Quotes about course
page 24

“If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus (1965), Ch. 17

Intelligence, Personality

“You know, I think you see a model here in Arizona. They passed a law here that says — that says that people who come here and try and find work, that the employer is required to look them up on E-Verify. This E-Verify system allows employers in Arizona to know who's here legally and who's not here legally. And as a result of E-Verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent. So going back to the question that was asked, the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states that are trying to do the job Barack Obama isn't doing.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CNN Arizona Republican Presidential Debate http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1202/22/se.03.html, posed question: "Should there be aggressive, seek them out, find them and arrest them as Sheriff Arpaio advocates?"; referring to lawsuits against Arizona SB1070 2012

People, Law, Question, Thinking

“Of course, if you find someone who has meditated like my Master made me meditate, very happily you can take advantage of him. I am ready to help you in that case. Do not follow the false one; do not waste your life.”

Ajaib Singh (1926–1997) Sant Ajaib Singh (11 September 1926 – 6 July 1997) was born in Maina, Bhatinda district, Punjab, India. He …

Ref. http://www.ajaibbani.org/remain_firm_on_the_truth.htm.

Life, Help, Falseness

“Though the churches, in general, abstained from interfering officially, the scientific activities of the physicists have always been influenced by their private religious views. The latter, of course, were not necessarily identical with the ecclesiastical doctrines, but the philosophical attitudes of the scientists were affected, at least to some extent, by the prevailing religious thought. Kepler, Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton freely acknowledged this influence; it played a part in the principle of least action in the eighteenth century. After this period, in which Kant's philosophy proclaimed the complete independence of scientific understanding and religious belief, not much more about it is found in physical writings. However, this by no means signifies that the investigational urge of later scientists was not intimately connected with their religiosity. The tenet that the scientific experience of truth in any sense is "theoria," i. e., a view of God, might be said sincerely about the best of them. The search for knowledge without regard to its applicability for use has been "an essential trait of man through the centuries, a sign of his higher origin."”

Max von Laue (1879–1960) German physicist

[Max von Laue, History of physics, Academic Press Inc, 1950, http://www.archive.org/details/historyofphysics030356mbp, 3-5]

God, Truth, Search, Understanding

“[Winston Churchill] is the servant, not of the British public, or of the British Empire, but of International Jewish Finance. This charge must be preferred against a man who has so signally violated British tradition in the course of this war.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Broadcast, Radio Cologne, 8 April 1943.

War

“We reckoned now that we were at the Pole. Of course, every one of us knew that we were not standing on the absolute spot; it would be an impossibility with the time and the instruments at our disposal to ascertain the exact spot. But we were so near it that the few miles which possibly separated us from it could not be of the slightest importance. It was our intention to make a circle around this camp, with a radius of twelve and a half miles (20 kilometers), and to be satisfied with that. After we had halted we collected and congratulated each other. … we proceeded to the greatest and most solemn act of the whole journey - the planting of our flag.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Upon reaching the vicinity of 89° 58' 30" S, 60° E, named camp Polheim, about 1½ mile from the geographical Pole. Several forays were made from here, one southwards and beyond the pole.
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

Time

“In the course of history … new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation. … the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried on.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Books, History

“Calling the whole system "Linux" leads people to think that the system's development was started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. That is what most users seem to think. The occasional few users that do know about the GNU Project often think we played a secondary role — for example, they say to me, 'Of course I know about GNU — GNU developed some tools that are part of Linux.'”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, Thus Spake Stallman (2000)

People, Thinking, Parting

“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that…") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Journal (15 October 2007)

Life, People, Feeling, Sense

“Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase… Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech… It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I’ll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Have I Got Views for You, p277
2000s, 2006

Art, Home, Thinking, Sport

“Have the climate models been successful in predicting anything? They, of course, predict substantial global warming. This is not surprising given the expressed belief of some of the model builders in the global warming hypothesis and the many parameters in the model that need to be introduced. However, the models also predict unambiguously that the atmosphere is warming faster than the surface of the earth; but all the available observational data unambiguously shows the opposite! Truth in science is always determined from observational facts. One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis. It is absolutely essential that one should be neutral and not fall in love with the hypothesis. If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. "Truth by Assertion" is not science.”

David Douglass

http://www.gravett.org/bizarrescience/archives/003967.html
Letter to the Wall Street Journal

Love, Truth, Science, Success

“Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866 (1824)

Law, Exercises

“For nearly four decades I placed some ideation, some ideal, some abstraction, before personal love, foolishly - inhumanly - believing that some cause, some goal, some ideology, was the most important thing and therefore that, in the interests of achieving that cause, that goal, implementing that ideology, one's own personal life, one's feelings, and those of others, should and must come at least second if not further down in some lifeless manufactured schemata. My pursuit of such things - often by violent means and by incitement to violence and to disaffection - led, of course, not only to me being the cause of suffering to other human beings I did not personally know but also to being the cause of suffering to people I did know; to family, to friends, and especially to those - wives, partners, lovers - who for some reason loved me. In effect I was selfish, obsessed, a fanatic, an extremist. Naturally, as extremists always do, I made excuses - to others, to myself - for my unfeeling, suffering-causing, intolerant, violent, behaviour and actions; always believing that 'I could make a difference' and always blaming some-thing else, or someone else, for the problems I alleged existed 'in the world' and which problems I claimed, I felt, I believed, needed to be sorted out […] Yet the honest, the obvious, truth was that I - and people like me or those who supported, followed, or were incited, inspired, by people like me - were and are the problem.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Letter To My Undiscovered Self (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/letter-to-self.html

Love, Life, People, Truth

“The grandfather of concepts for predicting the probable course of industry evolution is the familiar product life cycle.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 157

“If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully — the life you save may be your own — and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (1992)

Love, Life, World, Law

“While we seek to fill up life in a way that will best secure the ends of our existence here, our whole plan and course of action should be such as will not hinder but serve our preparation for a future world.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 383.

