feeling

“A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in…”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Philosophical Remarks (1930), Part I (1)
1930s-1951

“Totalitarianism no longer comes in the form of communism or fascism. It comes now from corporations. And these corporations fear those who think and write, those who speak out and form relationships freely. Individual freedom impedes their power and their profits. Our democracy, as Snowden I think has revealed, has become a fiction. The state, through elaborate forms of political theater, seeks to maintain this fiction to keep us passive. And if we wake up, the state will not shy away from draconian measures. The goal is complete subjugation, the iron rule of our corporations and our power elite.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: “ 25:13 Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

Fear, Democracy, Communication, Thinking

“When a job, whether it is generally regarded as important or not, falls to my lot to do…. it assumes importance immediately as far as I am concerned. I cannot rest until it is completed…whatever service I have succeeded in rendering to the nation is due, mainly, to this attitude and outlook of mine with regard to work”

Bidhan Chandra Roy (1882–1962) Former Chief Minister of West Bengal, India

In page=91
Remembering Our Leaders: Mahadeo Govind Ranade by Pravina Bhim Sain

“Some sixty years ago, Pope Pius XII, in a memorable address to anaesthesiologists and intensive care specialists, stated that there is no obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to every possible remedy and that, in some specific cases, it is permissible to refrain from their use… The specific element of this criterion is that it considers “the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources”. It thus makes possible a decision that is morally qualified as withdrawal of “overzealous treatment”.
Such a decision responsibly acknowledges the limitations of our mortality, once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile. “Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2278). This difference of perspective restores humanity to the accompaniment of the dying, while not attempting to justify the suppression of the living. It is clear that not adopting, or else suspending, disproportionate measures, means avoiding overzealous treatment; from an ethical standpoint, it is completely different from euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death.
The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality, and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity.
Let each of us give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But give it!”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association, From the Vatican, 7 November 2017 https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20171107_messaggio-monspaglia.html 2010s, 2017

Love, Life, Death, Way

“Jongkind.... his painting was too new and far too artistic to be appreciated in 1862 at his prices. Moreover, no one was as bad at making himself valued, as he was. He was a straight-forward and simple kind of man, who could hardly speak bad French and was very shy. But he was very outgoing that day. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained the whys and wherefores underlining his work and thereby, completed the training that I had already received from Boudin. He became from this moment my true master and it [is] to him, that I owe the definitive training of my eyes.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote from Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Johan Jongkind, famous pre-impressionist landscape-painter of Dutch origin, painting then in Honfleur for some years and advising Monet then.
1900 - 1920

Painting, Training

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely….”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

March 1965, p. 199
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

World, Strong, Time

“As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

On the Wardenclyffe Tower, in "The Future of the Wireless Art" in Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony (1908)

Music, Business, Distant, Appearance

“But politics demands, in the interests of each separate nation, guarantees for its independence and continued existence, special regulations to help its progress in culture, prosperity, and power, to build its society into a perfectly complete and harmoniously developed body politic, self-contained and independent.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Introduction, translated and reproduced in Hirst (1909), p. 291
The National System of Political Economy (1841)

Help

“Pleasure assails a man through each and every sense that he has; and while he must face and grapple with work, to pleasure he must give the widest berth possible and have none but unavoidable dealings with her. And herein the strongest man is indeed strongest, one might almost say, who can keep the farthest away from pleasures; for it is impossible to dwell with pleasure or even to dally with her for any length of time without being completely enslaved.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

A speech by Diogenes, p. 391
On Virtue

Pleasure, Sense, Time

“The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky.”

Anaximander (-610–-547 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

As quoted in "Science Attests the Accuracy of the Bible" in The Watchtower (1 October 1980)

Time, Parting

“Abraham took an early start as a hunter, which was never much improved afterwards. A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle-gun standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

p, 125
1860s, A Short Autobiography (1860)

Game

“If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. (1996).

