Quotes about continuity
page 12

“While we need to deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online, we must not forget about the safe spaces that continue to exist in the real world. Yes, that means taking military action to destroy Isis in Iraq and Syria. But it also means taking action here at home. While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations. But the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism, and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech after the London Bridge attack (4 June 2017)

World, Home, Communication, Country

“Several features or attributes of organizations can therefore be recognized
# Organizations are social institutions (entities) composed of sets of persons with established patterns of interaction.
# Organizations develop to achieve specific goals. Therefore, organizations are social creations that require order and cooperation.
# Organizations are social instruments possessing relatively identifiable boundaries and existing on a relatively permanent basis. While this final point is perhaps less clear than were those that precede it, the identification of fixed boundaries (for instance, the distinction between members and nonmembers) and continuity (that is, existence and identity over time) provide a conceptual framework for the study of organizational activity.”

Arthur G. Bedeian (1946) American business theorist

Source: Organizations: Theory and Analysis, 1984, p. 3-4 (1984: 2-3)

Study, Time, Personality

“In the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it’s true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless accidents.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

Change

“Production systems which are technologically the most advanced are also the least adaptable and work to the longest time scale of decision making. These are the process industries (chemical plants, oil refineries and so on) in which vast resources are invested in the creation of a closely programmed and tightly controlled process which will continue to perform the same task over a very long period.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Joan Woodward (1965, 1970), as cited in: Romiszowski, A. J. (2016). Designing Instructional Systems: Decision Making in Course Planning ..., p. 13

Decision, Time

“The work that's being done 24/7 at Antiwar. com not only honors Randolph Bourne's contribution to the libertarian tradition; it also helps to assure that that tradition will continue and grow.”

Jeff Riggenbach (1947)

About Randolph Bourne
"Ayn Rand and the Early Libertarian Movement," 2010

Help

“I am happy and humbled by the continued confidence by the people, but what is important is that public servants seeking the people’s vote like me continue to work to prove that we are worthy of the positions entrusted to us.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/02/08/906431/loren-chiz-tied-top-spot-latest-pulse-asia-survey 2013, Mid-Term Campaign Trail

Happiness, People, Confidence

“.. it seems to me that you could take the opposite point of view, and say that continuity (in language and in thought, B. K.) is the thing that is so distressing and that what one can do is attempt to create a discontinuous situation. It seems to me that continuity is almost a static concept. And since we have the concept of discontinuity it seems to me that it would be more interesting to attempt to establish that.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview at John's studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 89
1960s

“An art mode, new or old, is for the creative mind essentially a point of beginning. Content is brought into being by the activity through which the artist translates the movement into himself. In such an appropriation, there is no difference between an ongoing movement and one that is finished. During the reign of Minimalism, a painter might realize the new through Impressionism. That art history has a schedule of continuous advances en masse is a fantasy of the historian. The shared syntax of art movements is constantly replaced by the sensibility and practice of individuals. The avant-garde art of yesterday is the only modern equivalent of an aesthetic tradition. The fading of the ideas of a movement does not mean that it can no longer be a stimulus to creation. At the very dawn of a movement, the work of its artists commences to replace the concept; instead of Cubism there appear Picasso, Braque, Gris. Compared to the activities to which they give rise, ideas in art have a brief life. In the last analysis, the vitality of art in our time depends on works produced by movements after they have died.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 230, Art on the Edge (1975) "Shall These Bones Live?: Art Movement Ghosts"

Life, Art, History, Idea

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World, Faith, Way, Optimism

“Janza grinned, amazed at the accuracy of Archie's predictions. You'll have a great year, Achie had said. Which Janza echoed now: "We're going to have a great year, Bunting." Bunting nodded. Continued to stare into space. Not wanting to look at Janza nor or anybody or anything. Staring into the future, next year, beyond. Him, Bunting, in command of the entire school. Stooges at his beck and call. An army at his disposal. No rules except those he made up. The boss. More than that. Like a dictator, for crissake. Beautiful.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 278

School, Beauty, Future

“I confidently expect that we shall continue to be grouped with mothers-in-law and Wigan Pier as one of the recognized objects of ridicule.”

Edward Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges (1892–1969) British civil servant

On the civil service, in Portrait of a Profession: The Civil Service Tradition (1950)

Law, Confidence

“If truth were left to a market philosophy, there would be no point in continuing to make an argument for which there are no takers, or to ask a question for which there are no answers. The minority community has other grounds to sustain a wholesome discomfort and thereby keeps the door open for solutions not yet found.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

Truth, Communication, Question

“For many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 407

World, Question, Change, Past

“Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith — a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will — but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world — faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

As quoted in The New York Times (27 May 1984)

World, Faith, History, Study

“But there was in my father's mind another sentiment, less creditable to him, than the wish to give me the best education to be had. I mean those social aspirations which he continued to nourish, though by his removal to the remote situation of Hauxwell, and consequent detachment from the Castle, he was no longer able to gratify them. He had the instinct of good society, and liked to live with gentlemen, and to know what was going on in the upper world. His acquaintance with the peerage was accurate; he must have read Debrett at that time more than the Bible. Hence, in estimating colleges he was led to take the footman's view, and to prefer one which was frequented by the sons of gentlemen.”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Source: Memoirs (1885), Chapter I, pp. 22–24

World, Education, Time, Reading

“Precedent has shown that sticking to such a political foundation (1992 Consensus) will allow continued healthy development of cross-strait ties. Damaging the foundation will damage the fruit of peaceful development in cross-strait ties, leading to endless problems across the strait.”