Life, World, Way, Future

“Misleading may be the claims that procedures [of animal testing] are carried out under anaesthesia. Restraining devices and paralysing drugs can today be so effective that an anaesthetic is often unnecessary from the purely practical point of view. The risk of giving a dose too large and thereby losing an expensive chimpanzee, for example, may often tempt a scientist or technician, inexperienced with sophisticated anaesthetic techniques, to give a dose too small, from which the animal quickly recovers — but not of course until after it has been strapped securely to the operating table.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

Experiments on Animals (1971)

Animals

“Yes, of course you want every shot to be a duck-bird [a dead bird? ]”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

version in original Dutch: Ja ja, gij zoudt wel willen dat ieder schot een eendvogel was. (wanneer een schilderij niet bevredigend eindigde) Quoted by Maria Bilders-van Bosse, in her letter to A.C. Loffelt, 23 June 1895; from an excerpt of this letter https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/763 in RKD-Archive, The Hague his comment, when a painting was not good, at the end posthumous quotes

Bird, Dead

“A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual experiences—he thinks they’re great—but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. … The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the sexual experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. … The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. But if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. The sexual plight of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. … The question here is not whether the sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialog, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 38-39.

Bad luck, Children, Fear, Behavior

“The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been;
the attraction between them had gradually diminished,
the attraction had diminished a great deal.
But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Before Time Altered Them http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=123&cat=1 Collected Poems (1992)

Love

“Even the managers. It was all a feudal style of management. If we had accepted that style, we would not have grown. It was simply not a scalable model. Of course, the easiest thing would have been to follow it. But we had a disruptive style of management. So we said, 'we don't want people carrying their wisdom in notebooks as if it is some kind of secretive operation.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on how Reliance was built

Wisdom, People, Secret

“As a father, I have serious concerns about what life will be like for my kids, if I'm even here. Am I scared of the death threats, and people who want to kill me and the attacks against me, etc? Yeah, I am. Of course, I am. I wouldn't be human if I wasn't. But I am terrified for the entire next generation of this country, and its history, its culture, its identity – it's all under attack.”

Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist

CBN News interview

Life, Death, People, History

“Isn’t this illegal? In the case of the cameras accessed using default passwords, of course. Attorney Jay Leiderman told Motherboard that Insecam “is a stunningly clear violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) [I made it clear that the CFAA was an American law, and that this may or may not be illegal in other countries],” even if it is intended as a PSA. “You put a password on a computer to keep it private, even if that password is just ‘1.’ It’s entry into a protected computer.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated in, Jay Leiderman Quoted on the CFAA: This terrifying website lets you spy on people through 73,000 Private Security Cameras. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-this-terrifying-website-lets-you-spy-on-people-through-73000-private-security-cameras/

Law, Fraud, Country

“For any picture, ask yourself what question or questions it might be answering. Since the picture could answer many, questions, we can decide what question we are interested in. The picture will, of course, suggest that some questions are likely to find answers in it. For instance, Owens's pictures of pantries and refrigerators clearly suggest that they will answer questions about what kinds of food the inhabitants of the houses store and presumably eat, while other pictures in Suburbia suggest that they will answer other questions about the housekeeping arrangements of these people.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Howard Becker (1974). "Art as Collective Action." American Sociological Review 39:767-76.

People, Food, Question, Housing

“Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD, Mr. Vincent Smith says, "…. Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.' " Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of the Buddha in India.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

"The Decline and Fall of Buddhism", in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III (1987), Government of Maharashtra, p. 229-388

Books, Religion, Reading

“IV. Thesis. Freedom is very well compatible with sound lawfulness of the course of nature. But the concept of a timeless God is then untenable. But the restriction which omnipotence and omniscience suffer through freedom of the creature in the sense above determined, must be eliminated by the assumption of a temporally acting God, of a ruler of the hearts and destinies of men; the concept of Providence must be supplemented and in part replaced by the notion of government of the world.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

No Antithesis indicated.
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Men, God, World, Law

“There was a god or goddess of wind, rain, lightning, thunder, clouds, stars, sun, and of course, the moon goddess, and they all more or less worked under SkyMaker.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 50

God, Star, Sun

“In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course. To the pilgrim often a single footstep suffices to enable him to find his way across the bewildering plain.”