Life, Search, Literature, Question

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

People, Fear, Home, Drink

“I am convinced that the species humanity embraces the double species man and woman; that the essence of the complete human being is characterized by this duality; and that the entire structure of the essence demonstrates the specific character. There is a difference, not only in body structure and in particular physiological functions, but also in the entire corporeal life.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Life

“Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Volume II, p. 213
System of positive polity (1852)

Communication, Wealth

“But take a brief glance at real life. In present-day economic life you will find, not only competition and monopoly, but also their synthesis, which is not a formula but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. That equation, however, far from alleviating the difficulties of the present situation, as bourgeois economists suppose, gives rise to a situation even more difficult and involved. Thus, by changing the basis upon which the present economic relations rest, by abolishing the present mode of production, you abolish not only competition, monopoly and their antagonism, but also their unity, their synthesis, the movement whereby a true balance is maintained between competition and monopoly.

Let me now give you an example of Mr Proudhon's dialectics. Freedom and slavery constitute an antagonism. There is no need for me to speak either of the good or of the bad aspects of freedom. As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World. After these reflections on slavery, what will the good Mr Proudhon do? He will seek the synthesis of liberty and slavery, the true golden mean, in other words the balance between slavery and liberty. Mr Proudhon understands perfectly well that men manufacture worsted, linens and silks; and whatever credit is due for understanding such a trifle! What Mr Proudhon does not understand is that, according to their faculties, men also produce the social relations in which they produce worsted and linens. Still less does Mr Proudhon understand that those who produce social relations in conformity with their material productivity also produce the ideas, categories, i. e. the ideal abstract expressions of those same social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. To Mr Proudhon, on the contrary, the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i. e. as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive. It is nothing but an entity of pure reason, which is only another way of saying that an abstraction, regarded as such, is abstract. An admirable tautology! Hence, to Mr Proudhon, economic relations, seen in the form of categories, are eternal formulas without origin or progress. To put it another way: Mr Proudhon does not directly assert that to him bourgeois life is an eternal truth; he says so indirectly, by deifying the categories which express bourgeois relations in the form of thought. He regards the products of bourgeois society as spontaneous entities, endowed with a life of their own, eternal, the moment these present themselves to him in the shape of categories, of thought. Thus he fails to rise above the bourgeois horizon. Because he operates with bourgeois thoughts and assumes them to be eternally true, he looks for the synthesis of those thoughts, their balance, and fails to see that their present manner of maintaining a balance is the only possible one.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, (28 December 1846), Rue d'Orleans, 42, Faubourg Namur, Marx Engels Collected Works Vol. 38, p. 95; International Publishers (1975). First Published: in full in the French original in M.M. Stasyulevich i yego sovremenniki v ikh perepiske, Vol. III, 1912

Life, Men, Truth, World

“The Now is indivisible. — Completeness, the now, is an absence of the conscious mind to strive to divide that which is indivisible. For once the completeness of things is taken apart it is no longer complete.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 15

“Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep her on a tight rein […] Women want total freedom or rather - to call things by their names - total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters …”

Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)

This is composed of excerpts (with some paraphrasing) from a speech of Cato as reported in Livy's History of Rome, book 34, sections 2-4 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy34.html. Misattributed

Women, Men, Thinking, Freedom

“It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".

“Each of us who came here with wisdom must learn from this school. Heaven does not come from building beautiful churches, mosques, and temples. Man must build his church, mosque, and temple within himself. The house of God must be built within. The place of worship must be seen within. The completeness of God must be built within the self. If man can understand his story and the story of God and then build a church within himself, that is victory.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

The Wisdom of Man (1980)

Wisdom, God, School, Beauty

“The concept-systems of antithesis are concepts that are indeed thoroughly determined by negative predicates but are not positively representable.
Just because a precise and complete representation of these concept-systems is impossible, they are inaccessible to direct investigation and elaboration by our reflection. They may, however, be regarded as lying at the limit of the representable, i. e., we can form a concept-system lying within the representable, which passes over into the given system by simple change of magnitude ratio. By abstracting from the ratios of the quantities, the concept-system remains unchanged in case of transition to the limit. At the limit itself, however, some of the correlative concepts of the system lose their susceptibility of being represented, and those, indeed, that mediate the relation between other concepts.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

General Relation of the Concept System of Thesis and Antithesis
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Lying, Change

“If other thoughts rise, one should, without attempting to complete them, enquire, 'To whom did they arise?', it will be known 'To me'. If one then enquires 'Who am I?', the mind (power of attention) will turn back to its source. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

“As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 54.