Zhang Zhijun (1953) Chinese politician

Zhang Zhijun (2016) cited in " Chinese official reiterates '1992 consensus' mantra http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201612230006.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 23 December 2016.

Peace, Problem

“In this regard, I hope the dry rubber products segment continues to chart a more creditable growth in exports. These are challenging times. On the external front, the United States-China trade conflict, if protracted, could affect global growth and demand. On the domestic front, the private sector has to step up investment to drive economic growth, especially in the downstream sector.”

Teresa Kok (1964) Malaysian politician

Teresa Kok (2018) cited in " Teresa Kok: Rubber to surpass palm oil’s contribution to economy https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/09/18/teresa-kok-rubber-to-surpass-palm-oils-contribution-to-economy/" on FMT News, 18 September 2018

Hope, Time

“When we buy new clothes not to keep ourselves warm but to look "well-dressed" we are not providing for any important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we were to continue to wear our old clothes, and give the money to famine relief. By doing so, we would be preventing another person from starving. It follows from what I have said earlier that we ought to give money away, rather than spend it on clothes which we do not need to keep us warm. To do so is not charitable, or generous. Nor is it the kind of act which philosophers and theologians have called "supererogatory"”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it is wrong not to do so. Famine, Affluence, and Morality http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm, 1972.

Money, Personality, Clothes

“It was a passion from my childhood to work for children, I carried it forward. I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Kailash Satyarthi’s crusade to save childhood continues… (2014)

Children, Education, Passion, Childhood

“I don't believe this country will ever come to grips with child abuse until they make the obvious, simple connection between today's victim and tomorrow's predator. As long as they believe a Ted Bundy or a John Wayne Gacy is a biogenetic mistake as opposed to a beast that was built and a monster that was made, they'll continue to blithely walk around, saying, 'I'm against child abuse.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Todd Taylor's interview October 23, 2001, on Razorcake.com.

Country

“"I tell you," he [Milosevic] continued, "Izetbegovic has earned Sarajevo by not abandoning it. He's one tough guy. It's his". These words were probably the most astonishing and unexpected of the conference.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 291

Guy

“… a single generation enamoured of foreign ways is almost enough in history to risk the whole continuity of civilization and learning. Ages of accumulation are entrusted to the frail bark of each passing epoch by the hand of the past, desiring to make over its treasures to the use of the future. It takes a certain stubbornness, a doggedness of loyalty, even a modicum of unreasonable conservatism maybe, to lose nothing in the long march of the ages; and, even when confronted with great empires, with a sudden extension of the idea of culture, or with the supreme temptation of a new religion, to hold fast what we have, adding to it only as much as we can healthfully and manfully carry.”

Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda

p. 2 https://archive.org/stream/mythsofthehindus00niveuoft#page/n21/mode/2up Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (1913)

Age, Religion, Way, History

“With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) page 143 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=166&itemID=F944&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Men, Youth, Education, Law

“During all these days Lao Chiu was lying on the bed suffering continual pain. The doctors and nurses did their utmost to reduce his suffering to the minimum, but they could not completely relieve it. Even the chief surgeon said once, "When we were healing him I often thought that if another person was in his place he certainly would not have stood it so long, but Lao DChiu endured everything. When I saw him grinding his teeth to suppress his groans, I felt so touched that the tears feel from my eyes." Indeed he suffered great pain for a long period. While changing the dressings even laughing gas anaesthesia could not keep him quiet. Sometimes these pains were so intense that his whole body trembled uncontrollably.”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

A Battle For Life (July 1958)

Pain, Feeling, Lying, Tear

“The circumstance-adaptive law, operating upon the slight but continued natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety), does not preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have over the configuration of the body. To examine into the disposition to sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent, as in many vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external circumstance, and how far on the will, irritability and muscular exertion, is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, varieties being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life, Family, Law, Nature

“We see that each surface is really a pair of surfaces, so that, where they appear to merge, there are really four surfaces. Continuing this process for another circuit, we see that there are really eight surfaces etc and we finally conclude that there is an infinite complex of surfaces, each extremely close to one or the other of two merging surfaces.”

Edward Norton Lorenz (1917–2008) American mathematician and meteorologist

Lorenz (1963) "Deterministic nonperiodic flow", in: J. Atmos. Sci. 20, 130–141. cited in: T.N. Palmer (2008) " Edward Norton Lorenz. 23 May 1917 −− 16 April 2008 http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/55/139.full.pdf" in: Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 2009 55, 139-155

Appearance

“Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La lucidité, de même que les rayons du soleil, n’a d’effet que par la fixité de la ligne droite, elle ne devine qu’à la condition de ne pas rompre son regard; elle se trouble dans les sautillements de la chance.
Source: A Bachelor's Establishment (1842), Ch. IV.