Pietro Metastasio Achille in Sciro

Fra l' ombre un lampo solo
Basta al nocchier fugace
Che già ritrova il polo,
Già riconosce il mar.
Al pellegrin ben spesso
Basta un vestigio impresso,
Perchè la via fallace
Non l'abbia ad ingannar.
Act I, scene 6.
Achille in Sciro (1736)

Way, Star, Light

“At the time, I was working for The Times. My story ran in full. Then an official of the Foreign Office lunched my editor and told him my report was "not helpful". Because, of course, we supported President Saddam at the time and wanted revolutionary Iran to suffer and destroy itself. President Saddam was the good guy then. I wasn't supposed to report his human rights abuses. And now I'm not supposed to report the slaughter of the innocent by American or RAF pilots because the British Government has changed sides.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The ministry of mendacity strikes again http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles209.htm, April 4, 2003 2003

Guy, Support, Suffering, Change

“In our advance to a greater life, we confront an initial obstacle. Unless we remove or overcome this obstacle, we can rise no further. We spend our time in a daze of diminished existence, neither awake nor asleep. We resign ourselves to compromise and routine, seeing the world through the categories of the prevailing culture or the methods of established ways of thinking. We reconcile ourselves to the mutilation of our experience that we begin to accept when we entered on a particular course of life. We allow ourselves to be subdued by the carapace of diminished experience that formed around is, as we grew older. For the vast majority of men and women, overwhelming economic necessity and drudgery overwhelm and disguise a stupefaction that would otherwise be apparent. For the increasing number of people who, with the material progress of society, are released from grinding material constraint, there is no disguise. In this way, we cease to live as embodied spirit: as the context-bound but context-resisting agents that we really are. That which is most precious—life itself—we give away in return for nothing. We belittle ourselves, wrongly mistaking our belittlement for a fate as inescapable as our mortality, our groundlessness, and our insatiability.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 356

Life, Women, Men, Fate

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Money, War, Cars, Confidence

“In light of knowledge obtained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and final emergence into light—only those who have experienced it can understand that.”

Albert Einstein book The World as I See It

"Notes on the Origin of the General Theory of Relativity" (1934) Mein Weltbild, in Ideas and Opinions (1954) ed., Carl Seelig.
1930s

Happiness, Confidence, Search, Intelligence

“The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

The Sunday Times, London (10 May 1992)

People, Secret, Change

“It's all true. It's true I didn't want to be a dancer. What I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then at 14 I discovered girls, and began to study dancing diligently. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a hell of a shortstop.”

Gene Kelly (1912–1996) American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer and choreographer

Speaking on March 8, 1985 at the American Film Institute; as quoted in "Hollywood Honors Man Who `Danced Joy'" by Paul Rosenfield, in Los Angeles Times (March 9, 1985)

Love, Dreams, Way, Girl

“Man can live without animal flesh; consequently the eating of this flesh is purely to gratify an appetite — and a perverted appetite at that. No normal appetite could possibly crave flesh of any kind. So that there is no possible excuse for the killing and eating of animals, than this — except, of course, ignorance. After all, that is the greatest factor! It is against this taking of life unnecessarily that the vegetarian protests…”

Hereward Carrington (1880–1958) Jersey parapsychologist

Source: The Natural Food for Man, p. 157

Life, Animals

“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times—a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream—an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly—an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth—these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 88

Family, Food, Beauty, Cars

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Commonly quoted on many websites, this quotation is actually from an address by President Gerald Ford to the US Congress (12 August 1974) http://www.bartleby.com/73/714.html Misattributed

History

“…Hades had opened its gates and vomited forth the basest, most despicable, most horrible demons. In the course of my life I had seen something of untrammeled human insights of horror of panic. I had taken part in a dozen battles in the First World War, had experienced barrages, gassings, going over the top. I had witnessed the turmoil of the postwar era, the crushing uprisings, street battles, meeting hall brawls. I was present among the bystanders during the Hitler Putsch in 1923 in Munich. I saw the early period of Nazi rule in Berlin. But none of this was comparable to those days in Vienna. What was unleashed upon Vienna had nothing to do with [the] seizure of power in Germany. …What was unleashed upon Vienna was a torrent of envy, jealousy, bitterness, blind, malignant craving for revenge. All better instincts were silenced… only the torpid masses had been unchained. …It was the witch's Sabbath of the mob. All that makes for human dignity was buried.”

Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977) German writer and playwright

As quoted & translated by Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006) referencing Als Wärs ein Stück von Mir (1966) see also, A Part of Myself: Portrait of an Epoch Tr. Richard and Clara Winston (1984)

Life, War, World, Jealousy

“I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness-raise it increasingly, in the course of the years to come, because we shall never stop planting.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Joseph Beuys (1982), as cited in: Land and environmental art, Jeffrey Kastner, ‎Brian Wallis (1998), p. 164 - about his 7.000 Oaks [see there the image].
1980's

“Of course I'm inconsistent! Only logicians and cretins are consistent!”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

spoken by the character "The Chink".
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)

“Perhaps if Hitler had had the wisdom to withdraw his troops and prepare for the defense of his own country, Germany, despite the loss of face this would entail in the losing of all Italy, then the course of the war, if not the outcome, would have been quite different.”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

Italy, p. 133
Vokes - My Story (1985)

Wisdom, War, Loss, Country

“In the Buddhist scriptures one of the qualities attributed to Right Mindfulness is called “‘non-superficiality,” and this is, of course, just a negative way of expressing our positive term “thoroughness.””

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 31

Way

“We must recognise that in an integrated world, trade cannot be divorced from other concerns. We need to promote free trade and serious global efforts with respect to common problems even as we support every nation's right to chart its own course.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Statement made at World Economic Forum — reported in Muihoong (February 1, 2000) "China trade vote a key test, says Summers", The Straits Times, p. 9.
2000s

World, Support, Problem, Effort

“I've learned things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn't really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.”