Decision, Water

“By laying down the relativity postulate from the outset, sufficient means have been created for deducing henceforth the complete series of Laws of Mechanics from the principle of conservation of energy (and statements concerning the form of the energy) alone.”

Hermann Minkowski The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies

The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies (1907)

Law

“That higher and "complete" man is begotten by the "unknown" father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus—"vultu mutabilis albus et ater"—represents our totality, which transcends consciousness. It was this boy into whom Faust had to change, abandoning his inflated onesidedness which saw the devil only outside. Christ's "Except ye become as little children" is a prefiguration of this, for in them the opposites lie close together; but what is meant is the boy who is born from the maturity of the adult man, and not the unconscious child we would like to remain.”

C.G. Jung book Answer to Job

Answer to Job, R. Hull, trans. (1984), pp. 157-158

Wisdom, Children, Lie, Boy

“If graduates do not get relevant experience in their field of study after graduation, they will forget what they learned and, in a few years, their knowledge may be completely lost”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Quoted in Hong Kong's Career Times newspaper (February 6th 2004) http://www.ctgoodjobs.hk/english/article/show_article.asp?category_id=1070&article_id=12825&title=is-hong-kong-investing-enough-in-its-future&listby=date&listby_id=&page=4 Miscellaneous Quotes in the Press (2002-Present)

Knowledge, Study, Learning, Forgetting

“If your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’s inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness at this moment.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Future

“To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Complete Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

Personality, Dead, Forgetting

“It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English — the best race in the world — cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert, p. 104
1910s

World

“Last night we owned, with looks forlorn,
"Too well the scholar knows
There is no rose without a thorn" —
But peace is made! We sing, this morn,
"No thorn without a rose!"
Our Latin lesson is complete:
We've learned that Love is Bitter-Sweet!”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

A Lesson in Latin (1888), st. 3
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Love, Peace, Learning, Singing

“I want to be clear: The United States of America has done what we said we would do.
That’s not to say that our work is complete.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)

“(To Mussolini) His Excellence can count, now and forever, on my complete and absolute devotion.”

Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956) Italian general during both World Wars and a Prime Minister of Italy

(A Mussolini) Vostra Eccellenza può contare ora e sempre sulla mia completa e assoluta devozione.
Quoted in "Rodolfo Graziani: L'uomo"‎ - Page 78 - by Giovanni Battista Madìa, Emilio Faldella, Titta Madia - 1955

“I love the drawing board because most of the work I do is of half scale, so I can have the complete car in front of me, whereas the CAD system limits you to the size of the screen.”

Adrian Newey (1958) British Formula One engineer

Interview, 2013 http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2013/11/15315.html

Love, Cars, Drawing

“Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!
To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!
What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!
I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.
I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,
Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn't come.
I'm free, and against organised, clothed society.
I'm naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.
It's too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,
Deliberately at the same time…
No matter, I'll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.
This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!
I can't even light the next cigarette… If it's an action,
It can wait for me, along with the others, in the non-meeting called life.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Ah a frescura na face de não cumprir um dever!
Faltar é positivamente estar no campo!
Que refúgio o não se poder ter confiança em nós!
Respiro melhor agora que passaram as horas dos encontros,
Faltei a todos, com uma deliberação do desleixo,
Fiquei esperando a vontade de ir para lá, que'eu saberia que não vinha.
Sou livre, contra a sociedade organizada e vestida.
Estou nu, e mergulho na água da minha imaginação.
E tarde para eu estar em qualquer dos dois pontos onde estaria à mesma hora,
Deliberadamente à mesma hora...
Está bem, ficarei aqui sonhando versos e sorrindo em itálico.
É tão engraçada esta parte assistente da vida!
Até não consigo acender o cigarro seguinte... Se é um gesto,
Fique com os outros, que me esperam, no desencontro que é a vida.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), "A Frescura" (1929), in Fernando Pessoa & Co: Selected Poems, trans. Richard Zenith (Grove Press, 1998)

