Quotes about course
page 41

“It is because we know that we are going forward to life and resurrection that we must purify ourselves in order that we may be presented holy and faultless. This purification, of course, is not just ritual or moral. It is purification from the stains of the world. It will manifest itself in our freedom with regard to the things of the world. This is why hope and freedom are so often related in the texts. The hope which binds us to the risen Christ by a full and actual bond is precisely that which allows us to reject the validity of the secular powers.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 17

Life, World, Hope, Freedom

“How long will men dare to call anything expedient that is not right? Can odium and infamy be of service to any empire, which ought to be supported by glory and by the good-will of its allies? I was often at variance even with my friend Cato. He seemed to me to guard the treasury and the revenues too obstinately, to refuse everything to the farmers of the revenue, and many things to our allies; while we ought to be generous to our allies, and to deal with the farmers of the revenue as leniently as we individually do with our own tenants, especially as the union of orders to which such a course would conduce is for the well-being of the state.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, Sect. 22, as translated by Andrew P. Peabody
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

Men, Support

“Of course the avaricious man of our day, be he landlord, merchant, industrialist, does not adore sacks of coins or bundles of banknotes in some little chapel and upon some little altar. He does not kneel before these spoils of other men, nor does he address prayers or canticles to them amidst odorous clouds of incense. But he proclaims that money is the only good, and he yields it all his soul. A cult sincere, without hypocrisy, never growing weary, never forsworn. Whenever he says, in the debasement of his heart and his speech, that he loves money for the delights it can purchase, he lies or he terribly deceives himself, this very assertion being belied at the very moment he utters it by every one of his acts, by the infinite toil and pains to which he gladly condemns himself in order to acquire or conserve that money which is but the visible figure of the Blood of Christ circulating throughout all His members.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), pp. 89-90

Love, Men, Money, Pain

“I never felt overlooked because I didn’t expect any kind of recognition. I think that’s very typical of women. I had been acculturated to be supportive, to be accommodating, to support men in the work they do. We never think of getting credit or recognition or even taking the power. We didn’t think it those terms. Of course I think that’s changing now and there’s a surge of women who are not only running for office, but getting elected. That could make an incredible amount of difference in our world. We will never have peace in the world until feminists take power.”

Dolores Huerta (1930) American labor leader

On not getting credit for the work she did for farmworkers in “Pioneering Labor Activist Dolores Huerta: Women 'Never Think of Getting Credit' But Now That's Changing” https://time.com/5211356/dolores-huerta-pbs-documentary/ in Time Magazine (2018 Mar 27)

Women, Men, World, Making love

“My subject matter is Colombia and it has always been Colombia; I lived many years in New York, in Paris, and I have never had the feeling to paint an American or a French subject matter. The thing is that the art - and the artist - must have roots in his own land, in his own life: my life is in Colombia, and my land is Colombia. Now, of course, the language that you use to express the subject matter must be universal: the composition, the colour, the balance, etc. In this sense, subject must be local, but the language must be universal, in order to touch any human being in the world…”

Fernando Botero (1932–2023) Colombian artist

On staying with Colombia as his subject matter in “Interview: Fernando Botero” http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Art-Art_Features/34176/Interview-Fernando-Botero.html in TimeOut Shanghai (2016 Feb 25)

Life, World, Art, Feeling

“Spinoza accomplishes the synthesis of traditional philosophical components by means of breaking and shattering. It is useless to pursue the presuppositions of Spinozian philosophy if we do not look for them in the qualitative leap determined by his philosophy. The continuity of Spinozian thought with respect to the preceding course of the history of metaphysics consists of a radical discontinuity, one that exalts the utopia of consciousness and freedom (a patrimony of Western thought) in a project of liberation. The perspective of the world is not a utopia, the immanentism is not aesthetic, and the liberation is no longer artisanal, but all of this is presupposed, it is taken as a basis.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World, History, Freedom

“Many great writers inspired me, of course, but inspiration is not the same as a direct influence. I was often stirred by the beauty of great prose, the passion and startling intensity of hard-won truths, which leapt from that creative fire. … For the writer, therefore the reader, fresh truth is exhilarating, even painful truth, as in Kafka or Céline. Isn’t that what good writing finally arrives at? The insights and epigrams of Alexander Pope weren’t clichés when he wrote them, any more than those resounding lines in Shakespeare. They only became dog-eared from overuse.”