Chance, Sun

“I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights. We were impatient with those (like President Kennedy) who took a cautious approach. How could we continue to countenance these injustices that had gone on so long? (The fact that so many people in the establishment seemed to do so — as they had accepted colonialism, slavery, and other forms of oppression — left a life-long mark. It reinforced a distrust of authority which I had had from childhood).”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

Life, People, Childhood

“How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)?… the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness… really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.”

Erwin Schrödinger book What Is Life?

What Is Life? (1944)

Death

“Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!”

Erasmus Darwin book Zoonomia

Zoönomia, vol. 1 (1794).

Age, World, Imagination, History

“I have resolved to confine my studies and my pen to medical subjects only. For the talents which God has not given me, I am not responsible, but those which I possess, I have hitherto cultivated and employed as diligently as my opportunities have allowed me to do; and I shall continue to apply them with assiduity, and in tranquillity, to that profession which has constantly been the ultimate object of all my labours.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Letter X: Reply to the Edinburgh Reviewers, Miscellaneous works of the late Thomas Young https://archive.org/details/miscellaneouswo01youngoog (1855), p. 215

God, Study

“Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise. In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental question: “how to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve its goals and objectives”…”

Donald H. Liles (1947) American engineer

Source: The Enterprise Engineering Discipline (1996), p. 1

Question, Knowledge, Change

“Although the recession is strong and although hard times await us in the next 2 or 3 months, Spain will continue to grow in the second quarter of 2009.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

As President, 2008 Source: Diciembre 2008. Prensa http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/439407/

Strong, Time

“When America's creditors consider our behavior they see total fiscal irresponsibility. They see a deluded country that acts as if it is a privilege for foreigners to lend to it, and a deluded country that believes that foreigners will continue to accumulate US debt until the end of time.The fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower" http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03182008.html, CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Behavior, Country

“Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable. … The roots of this devotion to violence are deep, and we will be well rewarded if we trace them to their source. When we do, we will discover that the religion of Babylon—one of the world's oldest, continuously surviving religions—is thriving as never before in every sector of contemporary American life, even in our synagogues and churches. It, and not Christianity, is the real religion of America.”

Walter Wink (1935–2012) American biblical scholar

Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (1992), p. 13

Life, World, Religion, Nature

“Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.”

Francesco Mario Pagano (1748–1799) Italian jurist and author

As cited in: Richard Mann Roberts, Carlo Pisacane's La Rivoluzione, Troubador, 2010, p. 160

Law, Penalty, Time

“If the ideas of a ruling class were once the dominant (or hegemonic) ideology of bourgeois society, the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without norm. Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existence, but they no longer need to impose their speech (or are henceforth unable to); and the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only the absence of any great collective project but also the unavailability of the older national language itself.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Source: Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Chapter 1: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

World, Idea, Country

“Reclamation. Our country has a well defined policy of reclamation established under statutory authority. This policy should be continued and made a self-sustaining activity administered in a manner that will meet local requirements and bring our and lands into a profitable state of cultivation as fast as there is a market for their products. Legislation is pending based on the report of the Fact Finding Commission for the proper relief of those needing extension of time in which to meet their payments on irrigated land, and for additional amendments and reforms of our reclamation laws, which are all exceedingly important and should be enacted at once.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Law, Time, Country

“Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the competence of individual employees. Hence industry rejects any methodological proposal that can be viewed as making intellectual demands on its work force. Since in the US the influence of industry is more pervasive than elsewhere, the above dogma hurts American computing science most. The moral of this sad part of the story is that as long as computing science is not allowed to save the computer industry, we had better see to it that the computer industry does not kill computing science.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra Computing Science

Dijkstra (1999) "Computing Science: Achievements and Challenges" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1284.html (EWD 1284). 1990s

Sadness, Suffering, Science, Parting

“It is picked out from numbers progressing in continuous proportion. Of continuous progressions, an arithmetical is one which proceeds by equal intervals; a geometrical one which advances by unequal and proportionally increasing or decreasing intervals. Arithmetical progressions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, &c.; or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, &c, Geometrical progressions: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, &c.; or 243, 81, 27, 9, 3, 1.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms (1889)