Julie Andrews (1935) British actress, singer, author, theatre director, and dancer

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel {February 2000)

Life, People, Fear, Learning

“You ask what I am for and what I am against in Spain. I would give my right hand of course to prevent the agony; I would not give a flick of my little finger to help either side win.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Response in a pamphlet Writers Take Sides : Letters About the War in Spain from 418 American Authors (1938) by the American Writers League, which asked various authors: "Are you for or are you against Franco and fascism?".

Help

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin" http://books.google.com/books?id=OF-YSMKCVwMC&q=%22A+proud+man+is+always+looking+down+on+things+and+people+and+of+course+as+long+as+you+are+looking+down+you+cannot+see+something+that+is+above+you%22&pg=PA124#v=onepage Mere Christianity (1952)

People

“[ John Rawls's] Theory of Justice begins with this assertion: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust …. Truth and justice are uncompromising” (p. 3). How, one might ask. do we know that justice has this preeminence? Rawls’s second basic claim is that we have a particular kind of access to this preeminence: we have an “intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice” (p. 4) over all other considerations including welfare, efficiency, democratic choice, transparency, dignity, international competitiveness, or freedom, and, of course, over any rooted moral, philosophical, or religious conceptions. There is no account of where these intuitions came from, whether they might be in any way historically or sociologically variable, or what role they play in society.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 70-71.

Truth, Justice, Law, Way

“There are, of course, rare leaders such as Lincoln, Gandhi… They do not hesitate to harness man's hungers and fears to weld a following and make it zealous unto death in the service of a holy cause; but… they are not tempted to use the slime of frustrated souls as the mortar in the building of a new world… for they know that no one can be honorable unless he honors mankind.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 113, Ch. 17 The Practical Men of Action
The True Believer (1951), Part Four: Beginning and End

Death, Hunger, World, Fear

“And by the way, there is some irony here, when we are told that we need these workers to support an aging society, yet, over the past three decades we have allowed over 40 million Americans to die in abortion clinics. Why have we turned our hearts on our own innocent babies and embraced the culture of death? We no longer even talk about the tragedy of abortion or its consequences on our mothers, our culture, or our land. Instead, of course, we are replacing- we are seeking to replace the missing with an imported servant class.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

Death, Age, Way, Support

“I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the 'Rocinante'
Wheeling through the galaxies
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery
-- Cygnus X-1, Book One; The Voyage (1977)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Books, Way, Light, Heart

“In 1923, when I had been a student at the 'Bauhaus' in Weimar…. Gropius [the director of Bauhaus] asked me to teach the basic course 'Werklehhre'. He wanted me to introduce newcomers to the principles of handicrafts. He knew that I came from that background and had appropriate practice and knowledge.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Source: Homage to the square' (1964), A conversation with Josef Albers' (1970), p. 459

Knowledge

“The intermedia network has made all of us artists by proxy. A decade of television-watching is equal to a comprehensive course in dramatic acting, writing, and filming… the mystique is gone - we could almost do it ourselves. Unfortunately too many of us do just that: hence the glut of sub-mediocre talent in the entertainment industry.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 58

“In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"Nathaniel Hawthorne"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Life, Time, Reading

“During the final months of the campaign, as polls indicated that I had a real chance of becoming the next leader, opposition from the supply management lobby gathered speed. Radio-Canada reported on dairy farmers who were busy selling Conservative Party memberships across Quebec. A Facebook page called Les amis de la gestion de l’offre et des régions (Friends of supply management and regions) was set up and had gathered more than 10,500 members by early May. As members started receiving their ballots by mail from the party, its creator, Jacques Roy, asked them to vote for Andrew Scheer.
Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges. Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore. During these last months of the campaign, the number of members in Quebec had increased considerably, from about 6,000 to more than 16,000. In April 2018, according to my estimates, we are down to about 6,000 again.
A few days after the vote, Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the CBC, calculated that if only 66 voters in a few key ridings had voted differently, I could have won. The points system, by which every riding in the country represented 100 points regardless of the number of members they had, gave outsized importance in the vote to a handful of ridings with few members. Of course, a lot more than 66 supply management farmers voted, likely thousands of them in Quebec, Ontario, and the other provinces. I even lost my riding of Beauce by 51% to 49%, the same proportion as the national vote.
At the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa a few days after the vote, a gala where personalities make fun of political events of the past year, Andrew was said to have gotten the most laughs when he declared: “I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody…”, stopping in mid-sentence to take a swig of 2% milk from the carton. “It’s a high quality drink and it’s affordable too.” Of course, it was so funny because everybody in the room knew that was precisely why he got elected. He did what he thought he had to do to get the most votes, and that is fair game in a democratic system. But this also helps explain why so many people are so cynical about politics, and with good reason.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

page 23 in "Live or die with supply management", chapter 5 previewed April 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/my_chapter_on_supply_management of "Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada"

People, Game, Drink, Business

“Of course, she does seem to be a rather good doctor. At the very least she has done the King no obvious harm, and that in my experience is far more than one might reasonably expect from a court physician.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 7 (p. 130)

“Eva is perfectly content with her academic research,” said Diana. “She just isn’t interested in power. As I say those sentences,” she added, clasping her knees to her chest, “I can tell they’re both wrong. Aren’t they? Of course she’s interested in power.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

“She’s a human being,” agreed Iago.
Part 3, Chapter 8, “The Wrath of Diana” (p. 339).
Jack Glass (2012)