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) American novelist

The Paris Review interview (1999)

Pain, Truth, Beauty, Dogs

“The New Epoch... will bring the renaissance of woman. The Epoch of Maitreya is the Epoch of the Mother of the World. It is remarkable to observe the rapid rise of the women of India. There one can see women occupying the posts of ministers and other responsible positions. Many women of India are excellent speakers. The Indians readily elect women, because they have faith in the common sense of their wives. But, of course, there are also opponents of the liberation of woman.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

23 April 1938

Women, World, Faith, Sense

“As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On telling the histories of Uruguay and Argentina in “A Conversation with Carolina De Robertis on Immigration, Sexuality, and the True Origins of the Tango” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/conversation-carolina-de-robertis-immigration-sexuality-true-origins-tango/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2016 Apr 20)

People, Way, Feeling, History

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Paraphrasing a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Making love, Religion, Angels, Search

“The world described by modern physics has already moved far beyond our common sense and intuition, even beyond our imagination, and this is, of course, the richest resource for science fiction. I’ve tried to turn the magical world as demonstrated by modern physics into vivid stories. Most of my stories were based on and imagined along the lines of physics and cosmology.”

Liu Cixin (1963) Chinese science fiction writer

On how physics fits into his works in “In the Author’s Universe: Interview with Sci-Fi Author Cixin Liu” https://vocal.media/futurism/in-the-authors-universe-interview-with-sci-fi-author-cixin-liu in Vocal (2016)

World, Imagination, Sense, Science

“Nothing happens for the first time, especially if what you’re trying to do is to invent something absolutely novel and unprecedented. Of course, if nothing happens for the first time, that leaves the apparent problem of how anything happens at all. But the difficulty is entirely semantic: in the eternal recurrence of subatomic configurations of which our world is a simulacrum, there is no question of beginnings or endings. There are only middles, continuations, repetitions. Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (pp. 14-15)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

World, Question, Problem, Time

“I think it’s relative to the story you’re writing. Some novels are filled with summary and some are filled with scenes. Others are a beautiful, confusing mix, of course. Ultimately, I wanted to write a novel that I’d want to read later.”

Jon Pineda (1971) American writer

On choosing a story writing method in “7 QUESTIONS WITH JON PINEDA” https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2018/06/7-questions-jon-pineda in Hyphen Magazine (2018 Jun 7)

Beauty, Thinking, Reading

“I was to slowly discover that Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions and a historian’s enigma. He simultaneously means many things to many people. An alleged atheist and a staunch rationalist who strongly opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs and the caste system and dismissed cow worship as mere superstition, Savarkar was also the most vocal political voice for the Hindu community through the entire course of the Indian freedom struggle.... A feted revolutionary who created an intellectual corpus of literature that inspired the revolutionary movement in India for decades, Savarkar was also a passionate and sensitive poet, a prolific writer and playwright, and a fiery orator. ...The social reformer in him strove to dismantle the scourges of untouchability and caste hierarchies, and advocated a unification of Hindu society.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past

People, Communication, Literature, Freedom

“We are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us are Jains and some Jangamas; but Jains or Jangamas—we are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us are monists, some, pantheists; some theists and some atheists. But monotheists or atheists—we are all Hindus and own a common blood. We are not only a nation, but a Jati , a born brotherhood. Nothing else counts, it is after all a question of heart. We feel that the same ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and Chaitanya, Basava and Madhava, of Rohidas and Tiruvelluvar courses throughout Hindudom from vein to vein, pulsates from heart to heart. We feel we are a JATI, a race bound together by the dearest ties of blood and therefore it must be so.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Hindutva