Life, Smile, Dreams, Imagination

“As for the general idea of what one would do if certain of death in an hour—I fancy most persons in normal health tend to sentimentalise and romanticise a bit about it. For my part—as a realist beyond the age of theatricalism and naive beliefs—I feel quite certain that my own known last hour would be spent quite prosaically in writing instructions for the disposition of certain books, manuscripts, heirlooms, and other possessions. Such a task would—in view of the mental stress—take at least an hour—and it would be the most useful thing I could do before dropping off into oblivion. If I did finish ahead of time, I'd probably spend the residual minutes getting a last look at something closely associated with my earliest memories—a picture, a library table, an 1895 Farmer's Almanack, a small music-box I used to play with at 2 ½, or some kindred symbol—completing a psychological circle in a spirit half of humour and half of whimsical sentimentality. Then—nothingness, as before Aug. 20, 1890.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to a round-robin letter-writing group called "the Coryciani" (14 July 1936), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S.T. Joshi, p. 339
Non-Fiction, Letters

Death, Health, Books, Age

“The symptom is not only a cyphered message, it is at the same time a way for the subject to organize his enjoyment - that is why, even after the completed interpretation, the subject is not prepared to renounce his symptom.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

80
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Way, Time

“What is not abandoned is never completely lost.”

Friedrich Schiller Mary Stuart

Was man nicht aufgibt, hat man nie verloren.
Maria Stuart, Act II, sc. v (1800)

“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 54 (Vintage 2003)

Life, Wisdom, World, Way

“Faced with the thoughts, the actions of a woman whom we love, we are as completely at a loss as the world's first natural philosophers must have been, face to face with the phenomena of nature, before their science had been elaborated and had cast a ray of light over the unknown.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

Love, World, Nature, Light

“Out of the unconscious you get ritual, dreams, drama, story, art, music, and that sort of buffers us. We have our little domain of competence, and we're buffered by the domain of fantasy and culture. That's really what you learn about when you come to university if you're lucky and the professors are smart enough to actually teach you something about culture instead of constantly telling you that it's completely reprehensible and that it should be destroyed. Why you would prefer chaos to order is beyond me. The only possible reason is that you haven't read enough history to understand exactly what chaos means. And believe me, if you knew what chaos means, you'd be pretty goddamn careful about tearing down the temple that you live in, unless you want to be a denizen of chaos. And some people do. That's when the impulses you harbor can really come out and shine. And so a little gratitude is in order, and that makes you appreciative of the wise king while being smart enough to know that he's also an evil tyrant. That's a total conception of the world. It's balanced. Yah, we should preserve nature, but it IS trying to kill us. YES our culture is tyrannical and oppresses people, but it IS protecting us from dying. And YES we're reasonably good people, but don't take that theory too far until you've tested yourself. That's wisdom, at least in part, and that's what these stories try to teach you.”

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

Other

Wisdom, People, World, Dreams

“The economic transmission of power without wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert. It will enable him to dispense with the necessity of mining, pumping, transporting and burning fuel, and so do away with innumerable causes of sinful waste. By its means, he will obtain at any place and in any desired amount, the energy of remote waterfalls — to drive his machinery, to construct his canals, tunnels and highways, to manufacture the materials of his want, his clothing and food, to heat and light his home — year in, year out, ever and ever, by day and by night. It will make the living glorious sun his obedient, toiling slave. It will bring peace and harmony on earth.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Peace, Food, Home, Light

“The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I believed; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against me Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. There have been times when I have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on ground of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of public policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on questions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I have always found myself 4 fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.

Life, Money, School, Way

“e achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without a party which is strong by reason of its solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all members of the Party. This does not mean, of course, that the possibility of conflicts of opinion within the Party is thereby precluded. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflict of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be "blind." On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a conflict of opinion has been closed, after criticism has been exhausted and a decision has been arrived at, unity of will and unity of action of all Party members are the necessary conditions without which neither Party unity nor iron discipline in the Party is conceivable.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