“From the Kantian doctrine of the a priori carried to its genuine completion, as we have now seen it, we infer that the objects which present themselves in course of the normal and critical action of human consciousness are all that objects as objects can be; that beyond or beneath what completed human reason (moral, of course, as well as perceptive and reflective) finds in objects and their relations, or can and will find, there is nothing to be found; that our universe is the universe, which exists, so far as we know it, precisely as we know it, and indeed in and through our knowing it, though not merely by that. To state the case more technically, the cognition belonging to each mind is the indispensable condition of the existence of reality, though it is not the completely sufficient condition. If one asks, What then is this sufficient condition, the answer is, The consensus of the whole system of minds, including the Supreme Mind, or God.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.170

God, Reality, Universe

“As used in the Due Process Clauses, 'liberty' most likely refers to 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and structure. Both of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses reach back to Magna Carta. Chapter 39 of the original Magna Carta provided ', No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land'. Although the 1215 version of Magna Carta was in effect for only a few weeks, this provision was later reissued in 1225 with modest changes to its wording as follows: 'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

In his influential commentary on the provision many years later, Sir Edward Coke interpreted the words 'by the law of the land' to mean the same thing as 'by due proces of the common law'. Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015). 2010s

Law, Way, Change, Personality

“No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I’m not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Love, People, Learning, Joy

“In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system…The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Speech in Potsdam (13 October 1926), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92-93.
1920s

History, Nature

“The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 3, The Golden Horde, p. 59

Business

“Imagine you are God. You’re all-powerful, nothing is beyond you. You’re all-loving. So it is really, really important to you that humans are left in no doubt about your existence and your loving nature, and exactly what they need to do in order to get to heaven and avoid eternity in the fires of hell. It’s really important to you to get that across. So what do you do? Well, if you’re Jehovah, apparently this is what you do. You talk in riddles. You tell stories which on the surface have a different message from the one you apparently want us to understand. You expect us to hear X, and instinctively understand that it needs to be interpreted in the light of Y, which you happen to have said in the course of a completely different story 500-1,000 years earlier. Instead of speaking directly into our heads - which God has presumed the capability of doing so - simply, clearly and straightforwardly in terms which the particular individual being addressed will immediately understand and respond to positively - you steep your messages in symbols, in metaphors. In fact, you choose to convey the most important message in the history of creation in code, as if you aspired to be Umberto Eco or Dan Brown. Anyone would think your top priority was to keep generation after generation after generation of theologians in meaningless employment, rather than communicate an urgent life-or-death message to the creatures you love more than any other.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

FFRF 2012 National Convention, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTQiChzTNI?t=43m19s

Love, Life, Death, God

“This was not the first time Lito David backtracked on his issues against Senator Grace (Poe). Earlier, he also agreed to drop the residency issue in the petition he had filed against her due to a rule requiring the filing of disqualification case based on residency within 10 days from proclamation of the candidate. To say that a foundling like Senator Grace cannot be considered a citizen of the Philippines is a violation of an individual’s basic and alienable human right to bear a nationality from birth. The petition was given due course and Sen. Grace already faced him at the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET). I don’t understand why he called for a press conference against Sen. Grace, unless his motives are purely political. If indeed political, who is behind David? Why is he engaging Sen. Grace in a political discourse outside the SET?”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, September 15). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153581153210610/ 2015, Facebook

Motivation, Birth, Understanding, Time

“The professed Philosophy of Evolution is not an adult philosophy, but rather a philosophy that in the course of growth has suffered an arrest of development.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.53-4

Suffering

“Everybody is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

as quoted in photo-exhibition 'Cy Twombly', museum Marseille Amsterdam, autumn 2008
2000s

Way, Thinking

“In my conversation, I shall talk and act as I please. Still I am always aware, when speaking in public, that there are those present who are disposed to find fault with this people, and to try to raise a prejudice against them; and they will pick up isolated words and sentences, and put them together to suit themselves, and send forth a garbled version to prejudice the world against us. Such a course I never care anything about; for I have frequently said, spoken words are but wind, and when they are spoken are gone; consequently I take liberties in speaking which I do not allow when I commit my sentiments to writing.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 2:179 (February 18, 1855)
Young predicts that people will take his written words and rearrange them to suit themselves.
1850s

People, World

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being…This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Introduction, Section II: Of the Nature of Laws in General
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

God, Law, Nature, Time

“The devil does not sign contracts with just anyone. Upon the tens of millions, no judgment is pronounced. For them there is death, of course, but no doom. The trouble with history is its incorrigible and horrifying honesty. Only the truly doomed matter a damn to it. History is the abyss of the doomed.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p.185

Death, History

“The attack should not have happened, of course. The rice farmer sergeant had been perfectly right; the Federation could not afford to risk its own great cites to punish the villagers of Venus. He was right—from his viewpoint.
A rice farmer has one logic; the men who live by and for power have another and entirely different logic. Their lives are built on tenuous assumptions, fragile as reputation; they could not afford to ignore a challenge to their power—the Federation could not afford not to punish the insolent colonists.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 10, “While I Was Musing the Fire Burned” (p. 113)

Men

“The nature of man remains ever the same: in the ten thousandth year of the World he will be born with passions, as he was born with passions in the two thousandth, and ran through his course of follies to a late, imperfect, useless wisdom. We wander in a labyrinth, in which our lives occupy but a span; so that it is to us nearly a matter of indifference, whether there be any entrance or outlet to the intricate path.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe.
Vol. 2, p. 186; translation vol. 2, pp. 266-7
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Wisdom, World, Nature, Passion