Feeling, Question, Heart

“For socialists, of course, Mussolini’s apostasy proves nothing except his supreme evil. For everyone else, though, Mussolini’s origin story puts his subsequent career in a whole new light. Outsiders can easily see what insiders deny: The apostate fruit rarely falls far from the orthodox tree.”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

The Pageant of World History vs. Wikipedia: The Case of Mussolini https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/06/the_whitewash_o.html (Jun 20, 2012)

Tree, Light, Evil

“Kierkegaard cautioned that the crisis for biblical faith concerning conformity to the world, in one form or another, occurs wherever the anomaly of an established church appears. In the United States, the Constantinian Accommodation has been marvelously proliferated. Practically all churches and sects are, in effect, established and, in turn, conformed to the dominant social philosophy or secular ideology or civic religion. Biblical faith, here, in consequence, is strenuously distorted and persistently ridiculed—in the name of God, of course.”

William Stringfellow (1928–1985) American theologian

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 46

God, World, Faith, Religion

“The impact of Jesus on human history is so obvious and so enormous that few people would question his placement near the top of this list. Indeed, the more likely question is why Jesus, who is the inspiration for the most influential religion in history, has not been placed first. There is no question that Christianity, over the course of time, has had far more adherents than any other religion. However, it is not that relative influence of different religions that is being estimated in this book, but rather the relative influence of individual men. Christianity, unlike Islam, was not founded by a single person but by two people —Jesus and St. Paul— and the principal credit for its development must, therefore, be apportioned between those two figures.”

Michael H. Hart book The 100

about Jesus, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, p.17

Men, People, Books, Religion

“It was explaining early on, I think, the process. And I can see that those were like the early stages of what I eventually went into when I was doing the large-scale on-site installation pieces when I paint directly onto the walls. Because I’m actually painting but I’m also engaging the viewer and talking during the course of the time that I’m actually doing the work. So I think the early performance pieces actually influenced me in the direction that I would later take in the larger on-site pieces when I started doing those pieces.”

Gronk (artist) (1954) American artist

On explaining the artistic process to spectators in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gronk-13586#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Thinking, Time, Painting

“And, of course, if present frequent occupants of the West Wing or Situation Room must find time to appear for testimony as a matter of law when Congress issues a subpoena, then any such immunity most certainly stops short of covering individuals who only purport to be cloaked with this authority because, at some point in the past, they once were in the President’s employ.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970) United States District Judge

Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)

Law, Appearance, Time, Past

“I try to root the language of my poetry in kindness, forgiveness, compassion and curiosity, that is the way I want to live, but of course that’s not to say anger and resentment and envy and other difficult emotions don’t make a noise in my work…”

Raymond Antrobus (1986)

On his preferred themes in “Deaf poetics: Conversation with Raymond Antrobus" https://poetryinternationalonline.com/conversation-with-raymond-antrobus/ (Poetry International; 2018 Oct 11)

Making love, Way, Forgiveness, Envy

“On the one hand this catastrophe had brought to light the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy, their incapacity, their coterie-policy, their leanings towards the Romans. On the other hand the seizure of Sardinia, and the threatening attitude which Rome on that occasion assumed, showed plainly even to the humblest that a declaration of war by Rome was constantly hanging like the sword of Damocles over Carthage, and that, if Carthage in her present circumstances went to war with Rome, the consequence must necessarily be the downfall of the Phoenician dominion in Libya. Probably there were in Carthage not a few who, despairing of the future of their country, counselled emigration to the islands of the Atlantic; who could blame them? But minds of the nobler order disdain to save themselves apart from their nation, and great natures enjoy the privilege of deriving enthusiasm from circumstances in which the multitude of good men despair. They accepted the new conditions just as Rome dictated them; no course was left but to submit and, adding fresh bitterness to their former hatred, carefully to cherish and husband resentment—that last resource of an injured nation. They then took steps towards a political reform.(1) They had become sufficiently convinced of the incorrigibleness of the party in power: the fact that the governing lords had even in the last war neither forgotten their spite nor learned greater wisdom, was shown by the effrontery bordering on simplicity with which they now instituted proceedings against Hamilcar as the originator of the mercenary war, because he had without full powers from the government made promises of money to his Sicilian soldiers. Had the club of officers and popular leaders desired to overthrow this rotten and wretched government, it would hardly have encountered much difficulty in Carthage itself; but it would have met with more formidable obstacles in Rome, with which the chiefs of the government in Carthage already maintained relations that bordered on treason. To all the other difficulties of the position there fell to be added the circumstance, that the means of saving their country had to be created without allowing either the Romans, or their own government with its Roman leanings, to become rightly aware of what was doing.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Wisdom, Men, Money, War