“I remember seeing how Layne [Staley] reacted to Andy [Andrew Wood] dying from drugs, and I think that he was scared possibly. And I think he also reacted the same way when Kurt [Cobain] shot himself. They were really good friends. And yet it didn’t stop him. But for me, if I think about the evolution of my life as it appears in songs for example, Higher Truth is a great example of a record I wouldn’t have been able to write [when I was younger], and part of that is in essence because there was a period of time there where I didn’t expect to be here. And now not only do I expect to be here, and I’m not going anywhere, but I’ve had the last 12 years of my life being free of substances to kind of figure out who the substance-free guy is, because he’s a different guy. Just by brain chemistry, it can’t be avoided. I’m not the same, I don’t think the same, I don’t react the same. And my outlook isn’t necessarily the same. My creative endeavours aren’t necessarily the same. And one of the great things about that is it enabled me to kind of keep going artistically and find new places and shine the light into new corners where I hadn’t really gone before. And that feels really good. But it’s also bittersweet because I can’t help but think, what would Jeff be doing right now, what would Kurt be doing right now, what would Andy be doing? Something amazing, I’m sure of it. And it would be some music that would challenge me to lift myself up, something that would be continually raising the bar so that I would work harder too, in the same way they affected me when they were alive basically.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if there was a lesson to be learned from his friends' deaths caused by substance abuse and if it was not enough to scare everyone ** The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273, Solo career Era

Life, Truth, Music, Way

“But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. I, ch. IV
Jude the Obscure (1895)

World, Error

“Michael Atkinson vows to continue to 'fight' violent media. Which seems a bit like trying to turn the tide back with a water pistol.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

20 January 2010
Twitter

Water, Fight

“I don't think there is any doubt, if there ever was... that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction. Biological weapons that they discovered were very clear evidence of not only the fact that he had them, but that he had lied and that he is continuing to lie.”

Paul Martin (1938) 21st Prime Minister of Canada

Calgary Herald, March 7, 2003

Lie, Thinking

“The Committee shall continue to exist until such time as the President shall terminate its existence by Executive order.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Executive Order 9981 (1948)

Time

“At these meetings, which were about the year 1655, divers experiments were suggested, discoursed, and tried with various successes, though no other account was taken of them but what particular persons perhaps did for the help of their own memories; so that many excellent things have been lost. Some few only by the kindness of the authors have since been made public. Among these may be reckoned the Honourable Mr Boyle's Pneumatic Engine and Experiments, first printed in the year 1660; for in 1658 or 1659 I continued and perfected the air-pump for Mr Boyle, having first seen a contrivance for that purpose made for the same honourable person by Mr Gratorix, which was too gross to perform any great matter.”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

Hooke's Diary, as quoted by Alexander Bryson, F.S.A., Scotland, "Exposition of the Mechanical Inventions of Dr Robert Hooke." The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Vol. 4 https://books.google.com/books?id=R15KAAAAcAAJ (1856) pp. 13-14

Memory, Success, Help, Personality

“My message to you is continue the protests, continue despite the odds, and eventually, together, we will reach that crucial number, 350.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Speech about the Maldives, Interview with Mohamed Nasheed http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-2-2012/exclusive---mohamed-nasheed-extended-interview-pt--1, April 2, 2012.

“The continuing role of the government is to remove barriers and provide wider access to healthcare assistance which is a universal basic service.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Madyaas Pen http://madyaaspen.blogspot.com/2015/02/money-is-available-for-mandatory.html 2014

Universe

“We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

African Socialism Revisited http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/1967/african-socialism-revisited.htm, 1967.

“I believe in the American Constitution. I favor the American system of individual enterprise, and I am opposed to any general extension of government ownership, and control. I believe not only in advocating economy in public expenditure, but in its practical application and actual accomplishment. I believe in a reduction and reform of taxation, and shall continue my efforts in that direction.”

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

From his formal acceptance of the Republican party’s nomination for President (14 August 1924), as quoted in Coolidge: An American Enigma (1998), by Robert Sobel, Regnery Publishing, p. 292.
1920s

Effort

“With a Socialist government, there will not be a national surplus whilst there continues to be inequality.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Oct. 2003, when Cristóbal Montoro, then Home Affairs Minister, announced that there was a surplus in the public purse. As Opposition Leader Source: El Mundo, Rodríguez Zapatero reprocha a Rajoy que no afronte el debate presupuestario como líder del PP http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2003/10/28/espana/1067356250.html (Spanish)

“Some people understand the charity of our Lord and are saved by it; others, relying on this mercy and kindness, continue in their sins, thinking that it may be theirs whenever they wish. But this is not so, for then they are too late and are taken in their sins before they expect it, and so damn themselves.”

Walter Hilton (1340–1396) English Augustinian mystic.

Book I, ch. 43 (p. 52)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)

People, Understanding, Thinking

“I've been hearing that from envious people since I was in standard 1. Between 1971 when I started Primary School to when I completed by Bar Exams, I became number 1 numerous times and whenever that happened, those who had performed dismally would shout "Pride Comes Before A Fall!" Mediocre performers have continued to shout the same thing at me ever since. The good news is that green envy has never sabotaged the progress of any determined organic intellectual and visionary leader. So, yours are like the croaks of toads in a pond. They will never deter the Lion from drinking water.”