“There can be no question but that Christianity was originally a Jewish promotion, and it is noteworthy that the Christians who try to make their cult respectable in the Third Century claim that they repudiate the Jews. One of the earliest to do this was Tertullian, a Carthaginian shyster, whose Apologeticum, a defense of Christianity, was written at the very beginning of the Third Century. He asserts that Christianity is not a conspiracy of revolutionaries and degenerates, as was commonly believed, and claims that it is an association of loving brothers who have preserved the faith that the Jews forsook – which has been the common story ever since. Our holy men salvage Tertullian by claiming that he was "orthodox" in his early writings, but then, alas! became a Montanist heretic, poor fellow. Tertullian is the author of the famous dictum that he believes the impossible because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum), so he is naturally dear to the heart of the pious. How much Jerome and other saints have tampered with the facts to make Tertullian seem "orthodox" in his early works has been most fully shown by Timothy Barnes in his Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), but even he spends a hundred pages pawing over chronological difficulties that can be reconciled by what seems to me the simple and obvious solution: Tertullian, who was evidently a pettifogging lawyer before he got into the Gospel-business, had sense enough to eliminate from his brief for the Christians facts that would have displeased the pagans whom he was trying to convince that Christians represented no threat to civilized society; he accordingly concealed in his apologetic works the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sect to which he had been originally "converted," but he naturally expounded those doctrines in writings intended, not for the eyes of wicked pagans, but for other brands of Christians, whom he wished to convert to his own sect, which was that of Montanus, a very Holy Prophet (divinely inspired, of course) who was a Phrygian, not a Jew, and who had learned from chats with God that since the Jews had muffed their big opportunity at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus, when he returned next year or the year after that, was going to set up his New Jerusalem in Phrygia after he had raised hell with the pagans and tormented and butchered them in all of the delightful ways so lovingly described in the Apocalypse, the Hymn of Hate that still soothes the souls of "fundamentalist" Christians today. If, in his Apologeticum and similar works, Tertullian had told the stupid pagans that they were going to be tortured and exterminated in a year or two, they might have doubted that Christians were the innocent little lambs that Tertullian claimed they were.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Love, Men, God, Hate

“[Footnote:] A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Cobra
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Home

Jonathan Wolff (philosopher)

Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991), p. 106 http://books.google.com/books?id=A8D3CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT106

World, Justice, Feeling, Nature

“[Women] Inferior? Superior! I am sexist, of course.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Superstacja 19.08.2009 http://www.viddler.com/explore/ciauprtv/videos/748/597.418/, Answer for question: "Are you sexist? Do you think that women are inferior to men??"

Women

“The first fallacy of Communism is its attempt to over-simplify history. Marx and Engels attempted to change history from a fluid stream, fed by human activities from millions of tributaries, into a fixed, undeviating, pre-determined course of progress which could be charted in the past and predicted for the future on the basis of a single, simple criterion - economics. Obviously economics have played a vital and powerful role in human history but so have climate, topography, access to oceans and inland waterways, mechanical inventions, scientific discoveries, national and racial affinities, filial affection, religion, desire for explanatory adventure, sentiments of loyalty, patriotism and a multitude of other factors.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Religion, History, Communication, Change

“When our society is tested - we depend on the strength of the institutions which sustain that society - our churches, trade unions, charities, our universities and colleges, our legal system. And, of course, our political institutions, which should be a source of hope, a source of purpose.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

Hope, Universe, Dependency

“I have had what might be called a post graduate course in the most important subject for all Canadians - Canada itself.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, December 18, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

“This is where we store our bicycles. A lot of people ride their bikes to work here. And, of course, there has to be a robot to protect them and make sure they don't get stolen like R2D2 in episode two where he did a very bad job in protecting Princess Amidala from those worm things. But this robot is significantly more effective as a theft-deterrant system than R2D2 was in that film. That's why the bikes are here.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

From Disc Two; Behind the Scenes: Big Idea Tour (00:02:28-00:02:50)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

People, Princess

“There is another story, that we tried to impose upon him [Arafat] cantons, Bantustans. Total lie. We talked about 80%+ of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip. How can it become non-contiguous? And if you have some reservation against this or that curl of the border, at some corner, come to the table, negotiate it, and demand that this will be removed. I can go with you more and more, and I cannot afford spending more time on it, but basically, all these were stories that were invented in order to explain to his own people, and maybe to try to convince honest people in the free world how come that such an opportunity had been missed. Of course, I had my own demands, to protect Israel, to ensure our security, to make sure that we know where do we head. I said loud and clear: we have to put an end to this asymmetric process where we are supposed to give tangible assets, and the Palestinians have just to give vague promises about the nature of future relationship. I said I'm ready to go very far, but I want to know, now, that there is a partner, which is ready and capable to make tough decisions, and painful decisions. I was a great supporter of the peace of the brave, but never a supporter of peace of ostriches, where you put your head in the sand, let whatever happen, happen, and then wake up and say, OK, that's what happened. We cannot afford this approach. That's the reality.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

Pain, People, Lie, World

“Each time we eat we are choosing to support a system. In our choice of agricultural production methods, we can support one which either helps our future, or one which undermines it. The same is true of our actual dietary choices we make. The healthiest diet is one rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, low in animal products. This is better for the environment, our health and of course animals. I'm a vegan because I care for animals and for the future of our planet. Additionally, a vegan diet helps to prevent and reverse a range of non-communicable diseases including heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol, type II diabetes. Each time we eat, we are either feeding disease, or fighting it.”