“Thus the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quite considerable. It is not difficult to understand why from version to version, and translation to translation, with all the corrections inevitably resulting, it was possible for the original text to have been transformed during the course of more than two thousand years.”

Maurice Bucaille (1920–1998) French physician and author

about Old Testament, p. 11

Understanding

“The New Deal, for all its achievements and the popular idealism which inspired it, has become status quo. Its genuine gains, such as Social Security, must be defended and extended, of course. But the real task, for the democratic Left and for the nation, is now to go beyond the New Deal. Far beyond it.”

Michael Harrington (1928–1989) American political writer

Source: Toward a Democratic Left: A Radical Program for a New Majority (1968), Ch. 2, "Adam Smith's John Maynard Keynes"

“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and wilfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 1 “The Light of Ancient Mistakes” (p. 25)

Lie, Appearance, Future

“As writers, of course we’re interested in human beings, human stories, human trauma, and all that is very compelling for readers. But when we write these powerful stories about individual people, we have the illusion that we’ve made a difference. And of course we have—people read the books, they’re touched emotionally by these kinds of stories, and that’s great. But to the extent that the stories that we’re telling are about people who are weaker, in some way—they come from a small country, or a forcibly removed population, they’re underrepresented collectively—individual stories don’t change the conditions that produce those refugees in the first place…”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

On writers overestimating the difference that their writings make in “An interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen” https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-viet-thanh-nguyen/ in Asymptote Magazine

People, Books, Way, Change

“If you and your children were starving, if you saw violence and murder every single day, and just on the horizon is a safe country where people are allowed to dream, can make a decent living, of course you would cross the border. Any mother or father in their right mind would. We need to have compassion for this.”

Hilary Bettis

On why Mexicans cross the border in “The Borders of Our Lives” https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/02/26/the-borders-of-our-lives/ (American Theatre; Feb 2018)

Children, People, Making love, Dreams

“It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Disputed, Give me liberty, or give me death! (1775)

Life, Death, God, War

“Translation from Bulgarian: I believe the role of both the journalist and the writer is to analyze critically. Of course, both the writer and the journalist pay a price for this.”

Lea Cohen (1942)

Смятам, че ролята и на журналиста, и на писателя е критичният анализ. Разбира се и писателят, и журналистът плащат съответната цена. <br class="br">Програма Хоризонт, https://bnr.bg/post/101200075, Bulgarian National Radio, December 2019

“When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Plough, Sword, and Book : The Structure of Human History (1988), Ch. 5 : Codification, p. 123

Truth, Knowledge

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth, Home, Time, Personality

“I think if she comes from anywhere that has a name, it is out of myth. And myth has been my study and joy ever since — oh, the age, I would think... of three. I’ve studied it all my life. No culture can satisfactorily move along its forward course without its myths, which are its teachings, its fundamental dealing with the truth of things, and the one reality that underlies everything.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

The Paris Review interview (1982)

Life, Truth, Age, Thinking

“Sad is a fake word for me to be using, I am still angry that their reason for disagreeing with McCarthy was too often his crude methods.... Many of the anti-Communists were, of course, honest men. But none of them... has stepped forward to admit a mistake. It is not necessary in this country; they too know that we are a people who do not remember much. I have written here that I have recovered. I mean it only in a worldly sense because I do not believe in recovery. The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.”

Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) American dramatist and screenwriter

Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 150

Men, People, Pleasure, Sadness

“We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him. Of course, all of you may not want the kind we want... some of you may prefer prunes and morality to the bitter end.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)

Age, Personality, Perfection

“Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget — and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use.But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Bad luck, Making love, Religion, Way

“In the very long run, of course, truth will be restored. If you can learn anything at all from history, it is that everything changes. So, the present power equation that has made these distortions possible, won’t endure forever. It is a foregone conclusion that one day, the negative role of the secularist historians will be seen for what it was. Western Indologists who chose to toe the secularist line, even against their own research findings, will not look good either.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Source: 2010s, On Modi Time (2015), Chapter : Ayodhya Interview 2013

Truth, History, Learning, Change

“But the blot on the encyclopedia’s fair name is not just in the wrongness of the statement, but in its partisan and non-encyclopedic nature…. If Wikipedia wants to live up to its promise of being a reliable encyclopedic source, it will strike this and all sentences resembling it from its article on me. At most, it can use me as an example of how it was fooled by some of its all-too-partisan collaborators. Speaking of whom: the history page accompanying my page proves forever that some Wikipedia collaborators wanted to inflict on me the maximum harm possible, an attitude incompatible with work for an encyclopedia. Shouldn’t Wikipedia fire them and wipe out everything they wrote? Of course they can still contribute blogs and columns, by preference under their own full names, but they have proven themselves not to be encyclopedic authorities. …”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2012/04/meera-nanda-against-hinduism-and-its.html
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

Fools, History, Nature

“But the dominant position certainly is to minimize the importance of the ASI findings. This is a general phenomenon in the whole secularist press: instead of a thorough analysis and a lively debate worthy of the importance and unequivocal verdict of the report, the page is turned as quickly as possible. This is, of course, a strong indication that the report’s findings are embarrassing for the secularists because they go against what the secularists have been saying for all these years. Like spoilt children, the secularists are used to having it all their own way, and when reality interferes, they close their eyes, shut off their ears and refuse to know. And they will lie and cheat in order to prevent others from knowing.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

Children, Lie, Way, Reality

“The VHP-mandated scholars have, in their argumentation, pointed out no less than four attempts where scholars belonging to the anti-temple party have tried to conceal or destroy documentary evidence. Those are of course cases where the attempt failed because it was noticed in time, but the question must be asked how many similar attempts have succeeded.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

Question, Time

“They themselves of course can get away with blatant lies, because they are shielded by a politically motivated press against any criticism that would threaten their eminence. But real scientists do not count on such exemptions.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Motivation

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to you think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Kenneth Arnold's paraphrasing of a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Making love, Religion, Angels, Search

“Warfare with the use of aviation and military hardware and so on, a huge number of militant groups on the territory of this country, with militants coming mostly from terrorist organisations based abroad, including Al-Qaeda who were active in this country. Thank God, we got rid of this but we have not eradicated terrorism per se. Of course, terrorism still poses a great threat to our country as well, which was why we launched these operations in Syria…”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Cooperation, Terrorism, UK & USA, President Trump, Resolving Conflict, Defense, Crimea, The Media, Nuclear Weapons Policy: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)

God, Country

“There is a demand for true heroism in our lives. True heroism can manifest itself, in particular, by defending civilization from today’s evils. Of course, terrorism is one of the most serious and challenging evils…. the only way to effectively stand up to terrorism is to join efforts. Unfortunately, in the true sense of the word, we have not put this cooperation in place yet. There are some aspects of cooperation where we have succeeded but this is not enough. By the highest standards, we have failed to join efforts the way we should so far, while this could be done, based on the relevant international rules of law and UN resolutions.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Cooperation, Terrorism, UK & USA, President Trump, Resolving Conflict, Defense, Crimea, The Media, Nuclear Weapons Policy: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)

Law, Way, Sense, Effort

“Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: Thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges, we will confront hardships, but we will get the job done. Every 4 years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, January, Inaugural address, (January 20, 2017)