Miguna Miguna (1962) lawyer, author and columnist

Reply to a Facebook detractor who said "pride goes before a fall", 2016
2016

People, School, Drink, Water

“I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,
as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,
stiff with cold, dying with pain.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

No quiero para mí tantas desgracias.
No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba,
de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos
ateridos, muriéndome de pena.
Walking Around, Residencia II (Residence II), II, stanza 4-5.
Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh:
I do not want for myself so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as root and tomb,
just underground, a vault with corpses
stiff with cold, dying of distress.
Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)

Pain

“For a persistent and continued ascent to [the Principle and Source of] life is the constituent element of increased happiness.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Life, Happiness

“Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

in his letter to H. E. Kramer, 25-10-1926, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 44 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

Art, Way, Time

“In America the architect has a direct and continuing relationship with technology. Perhaps this is why he does not ask more from technology than it can offer. In our country [Russia] it is still impossible to have such urban complexes as are found in Paris, Chicago, or Berlin. It is through technology that we can build a bridge to all the most recent achievements, which is what made it possible for our country to pass directly from the hoe to the tractor without having to travel the long path of historical development. That is why we want to introduce the most modern methods of building and construction into our country — and why we see the works and designs of both the 'formalists' and the 'constructivists' as a radical experiment in the manipulation of construction.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

Quote from: 'Basic Premises'
1926 - 1941, Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion' (1929)

Travel, Country

“I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word "holy" means "set apart," and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, "set apart." You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were definitely in the minority and it was a band of hardy monks who preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead "condition" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes.”

Paul Weyrich (1942–2008) American political activist

Letter to Amy Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research http://www.nationalcenter.org/Weyrich299.html (1999-02-16)

War, Education, School, Way

“The [sexual harassment] situation has gotten so out of hand that, in 1993, in one of the first British cases, a plumber was fired for continuing to use the traditional term "ballcock" for the toilet flotation unit, instead of the new politically correct term, sanitized of sexual suggestiveness. This is insane. We are back to the Victorian era, when table legs had to be draped lest they put the thought of ladies' legs into someone's dirty mind.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 50

“There was, sometimes, a de facto alliance between this president and pope. But relations were not so close that they could be taken for granted by the president's men. In fact, the documents reveal a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U. S. policies.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Freedom's Men: The Cold War Team of Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan (2005)

Men, Support

“Procedure, properly applied, allows specialization to be carried to its optimum degree and effects the most efficient division of labor. Procedure not only divides labor; it also divides-and fixes-responsibility. Procedure thus is a means of maintaining order and of achieving regularity, continuity, predictability, control, and accountability. It is a means of maximizing control of the subjective drives of an organization's members, of assuring that their official actions contribute-and, if possible, that their private loyalties conform-to the organization's objectives. From a general political angle, procedure ensures equality of treatment-a value of great significance to the citizen.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: "Government by Procedure", 1946, p. 381-82; As cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 595

Loyalty

“The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn't ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, "Here's your square hole"?The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I'm saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

"Pegs and Holes", 2011-06-15, Scott Adams Blog, 2012-12-03 https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/06/15/pegs-and-holes/,, quoted in * 2011-06-20 Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Says Rape Is A ‘Natural Instinct’ For Men Huffington Post https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-on-rape_n_880590

Women, Men, World, Way

“Is health care a privilege, or is it a right? If it's a privilege, even if it's a really desirable privilege like indoor plumbing, we need to stop giving health care of any kind to uninsured people who can't pay for it in advance. But… …I think the reason we continue to treat people who are uninsured is because we don't believe that health care is a privilege. We believe that it is a right. And if it is a right, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the responsibility of a government to protect that right.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_RVl-ph3s YouTube

Life, Happiness, People, Health

“I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the national security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status, and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.
We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.
I ask the American people to join me in saying a thanks for all the folks who have been fighting hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families.”

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

Remarks Upon Arrival at Barksdale Air Force Base https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_Upon_Arrival_at_Barksdale_Air_Force_Base (11 September, 2001) 2000s, 2001

People, World, Family, Home

“The Labour Party has now been taken over by extremists…The Labour Party is now committed to a programme which is frankly and unashamedly Marxist, a programme initiated by its National Executive and now firmly endorsed by its official Party Conference. In the House of Commons the Labour Left may still be outnumbered, but their votes are vital to the continuance of Labour in office, and that gives them a strength out of proportion to their numbers. And make no mistake, that strength, those numbers, are growing. In the constituency Labour parties, in the Parliamentary Labour Party, in Transport House, in the Cabinet Room itself, the Marxists call an increasing number of tunes…let's not mince words. The dividing line between the Labour Party programme and Communism is becoming harder and harder to detect. Indeed, in many respects Labour's programme is more extreme than those of many Communist parties of Western Europe.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (8 October 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103105 Leader of the Opposition

Communication, Housing

“The Falklands War continues to fascinate me. What a conflict! What an unlikely pair of antagonists! The British have always fought, to be sure. No nation on Earth can be taken seriously in historical circles unless it has had at least one war with the British; it's like not having an American Express card. And yet the very idea of Britain in a contemporary war is a shock. Britain, one feels, fights in history books and not on TV.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"A Few Points About Knife Throwing", Fantasy Newsletter (1983), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