Decision, Strong, Parting

“I have been a consistent and strong opponent of this war. I have also tried to act responsibly in that opposition to ensure that, having made the decision to go into Iraq, we provide our troops, who perform valiantly, the support they need to complete their mission. I have also stated publicly that I think we have both strategic interests and humanitarian responsibilities in ensuring that Iraq is as stable as possible under the circumstances. Finally, I said publicly that it is my preference not to micromanage the Commander-in-Chief in the prosecution of war. Ultimately, I do not believe that is the ideal role for Congress to play. But at a certain point, we have to draw a line. At a certain point, the American people have to have some confidence that we are not simply going down this blind alley in perpetuity.
When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried-and-failed policy, opposed by generals and experts, opposed by Democrats and Republicans, opposed by Americans and even the Iraqis themselves. It is time to change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back, and it is time to refocus America's effort on the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Floor Statement on President's Decision to Increase Troops in Iraq (19 January 2007)
2007

War, People, Confidence, Support

“In the old days pictures went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture — then I destroy it. In the end though, nothing is lost: the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267)
Other translation:
Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.
Richard Friedenthal (1968, p. 256); Also quoted in: John Bowker (1988), Is anybody out there?: religions and belief in God in the contemporary world. p. 57.
1930s, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

“Even if you try not to do your duty you will be perforce obliged to do it. Let the body complete the task for which it came into being. Sri Krishna also says in the Gita, whether Arjuna liked it or not he would be forced to fight. When there is work to be done by you, you cannot keep away; nor can you continue to do a thing when you are not required to do it, that is to say, when the work allotted to you has been done. In short, the work will go on and you must take your share in it -- the share which is allotted to you. [Question: How can it be done? Reply:] Like an actor playing his part in a drama: free from duality.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Question, Fight, Parting

“By the painful light of the factory’s huge electric lamps
I write in a fever.
I write gnashing my teeth, rabid for the beauty of all this,
For this beauty completely unknown to the ancients.

O wheels, O gears, eternal r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
Bridled convulsiveness of raging mechanisms!
Raging in me and outside me,
Through all my dissected nerves,
Through all the papillae of everything I feel with!
My lips are parched, O great modern noises,
From hearing you at too close a range,
And my head burns with the desire to proclaim you
In an explosive song telling my every sensation,
An explosiveness contemporaneous with you, O machines!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

À dolorosa luz das grandes lâmpadas eléctricas da fábrica
Tenho febre e escrevo.
Escrevo rangendo os dentes, fera para a beleza disto,
Para a beleza disto totalmente desconhecida dos antigos.Ó rodas, ó engrenagens, r-r-r-r-r-r-r eterno!
Forte espasmo retido dos maquinismos em fúria!
Em fúria fora e dentro de mim,
Por todos os meus nervos dissecados fora,
Por todas as papilas fora de tudo com que eu sinto!
Tenho os lábios secos, ó grandes ruídos modernos,
De vos ouvir demasiadamente de perto,
E arde-me a cabeça de vos querer cantar com um excesso
De expressão de todas as minhas sensações,
Com um excesso contemporâneo de vós, ó máquinas!
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Ode Triunfal ["Triumphal Ode"] (1914), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

Pain, Beauty, Feeling, Light

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el cerebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book I, Ch. 1 (tr. Samuel Putnam).

Sleep, Reading

“Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.”

Humphry Davy (1778–1829) Cornish chemist

As quoted in Humphry Davy : Science & Power (1998) by David Knight, p. 87

World, Nature, Science

“Venus de Milo.
To a child she is ugly.
When a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though, by physiologic standards, incomplete, she is beautiful.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 1, part 4 at resologist.net

Beauty, Thinking

“To me, [it's] extremely interesting that men, perfectly honest, enthusiastic over their work, can so completely fool themselves.”

Irving Langmuir Pathological Science

1953 talk, transcribed in: [Irving Langmuir, 1989, October, Pathological Science, Physics Today, 42, 36-48]

Men, Fools

“The empire of Saturnus is gone by;
Lord of the secret birth of things is he;
Within the lap of earth, and in the depths
Of the imagination dominates;
And his are all things that eschew the light.
The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance,
For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now,
And the dark work, complete of preparation,
He draws by force into the realm of light.
Now must we hasten on to action, ere
The scheme, and most auspicious positure
Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight,
For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act I, sc. i
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

Secret, Imagination, Birth, Light

“[The value and dignity of the individual] is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with frictionless harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete. He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must 'die to self' if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute "we must obey God rather than man."”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Irony of American History (1952)

Life, God, Pain, Hope

“The murderer smiles palely in wine,
Death's horror grips the sick.
Excoriated and naked, the nun prays
Before the Savior's agony on the cross.