People, World, Peace, Justice

“I firmly came out in favor of the independence of nations and sovereignty for the republics. At the same time, I support the preservation of the union state and the integrity of this country. The developments took a different course. The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, which is something I cannot subscribe to.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, Resignation Address (1991)

Support, Time, Country

“The white races did, of course, give some things to the natives, and they were the worst gifts that they could possibly have made, those plagues of our own modern world-materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism and syphilis. For the rest, since these peoples possessed qualities of their own which were superior to anything we could offer them, they have remained essentially unchanged.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Where imposition by force was attempted, the results were even more disastrous, and common sense, realizing the futility of such measures, should preclude any recourse to their introduction. One solitary success must be conceded to the colonizers: everywhere they have succeeded in arousing hatred, a hatred that urges these peoples, awakened from their slumbers by us, to rise and drive us out. Indeed, it looks almost as though they had awakened solely and simply for that purpose! Can anyone assert that colonization has increased the number of Christians in the world? Where are those conversions en masse which mark the success of Islam? Here and there one finds isolated islets of Christians, Christians in name, that is, rather than by conviction; and that is the sum total of the successes of this magnificent Christian religion, the guardian of supreme Truth! Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure.
7 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

People, Alcohol, World

“Variant : This is what I call the American idea of freedom — a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice — the unchanging law of God.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) by Tryon Edwards, p. 17; an earlier statement of such sentiments was made by Benjamin Disraeli in Vivian Grey (1826), Book VI, Ch. 7: "all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist." Parker was also very likely familiar with Daniel Webster's statements referring to "The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people" in a speech on Foot's Resolution (26 January 1830); the most famous use of such phrasing came in Abraham Lincoln's, Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863) when using words probably inspired by Parker's he declared: "we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Fifty eight years later, in 1921, Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), Founder of Modern China, credited Lincoln's immortal words as the inspiration of his Three Principles of the People (三民主义) articulated in a speech delivered on March 6, 1921, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National People’s Party in Guangzhou. The Three Principles of the People are still enshrined in the Constitution of Taiwan. According to Lyon Sharman, "Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning, a Critical Biography" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1934), Dr. Sun wrote that his own three principles “correspond with the principles stated by President Lincoln—‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.’ I translated them into … the people (are) to have . . . the people (are) to govern and . . . the people (are) to enjoy.”

God, People, Justice, Law

“The average income of blacks here is far higher than the average income of all the people in the Soviet Union. The official government definition of the poverty line in the U. S. is higher than the average income in the Soviet Union; it’s higher than the income received by 90 percent of the people on the world’s surface. Now, that doesn’t mean blacks aren’t subject to injustice; of course they are.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

People, World

“This leads to my next myth—the myth that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. What was really involved in that last story was that somehow the local people do not pay out the money coming down from Washington somebody else does. Of course, the truth is that the money makes a round trip between Florida and Washington, and there is a discount taken off for cash as it passes through Washington. Some of you may remember that wonderful description of government by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said that government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Economic Myths and Public Opinion” https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf, The Alternative: An American Spectator, vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9

Money, People, Truth, Making love

“Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html

People, Thinking

“More than any other mass medium, radio enjoys a captive audience—if only because so many of the listeners are driving—but in a major market there are dozens of AM stations to listen to, plus of course FM and satellite radio, and even a very seductive and successful station rarely gets more than a five or six percent audience share.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

"Host: Deep into the mercenary world of take-no-prisoners political talk radio." The Atlantic, April 2005.
Essays

Success

“The vanishing middle-class, distinct rich/poor class divisions in the US and poverty continue to be issues that nag and tear at the social fabric but rarely are put front and centre in plays and works for live performance. I don’t think every play needs to address these topics, of course. I do think the daily lives of citizens—the sheer struggle to get by, make do, and the increased dependency on credit (and therefore, debt) are issues that affect everyone…”

Caridad Svich (1963) American writer

On the topics rarely addressed in theater in “Making Invisible Stories Seen, Heard and Felt Interview with Caridad Svich” http://www.critical-stages.org/3/making-invisible-stories-seen-heard-and-felt-interview-with-caridad-svich/ in The IATC webjournal/Revue web de l'AICT – Autumn 2010: Issue No 3