War, Books, Feeling, History

“I'm often asked why I make such a 'big deal' about choosing conservative Christians, Messianic Jews, or Orthodox Jews for neighbors. The plain truth is that in a societal collapse there will be a veritable vacuum of law enforcement. In such times, with a few exceptions, it will only be the God fearing that will continue to be law abiding. Choose your neighborhood wisely.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Letter Re: Religious Versus Non-Religious Neighbors, Post-TEOTWAWKI https://survivalblog.com/letter_re_religious_versus_non/ Surivalblog, 20 September 2005

God, Truth, Fear, Law

“It was a DJ style which helped to create the lifestyle which came to be known as hip hop. At the beginning of the disco era in the first half of the 1970s, regular disco jocks in clubs were most concerned with the blend between one record and the next - matching tempos to make a smooth transition which, at its best, could continually alter the mood on the dancefloor without breaking the flow.”

David Toop (1949) British musician

David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2: African Rap To Global Hip Hop, p.12. New York. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852422432.

Mood, Help

“For most of her existence, Molly had not shied from a truth that most people understood but diligently suppressed: that every moment of every day, depending on the faith we embrace, each of us continues to live either by the merciful sufferance of God or at the whim of blind chance and indifferent nature.”

Dean Koontz book The Taking

Part 1, Chapter 2
The Taking (2004)

God, People, Truth, Faith

“If we are to ban CFC production completely, as I believe that we should, we must also accept that considerable support must be given to other countries which wish to continue to produce refrigerators and similar products. The technology to produce those goods without CFCs must be transferred to China, India and other countries which need it. If that does not happen, we cannot lecture those countries about producing CFCs while we hold that technology to ourselves and use it as an economic lever against poorer countries and poorer people throughout the world. The economic imbalance between countries is at the root of the world's problems…If we are to sort out the problems of poverty and of the environment, we require a real restructuring of the world's economy. That will not be achieved by imposing a model of market forces on the poorest people in the poorest countries but by paying those people for the products that they produce, not hoarding technological advances for ourselves but sharing and spreading them around the world, and not persuading and pushing countries to revert to monoculture production, which is dangerous and damaging to the environment.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jun/26/aid-and-the-environment in the House of Commons (26 June 1990). 1990s

People, World, Support, Problem

“The nice thing about an -ism, someone once observed, is how quickly it becomes a wasm. Some musical wasms—academic-wasm, for example, and its dependent varieties of modern-wasm and Serial-wasm—continue to linger on artifical life support, thought, and continue to threaten the increasingly fragile classical ecosystem.”

Richard Taruskin (1945) American writer

New York Times, March 10, 1996. Quoted in Ashby, Arved, ed. (2004). The Pleasure of Modernist Music. ISBN 1580461433.

Life, Music, Support, Dependency

“At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in order to conceal the direction of her flight.”

Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) English author

The Encountering of Six within a Wood
Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922)

“I believe that He was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to a Roman Catholic, July 18, 1749, The works of the Rev. John Wesley (1872), London, Wesleyan Conference Office, vol. X, p. 81. https://books.google.com/books?id=TZBKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA81&dq=%22continued+a+pure+and+unspotted+virgin%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjn7srt5I_NAhUUU1IKHUlzC-AQ6AEIUTAH#v=onepage&q=%22continued%20a%20pure%20and%20unspotted%20virgin%22&f=false General sources

Nature, Personality

“People who are having a love-sex relationship are continuously lying to each other because the very nature of the relationship demands that they do, because you have to make a love object of this person, which means that you editorialize about them. You know? You cut out what you don't want to see, you add this if it isn't there. And so therefore you're building a lie. But in a friendship you don't do that. You do exactly the reverse. You try more and more to be as completely pure and straight as you can be.”

Truman Capote (1924–1984) American author

From a 1970 interview
Truman Capote: Conversations (1987)

Love, Friendship, People, Lie

“In the Cabinet there were large Irish proprietors, and, without imputing to any proprietor a desire of doing injustice to his tenants, it was easy to understand that after the long continuance of the present state of the law in Ireland, proprietors were alarmed at any proposition coming to them like the Bill of the hon. Member for Rochdale. The Irish proprietors in the Cabinet, in that House, and out of it, were afraid of a Bill that would interfere with the powers and privileges that a Parliament of landowners for generations past had been conferring upon the proprietors of the soil. That was the point. The question was, could the cats wisely and judiciously legislate for the mice? He did not believe it. He was as much opposed as any man could be to transferring the land from the landlord to the tenant; but a measure of justice was due from the former to the latter, both in Ireland and in this country as well.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1852/feb/10/tenant-right-ireland in the House of Commons (10 February 1852). 1850s

Justice, Law, Cats, Understanding

“Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Widow's Son

Universe

“Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world.”