The mother sings quietly in sleep.
Peacefully the child looks into the night
With eyes that are completely truthful.
In the whorehouse laughter rings.

By candlelight down in the cellar hole
The dead one paints with white hand
A grinning silence on the wall.
The sleeper whispers still.”

Georg Trakl (1887–1914) austrian poet

"Romance in the Night"

Death, Truth, Smile, Laughter

“To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

128
Stray Birds (1916)

Truth, Waiting

“As a woman, I completely reject Hillary’s brand of bourgeois feminism because it leaves out millions of immigrant women, poor women, and the women under her bombs around the world.”

Abby Martin (1984) American journalist

TeleSUR, April 17, 2016 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PV_PLCC6jeI#t=1597

Women, World

“At the battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had charged again and again upon the unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving up the attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in mere vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Connecticut https://archive.is/oYxvX (6 March 1860). About

Despair

“For a while I gave myself up entirely to the intense enjoyment of picturing machines and devising new forms. It was a mental state of happiness about as complete as I have ever known in life. … When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven−league boots. In less than two months I evolved virtually all the types of motors and modifications of the system which are now identified with my name, and which are used under many other names all over the world. It was, perhaps, providential that the necessities of existence commanded a temporary halt to this consuming activity of the mind.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The last line is about having to take up a job
My Inventions (1919)

Life, Happiness, World, Nature

“Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim to be the complete theory of nature. This is called the problem of quantum gravity.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

Nature, Problem

“We have now completed both the spiritual and the temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor. Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-07.html The Large Catechism by Martin Luther, Translated by F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau Published in: Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921) pp. 565-773, (1529)

Death, God, Children, Parent

“This took me completely by surprise. Since July 20, 1944, I had not spoken to Hitler at all except at some large gathering. … I had never received any hint on the subject from anyone else…. I assumed that Hitler had nominated me because he wished to clear the way to enable an officer of the Armed Forces to put an end to the war. That this assumption was incorrect I did not find out until the winter of 1945-46 in Nuremberg, when for the first time I heard the provisions of Hitler's will…. When I read the signal I did not for a moment doubt that it was my duty to accept the task … it had been my constant fear that the absence of any central authority would lead to chaos and the senseless and purposeless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives … I realized … that the darkest moment in any fighting man's life, the moment when he must surrender unconditionally, was at hand. I realized, too, that my name would remain forever associated with the act and that hatred and distortion of facts would continue to try and besmirch my honor. But duty demanded that I pay no attention to any such considerations. My policy was simple — to try and save as many lives as I could …”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

April 30, 1945, quoted in "Memoirs: Ten Years And Twenty Days" - Page 442 - by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz - History - 1997.

Life, War, Fear, Way

“Rationality requires a complete knowledge and anticipation of the consequences that will follow on each choice. In fact, knowledge of consequences is always fragmentary”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947

Knowledge

“To me it is a riddle that Knut Wicksell, who for most of his life was a fanatical representative of extreme opinions in the social debate, could present a completely different personality in the scholarly context. During the period when I knew him he was the diffident seeker after scientific truth.”

Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician

Bertil Ohlin (1972, 558), as cited in: Carlson, Benny, and Lars Jonung. "Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Bertil Ohlin and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of the economist in public debate." Econ Journal Watch 3.3 (2006): 511-550.
1920s

Life, Truth, Personality

“I was completely ignorant of the poetry of Poe; it is admirable, it is poetry itself, the dream, and how one feels that you have translated its soul! I am no more than a completely illiterate ignoramus, but am not any the less moved by it. I knew only Poe's prose, which I had read and admired very young before I had heard it spoken of, but how your poems complete and express the man he was”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter, 15 February 1889, (L. 911); as cited in Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1870 - 1890

Dreams, Feeling, Soul, Reading

“The "social contract," in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments

Sense

“There are people whose mind would recoil from actual negation, but who have no objection to complete indifference; and it is this that is the most to be feared, for, to deny something, one must think about it to some extent, however little that may be, whereas an attitude of indifference makes it possible not to think about it at all.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 103

People, Fear, Thinking, Indifference

“Dearest,
I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that.
But I know that I shall never get over this: and I am wasting your life. It is this madness. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that.
V.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Letter to Leonard Woolf (28 March 1941), from The Virginia Woolf Reader (1984) edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, p. 369, ISBN 0156935902

Life, Happiness, Disease, Madness

“Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 15: Power and moral codes

Women

“Evil is the force that believes its knowledge is complete.”