Making love, Thinking, Tear, Dependency

“In my work, you get used to criticisms. Of course you do, because there are a lot of people trying to get you down, but I always cheer up immensely if one is particularly wounding because I think well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. That is why my father always taught me: never worry about anyone who attacks you personally; it means their arguments carry no weight and they know it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

From an interview for Italian television (RAI) (10 March 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106223 <br class="br">Second term as Prime Minister

People, Thinking, Personality

“He’s here, of course, strictly through his own ambitious carelessness.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

“Prime flaws of youth, of course—but also its strengths, this carelessness and ambition.”
Part 3, Chapter 14 (p. 191)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“You realize of course, Barnar, that it is simply not possible that we’re actually doing this?”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

“I’ve come to the same comforting conclusion, old friend. Therefore let’s away—an impossibility can only do us an unreal sort of harm, after all.”
Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 139)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease at the expense of the people. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given much more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of the government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts.”

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

Letter to James Madison, Paris, (20 December 1787), The Political Writings Of Thomas Jefferson, Dumbauld, Edit. (1955) pp. 67-68
1780s

Men, People, Thinking, Country

“Of course, the trouble with following occult texts blindly is that there is no guarantee that the thing the ritual summons is what it says on the label.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

“But they’re Christians. If you want to get them to raise something from the dungeon dimensions, of course you tell them it’s Jesus Christ. I mean, who else would they enthusiastically dive into necromantic demonology on behalf of?”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 11, “The Apocalypse Codex” (p. 209)

“I used to sit on the stairs outside the courtroom and scratch out poems on legal pads while I was waiting for our cases to be called. There were juvenile hearings prior to the housing cases, and of course given their right to privacy we were not allowed inside the courtroom while that was going on. Everyone was in the hallway or on the stairs. I sat there. I didn’t have an office there, and I wrote poems. It was not as crazy as it might sound because whether I was working or am working as a lawyer or a poet, I am an advocate…”

Martín Espada (1957) Puerto Rican poet

On composing poems while practicing as an attorney in “The Writer’s Block Transcripts: A Q&A with Martin Espada” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2015/12/11/the-writers-block-transcripts-a-qa-with-martin-espada/ in Sampsonia Way (2015 Dec 11)

Waiting, Housing

“When we look back over the course of our nation’s history, what we see again and again almost like clockwork are these predictable efforts by the wealthy elite to use race as a wedge. To pit poor whites against poor people of color for the benefit of the ruling elite. Many people don’t realize that even slavery as an institution—the emergence of an all-Black system of slavery—was to a large extent the result of plantation owners deliberately trying to pit poor whites against poor Blacks. And ensure that poor whites would not join in any kind of resistance, movement, struggle, or revolt with poor Blacks…”

Michelle Alexander (1967) American lawyer, civil rights activist and writer

On the elite’s influence on the poor in in “The struggle for racial justice has a long way to go” https://isreview.org/issue/84/struggle-racial-justice-has-long-way-go in the International Socialist Review (May 2012)

People, Color, History, Effort

“I confess, the Amnewor is new to me. Yes, I’ve heard the name—as a minor fact in some other god’s story. Precisely what it did, though, I can’t remember. That, of course, makes it more intriguing. Death. It was associated with endless, mindless, pointless death. But which of them isn’t?”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 9.81 (p. 273)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

Death, God, Making love

“Content, of course, must have some form. And form, of course, creates its content/commentary. This is why their chimeras have chased each other through moment after moment of history, the intense perception of one or the other producing the overwhelming effect: Art.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 8.21 (p. 232)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

Art, History

“The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children’s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home.”