David Lodge (1935) writer

Part II, ch. 2, p. 141.
Small World (1984)

World, Time, Perfection

“The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, 1921, p. 270

Past

“The Declaration of Independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis. … I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice. I believe that despite all the objective and subjective difficulties, the future of Israel and its position in the family of enlightened nations will depend on our ability to realize the promise of the founding fathers as they canonized it in the Declaration of Independence. I have always believed that there is no military solution to the Jewish Arab conflict, neither from a moral nor a strategic one and since a solution is therefore inevitable I ask myself, why wait?”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Statement at the Knesset upon receiving the Wolf Prize, May 9, 2004, transcript online https://electronicintifada.net/content/daniel-barenboims-statement-knesset-upon-receiving-wolf-prize-may-9-2004/5080 (16 May 2004) at The Electronic Intifada.

People, Family, Justice, Dreams

“In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations expert urges states to cut military spending and invest more in human development http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpNewsByYear_en)/D5D061E9891363C1C1257CB7003055E0?OpenDocument. 2014

War, World, Faith, Change

“The new Republican party. Accountability last. If ever. That is the Republican party. Now I am confident we progressives, we liberals, can change this, but it's gonna take a lot of work and we can hustle it along faster: you know the universe does tilt towards justice eventually, but we can make it tilt faster if we continue to work together in Democratic circles, liberal circles, progressive circles, libertarian circles, and true conservative circles to try and change the type of people we elect and the type of news media we have and the type of pundits we allow to pollute our airwaves. Myself included. I shouldn't be a pundit. I don't know why I am, but they asked me to, and once your name is in the rolodex, you're in. So sometimes I go on -yeah I stink. I'm a stinky pundit! …well, compared to the pundits they have I'm fantastic! But in the real world, I stink, and should not be a pundit.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, April 21, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report

People, World, Justice, Confidence

“I think there will always be challenges for women and men. There are always going to be male chauvenists but it's just a matter of women continuing to stand up for their rights and prove their worth. The world would end if women didn't start families, carry children, but that is no reason for them not to work, have careers, exist as a person rather than just a mother.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia is my kind of girl! https://eu.marliesdekkers.com/en-it/maison-marlies/anastacia-is-my-kind-of-girl.html, MarlieDekkers.com, 2014. General Quotes

Women, Men, Children, World

“In vain do individual great men seek to mint new concepts and to set them in circulation — it is pointless. They are used for only a moment, and not by many, either, and they merely contribute to making the confusion even worse, for one idea seems to have become the fixed idea of the age: to get the better of one's superior. If the past may be charged with a certain indolent self-satisfaction in rejoicing over what it had, it would indeed be a shame to make the same charge against the present age (the minuet of the past and the gallop of the present). Under a curious delusion, the one cries out incessantly that he has surpassed the other, just as the Copenhageners, with philosophic visage, go out to Dyrehausen "in order to see and observe," without remembering that they themselves become objects for the others, who have also gone out simply to see and observe. Thus there is the continuous leap-frogging of one over the other — "on the basis of the immanent negativity of the concept", as I heard a Hegelian say recently, when he pressed my hand and made a run preliminary to jumping. — When I see someone energetically walking along the street, I am certain that his joyous shout, "I am coming over," is to me — but unfortunately I did not hear who was called (this actually happened); I will leave a blank for the name, so everyone can fill in an appropriate name.”

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

Journals IA 328, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men, Age, Idea, Past

“My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense… If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? … We all do it.
But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television. … As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

Home

“As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century […. ] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run.”

Johan Norberg book In Defense of Global Capitalism

In Defense of Global Capitalism

Time

“I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Interview in The Times (29 March 1960), p. 7
1950s

Reading

“Since I was a child, I’ve used my imagination to escape from life. At the same time, my imagination has plagued me with both reality-based anxieties as well as anxieties based entirely in the imagination, such as the fear of Hell I was taught to have by the Catholic Church. Paired with a talent for literary composition, a talent that it took me over ten years to refine, I became a writer of horror stories. To my mind, writing is the most important form of human expression, not only artistic writing but also philosophical writing, critical writing, etc. Art as such, especially programmatic music such as operas, seems trivial to me by comparison, however much pleasure we may get from it. Writing is the most effective way to express and confront the full range of the realities of life. I can honestly say that the primary stature I attach to writing is not self-serving. I’ve been captivated to some degree by all forms of creativity and expression—the visual arts, film, design of any sort, and especially music. In college I veered from literature to music for a few years, which is the main reason it took me six years to get an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. Since my instrument is the guitar, I know every form and style in its history and have written the classical, acoustic, and electric forms of this instrument. I think because I have had such a love and understanding of music do I realize, to my grief, its limitations. Writing is less limited in the consolations it offers to those who have lost a great deal in their lives. And it continues to console until practically everything in a person’s life has been lost. Words and what they express have the best chance of returning the baneful stare of life.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti http://wonderbooknow.com/interviews/thomas-ligotti/