Elizabeth Kucinich (1977) British activist

"Food, Regenerative Agriculture & Climate", in ElizabethKucinich.com (2016) https://www.elizabethkucinich.com/issues.

Health, Disease, Support, Time

“Before the eighteenth century the demographic impact of the profession of medicine remained negligible. Relatively few persons could afford to pay a doctor for his often very expensive services; and for every case in which the doctor's attendance really made a difference between life and death, there were other instances in which even the best available professional services made little difference to the course of the disease, or actually hindered recovery. …Only with the eighteenth century did the situation begin to change; and it was not until after 1850 or so that the practice of medicine and the organization of medical services begin to make large-scale differences in human survival rates and population growth.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Life, Death, Disease, Change

“You know, I never planned to leave. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. You know, I played their game, pretending, of course. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB… Horrifying.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union

Statement in television interview: Larry King (May 5, 2002). " Interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/05/lklw.00.html", Larry King Weekend, CNN.

People, Game

“Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.”

Alexander Haig (1924–2010) former U.S. States Secretary of State and U.S. Army general

March 30, 1981, after Ronald Reagan was hospitalized. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/04/23/60II/main287292.shtml.

Housing

“The line of march of all spirits is always progressive, never retrograde. They raise themselves gradually In the hierarchy of existence they never descend from the rank at which they have once arrived. In the course of their different corporeal existences they may descend in rank as men, but not as spirits. Thus the soul of one who has been at the pinnacle of earthly power may, in a subsequent incarnation, animate the humblest day-labourer, and vice versa; for the elevation of ranks among men is often In the inverse ratio of that of the moral sentiments. Herod was a king, and Jesus, a carpenter.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 128.

Men, Soul, Animals

“I will be even briefer than Fabian, I thought I would creep in the back and I don’t have to say anything but what I would like to say and I came in when Eddy was 10 speaking and that was because we had a very constructive meeting with the High Commissioner yesterday and we made some decisions which is always good. Where I disagree sometimes with the Greek Cypriots is that I wanted to vote for Turkey never to be in the European Union! I have no interest in Turkey being in the EU until all, a whole host of problems are resolved and it is of course the Cyprus problem for me first on the agenda, but it is the Kurdish problem, its the military backing barracks, and all the rest of that, you know there are no human rights and many human rights violations in Turkey. So whether it takes 20 years or longer that makes me think that Turkey is using Cyprus as a lever to get as much out of it as is possible and of course the longer it takes for them not to be a member the longer that lever takes and the longer we will have 200,000 or 300,000 Turks settled in Cyprus and that becomes a very much bigger problem than it is now already and I think that I have said that at three or four meetings before rather than us talking about the problem of Cyprus which makes that it becomes a problem for the Republic as it is worldwide known we ought to talk about the problem of Turkey, it is really a 100% Turkish problem that they're not acting in the way in which they should be acting and if that’s the case well shove it to them! And I saw about 50 Turkish … [(A Turkish Cypriot member of the audience accused him saying "You are racist!" and returns his comments…. Many interruptions and heckling from the audience, some Greek Cypriots shouted for the Turkish Cypriot to get out if he didn’t like what he was hearing and three or four police officers arrived in the room.)] Well, it has certainly allocated my speech time and I would only say to the gentleman that we have nothing against honest straightforward Turkish Cypriots but Turkey is using the occupied territory to settle Turkish people they don’t necessarily want in Turkey, many are unemployed, that is not racism, that is a set of true facts and I don’t know whether you are a Turkish Cypriot or a Turkish person I have no disrespect for anybody in the world, but I have deep disrespect for the Turkish Government and the Turkish military and that is my last word on that!”

Rudi Vis (1941–2010) British politician

[At the Friends of Cyprus meeting in the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons, 3rd July 2007] (see External links for transcript)

People, World, Way, Problem

“Of course, Charlie and I can identify only a few Inevitables, even after a lifetime of looking for them. Leadership alone provides no certainties: Witness the shocks some years back at General Motors, IBM and Sears, all of which had enjoyed long periods of seeming invincibility. Though some industries or lines of business exhibit characteristics that endow leaders with virtually insurmountable advantages, and that tend to establish Survival of the Fattest as almost a natural law, most do not. Thus, for every Inevitable, there are dozens of Impostors, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1996 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1996.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law, Business, Nature

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Life, People, World, Way

“Strangely, I liked them (the Sex Pistols) until they made records. I saw them quite a few times before they actually made records. And when they did, it just became… suddenly punk had this enormous scope and was everywhere. Obviously it lost everything. And looking back, I don't really have that much affection for the whole punk thing. It really didn't mean so much to me at all. But of course, I would rather it have been there than not.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with David Jensen (1983)
In interviews etc., About other artists

Sex, Time

“A picture that I painted after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain [in 1936, Max Ernst was a resolute opponent of the Spanish dictator General Franco, who was supported by Germany's Nazi regime] is 'The Fireside Angel'. This is, of course, an ironic title for a rampaging beast that destroys and annihilates anything that gets in its way. This was my idea at the time of what would probably happen in the world, and I was right.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Room 10, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to his painting 'L'ange du foyer' / 'Le triomphe du surréalisme', 1937 ('The Fireside Angel' / The Triumph of Surrealism'); the alternative title was offered by Ernst himself in 1938, when he spontaneously opted for a different title: 'The Triumph of Surrealism'.
1936 - 1950