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

Other

Knowledge, Evil

“We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

Nature, Personality, Forgetting

“Matthew is a complete pro. Everyday that we were shooting, we were getting great material.”

Matthew Perry (actor) (1969) American actor

Reginald Hudlin, on directing Perry in the film Serving Sara – Larry Ratliff (August 22, 2002) "Perry finds himself, happiness after rehab stint disrupts 'Sara'", San Antonio Express-News, p. 01F.
About

“We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Nehru wrote this resolution of Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence), which was adopted in the Congress session at Lahore on 26 January 1930; this was later celebrated as Independence Day until August 1947, and after 26 January 1950 as Republic Day; as quoted in India http://books.google.com/books?id=nHnOERqf-MQC&pg=PA204 (1999) by Stanley A. Wolpert

Life, People, Freedom

“Whoever takes the truth and puts it into action with all his heart, will and life can succeed. This mindset will be completed when trusting only in God and leaning on Him.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from the Wolmyeongdong Website http://wmd.god21.net/WolMyeongDong/Founder

Life, God, Truth, Heart

“Another characteristic of the A. R. F.'s "Western"-dependent strategy is its complete disregard for the need to transfer the Armenian armed struggle to the historic Armenian homeland, the need to build a mass-based guerrilla force closely aligned with Turkish and Kurdish revolutionaries. Many appeals in A. R. F. literature and propaganda are directed to "international public opinion" and other non-Armenian audiences. Meanwhile, few appeals are directed to the Armenian people themselves…”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 57.

People, Literature, Dependency

“So my life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see -- no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice.”

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919–1995) Atheist activist

"Playboy Interview: Madalyn Murray", Playboy (October 1965)

Life, World, Family, Way

“The true nature of the international system under which we were living was not realized until it failed. Hardly anyone understood the political function of the international monetary system; the awful suddenness of the transformation thus took the world completely by surprise. And yet the gold standard was the only remaining pillar of the traditional world economy; when it broke, the effect was bound to be instantaneous. To liberal economists the gold standard was a purely economic institution; they refused even to consider it as a part of a social mechanism.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 2 : Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties

World, Nature, Parting

“The poet is a pretender.
He pretends so completely,
that he even pretends that it is pain
the pain he really feels.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.
"Autopsicografia" ["Autopsychography"], in Presença, No. 36 (November 1932)
Fernando Pessoa's most translated poem.
Richard Zenith's translation:
The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.

Pain, Feeling

“The persona, the ideal picture of a man as he should be, is inwardly compensated by feminine weakness, and as the individual outwardly plays the strong man, so he becomes inwardly a woman, i. e., the anima, for it is the anima that reacts to the persona. But because the inner world is dark and invisible to the extraverted consciousness, and because a man is all the less capable of conceiving his weaknesses the more he is identified with the persona, the persona's counterpart, the anima, remains completely in the dark and is at once projected, so that our hero comes under the heel of his wife's slipper. If this results in a considerable increase of her power, she will acquit herself none too well. She becomes inferior, thus providing her husband with the welcome proof that it is not he, the hero, who is inferior in private, but his wife. In return the wife can cherish the illusion, so attractive to many, that at least she has married a hero, unperturbed by her own uselessness. This little game of illusion is often taken to be the whole meaning of life.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" P.309

Life, World, Game, Strong

“Some revolutions are inevitable. There are moral eruptions, just as the outbreak of volcanoes are physical eruptions. When the chemical combinations which produce them are complete, the volcanic eruptions burst forth, just as revolutions do when the moral factors are in the right state. In order to foresee them the trend of ideas must be understandingly observed.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Idea

“The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or encouragement of the ego. Only if a person's own ego is sufficiently fulfilled, can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others, without robbing himself of his self-respect. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego; in reality, his bragging results from a need to satisfy his impoverished ego.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)