Love, Life, Pleasure, Fear

“And Hindu society which constitutes the nation has been driven into a corner. Hindu leaders have been made to cry that they are not communalists, that they have renounced revivalism, that they cherish Islam as a great religion, that they regard Islamic heroes as their own heroes, that they have no use for people who regard the prevalent mode of secularism as perverse, and that they are fed up with that ‘lunatic fringe’ which still continues to take pride in the national heritage. …. The nation will never be able to get out of this tight corner till it clears up the terminological confusion, stops making use of meaningless words like communalism and revivalism, and rewrites its books of history, politics, and sociology in an exact and appropriate language. This exact language will substitute Nationalism for Hindu Communalism, National Resurgence for Hindu Revivalism, Islamic Atavism for Muslim Revivalism, and Islamic Imperialism for Muslim Communalism. Then alone the various elements and forces struggling for supremacy in the country at present will fall into their proper places, and come out in their true colours.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

People, Books, Religion, History

“Then came those years in which I was forced to recognize the existence of a drive within me that had to make itself small and hide from the world of light. The slowly awakening sense of my own sexuality overcame me, as it does every person, like an enemy and terrorist, as something forbidden, tempting, and sinful. What my curiosity sought, what dreams, lust and fear created — the great secret of puberty — did not fit at all into my sheltered childhood. I behaved like everyone else. I led the double life of a child who is no longer a child. My conscious self lived within the familiar and sanctioned world; it denied the new world that dawned within me. Side by side with this I lived in a world of dreams, drives and desires of a chthonic nature, across which my conscious self desperately built its fragile bridges, for the childhood world within me was falling apart. Like most parents, mine were no help with the new problems of puberty, to which no reference was ever made. All they did was take endless trouble in supporting my hopeless attempts to deny reality and to continue dwelling in a childhood world that was becoming more and more unreal. I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly.”

Hermann Hesse book Demian

Source: Demian (1919), p. 135

Life, Children, Secret, World

“No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. …I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel, Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003)

Truth, World, Peace, Dependency

“No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

Vol I; The Birth of Britain
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men, People, Imagination, History

“Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g — what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma — to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 395

Imagination, Star

“This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head - he thinks of it, whatsoever its size, as if he were holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complete form..”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Moore from his text 'The sculptor speaks' (1937), p. unknown
1925 - 1940

Thinking

“Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’. For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Source: The Tao of Physics (1975), p. 244.

Beauty, Nature, Universe, Time

“Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer. Three years later, over 16 million Americans are out of work or have just quit looking. Millions more are underemployed. Three years later, unemployment is still above 8%, a figure he said his stimulus would keep from happening. Three years later, foreclosures are still at record levels. Three years later the prices of homes continue to fall. Three years later, our national debt has grown nearly as large as our entire economy. Families are buried under higher prices for food and higher prices for gasoline. It breaks my heart to see what's happening in this country. These failing hopes make up President Obama's own misery index. It's never been higher.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Mitt Romney 2012 Presidential Campaign Announcement Speech http://blog.4president.org/2012/2011/06/mitt-romney-2012-presidential-campaign-announcement-speech-june-2-2011-stratham-new-hampshire-remark.html 2011

Family, Food, Hope, Home

“If the GOP’s “big tent” is destined to collapse, there’s no one better to be standing under it than Kemp. If the party does not collapse-and it elites continue to ignore the views of its grass roots-it will be too left-wing for any true freedom lover to support.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Jack Kemp, American Socialist" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, September 1996, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1996sep-00001,

Lovers, Support, Freedom, Grass

“Intellectual culture consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating information, though this is important, but in building up a force of thought which may be turned at will on any subjects on which we are called to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the concentration of the attention, in accurate, penetrating observation, in reducing complex subjects to their elements, in diving beneath the effect to the cause, in detecting the more subtle differences and resemblances of things, in reading the future in the present, and especially in rising from particular facts to general laws or universal truths. … Oone man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbor; whilst another looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Truth, Law, Spring, Nature

“The work of art … is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beauty.”

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

Source: Collected Poems (1966), p. 20

Beauty, Art

“Although my plans for the future haven't changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070619/bloomberg-politics/
On His Declaration to Leave the GOP

Change, Future

“The great attraction of cultural anthropology in the past was precisely that it seemed to offer such a richness of independent natural experiments; but unfortunately it is now clear that there has been a great deal of historical continuity and exchange among those "independent" experiments, most of which have felt the strong effect of contact with societies organized as modern states. More important, there has never been a human society with unlimited resources, of three sexes, or the power to read other people's minds, or to be transported great distances at the speed of light. How then are we to know the effect on human social organization and history of the need to scrabble for a living, or of the existence of males and females, or of the power to make our tongues drop manna and so to make the worse appear the better reason? A solution to the epistemological impotence of social theory has been to create a literature of imagination and logic in which the consequences of radical alterations in the conditions of human existence are deduced. It is the literature of science fiction. … [S]cience fiction is the laboratory in which extraordinary social conditions, never possible in actuality, are used to illumine the social and historical norm. … Science fiction stories are the Gedanken experiments of social science.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" The Last of the Nasties? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/feb/29/the-last-of-the-nasties," The New York Review of Books, 29 February 1996; Review of The Lost World by Michael Crichton

People, Sex, Imagination, History

Quotes about continuity page 12

Quotes about continuity
page 12