World, Angels, Way, Idea

“As conscious beings advance in mental growth, they come to recognise that this ideal must embrace not merely their own kin or neighbours, not only their tribe or nation, not only the whole race or species, but all conscious beings whatever, no matter how foreign. It is surely probable that this desire for the fulfilment of personality-in-community plays a very large part in the universe. We must remember, of course, that the particular forms which it may take in different kinds of worlds, up and down the universe, may be utterly alien to our comprehension and appreciation. Or rather, not utterly alien; since, if these arguments are correct, there is an essential underlying kinship and identity in all possible kinds of conscious being.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Source: Philosophy and Living (1939), Chapter VII: Ethics

World, Communication, Universe, Parting

“We are Germany 1930. And if people don't speak out, you have no choice of changing course later. You can deny it all you want, but the socialist revolution is here.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2014-01-28
The Glenn Beck Program
Radio, quoted in * 2014-01-28
Beck: Criticism Of Tom Perkins Proves 'The Socialist Revolution Is Here'
Kyle
Mantyla
RightWingWatch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beck-criticism-tom-perkins-proves-socialist-revolution-here
2014-02-05
regarding criticism of billionaire Tom Perkins for comparing the Occupy Movement to Nazi Germany his letter to the editor, * 2014-01-24
Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316913982034286
2010s, 2014

People, Change

“"Treading" does not simply mean treading with the feet. Tread with the body, tread with the spirit, and, of course, tread and cut with the long sword. You must achieve the spirit of not allowing the enemy to attack a second time. This is the spirit of forestalling in every sense. Once at the enemy, you should not aspire just to strike him, but to cling after the attack. You must study this deeply.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Sense, Study, Time

“A resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than government resource allocation. The government can offer, justifying it with one reason or another, "Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces. Through the tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft — the taking of one person's rightful property to give to another.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Personality

“My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a course of Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness" was that which I had always been taught to apply.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Happiness, Education, Sense

“She could kill him easily. But the lash-tube wavered. Cris Johnson stood without fear; he wasn't at all afraid. Why not? Didn't he understand what it was? What the small metal tube could do to him?
"Of course," she said suddenly, in a choked whisper. "You can see ahead. You know I'm not going to kill you. Or you wouldn't have come here."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)

Fear, Understanding

““How does it feel to have just changed the course of history?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the navigator. “To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I’m going to be dead.””

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (11) “The Sealed Train”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Way, Feeling, History, Thinking

“The houses of this country (Maharashtra) are exceedingly strong and built solely of stone and iron. The hatchet-men of the Government in the course of my marching do not get sufficient strength and power (i. e., time) to destroy and raze the temples of the infidels that meet the eye on the way. You should appoint an orthodox inspector (darogha) who may afterwards destroy them at leisure and dig up their foundations.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maharashtra . Aurangzeb to Ruhullah Khan in Kalimat-i-Aurangzib. Kalimat-i-Aurangzeb, quoted in Sarkar, Jadu Nath, History of Aurangzeb,Volume III, Calcutta, 1972 Impression. p. 188-89 quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/page/n299 Quotes from late medieval histories

Men, Way, Strong, Time

“Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.”

David Whitmer (1805–1888) Book of Mormon witness

Letter of David Whitmer to Anthony Metcalf, March 1887. Quoted in Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1981), p. 86.

Angels, Nature, Time

“…the power to control the supply of money, which is one of the fundamental aspects of sovereignty, has passed from government into other hands; and therefore new institutions must be set up which will in effect exercise some of the major functions of government. They would set the level of public expenditure, and settle fiscal policy, the exercise of taxing and borrowing powers of the state, since these are indisputedly the mechanism by which the money supply is determined. But they would do more than this. They would be supreme over the economic ends and the social structure of society: for by fixing prices and incomes they would have to replace the entire automatic system of the market and supply and demand—be that good or evil—and put in its place a series of value judgments, economic or social, which they themselves would have to make…There is a specific term for this sort of polity. It is, of course, totalitarian, because it must deliberately and consciously determine the totality of the actions and activities of the members of the community; but it is a particular kind of totalitarian regime, one, namely, in which authority is exercised and the decisions are taken by a hierarchy of unions or corporations—to which, indeed, on this theory the effective power has already passed. For this particular kind of totalitarianism the Twentieth Century has a name. That name is "fascist."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Leamington (18 September 1972), quoted in The Times (19 September 1972), p. 12
1970s

Money, Exercises, Communication, Decision

“The struggle against arbitrariness, as violence and as deception, requires people to build a society that is less hostage to itself. No central aspect of its arrangements must be left invisible or immune to challenge in the normal course of our routines of conflict and exchange. Objectivity is achieved not by holding fast to a given structure, resolutely contrasted to the hell of force and fraud, but by rendering the structure insubstantial—by turning it, increasingly, into the structure of no structure. This is the realistic next best to the visionary ideal of a circumstance in which all hierarchies and divisions have fallen down forever. The next best consists in the circumstance in which these hierarchies and divisions are repeatedly dragged out into the light of struggle and revision.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 45-46

People, Hell, Fraud, Light

Quotes about course page 24

Quotes about course
page 24