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

As quoted by Clara Zetkin in "Lenin on the Women’s Question", My Memorandum Book https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm, 1920. <br class="br">Attributions

Women, Men, Children, Education

“People like to pigeon-hole pianists. There are, we are routinely told, the barnstormers – romantic pianists who throw the entire force of the heart and soul into their playing – and then there is the more analytical school – those who play by intellect, everything meticulously thought out and delicately weighted. By and large it’s piffle, of course; few pianists would admit to excluding head or heart in their playing and great interpretations are forged through a combination of the two, and more besides. But German-born Burkard Schliessmann rejects such divisions more than most.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

James Inverne in his article Burkard Schliessmann in STEINWAY & SONS International Pianos Magazine 2008, p. 34

People, School, Soul, Heart

“You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: How I Grew (1987), Ch. 1

Love, Life, Friendship, Marriage

“Idealists, I know, are dangerous, but the claim of the ideal (Ibsen) has to be felt or else…. Or else the world, our deteriorating world, will continue on its course by sheer inertia. Inertia is taking over, right here; you can sense it.”

Mary McCarthy book Cannibals and Missionaries

From Sophie Weil's diary in "Envoi"
Cannibals and Missionaries (1979)

World, Sense

“To allude negligently to Kafka, Yeats, Proust, Stendhal, or St. John of the Cross in a tone of of-course-you-know-them is canonical for Mademoiselle contributors, whatever the topic in hand.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue", p. 186
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

“If we would return to the shaggy condition of primitive ages, we need only acquire an environment which will favor from age to age those whose peripheries retain to the intensest extent the hirsute tendency. If the disparities between the sexual tastes of male and female would be leveled or inverted, the conditions which have caused the existing disparity must be reversed. The horse exposed to a fad for dwarfs would, in the course of ages, the length of time depending on the pitch of discrimination, be dwindled to its fox-like proportions of eocene times. In an environment requiring courage, foxes would either disappear or grow heroic. Serpents could be rendered as loving as doves by a procedure no more laborious than that by which they have been made vindictive. And beardless aesthetes may become philosophers as easily as have men.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Race Culture, pp. 208–209

Love, Men, Age, Making love

“Starships, of course, have few limitations with regard to design, the prime specification being simply that they not disintegrate during acceleration or course change.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 7 (p. 100)

Change

“The belief that society was in decline was a permanent characteristic of every era. People always believed they lived in a crumbling world. They themselves were of course okay, but everyone around them was headed downhill.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 6 (p. 84)

People, World

“Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

North Korea: "Sanity" at the Brink (2009)

Question, Nature, Time, Self-confidence

“I am an unhappy man. I am haunted by my inability to express the inexpressible, to come to terms with the unknown. The pursuit of beauty is, of course, a major psychological drive. It its various guises—which is to say, the urge to perfection, the yearning to merge with the eternal, the explorer’s restlessness, the realization of an Absolute created by ourselves, yet larger than our totality—it is perhaps the most important human thrust.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 6 (p. 346)

Beauty, Perfection

“Gambling, in the ultimate study, stems from the passive, the submissive, the irresponsible in human nature; the gambler is one of an inferior lickspittle breed who turns himself belly-upward to the capricious deeds of Luck. Examine now the man of strength and action: he is never led by destiny. He drives on a decided course, manipulates the variables, and instead of submitting to the ordained shape of his life, creates a pattern to his own design.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Startling Stories (September 1948), p. 113
Short fiction, Sanatoris Short-Cut (1948)

Life, Bad luck, Nature, Study

“Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that we alone pursue the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Truth, Madness

“Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter , “” (pp. 15-16)

Wisdom, World, Courage, Question

“That in nonarithmetic operations the small and slow human brain can still do so much better than the large and fast electronic computer is an impressive tribute to how cleverly the brain is packaged and programmed—features brought about, of course, by natural selection. Those who possessed poorly programmed brains eventually did not live long enough to reproduce.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 8, “The Future Evolution of the Brain” (p. 224)

Nature

“It’s the end of the world. I was excited by the whole situation. Well, if everybody is going to die, die hard, shit, but what do I know? Is this an atomic bomb--the end of the world--the end of the millennium? No more fear of being fired--for typos or tardiness--digressions or recessions--and what a way of being fired--bursting into flames--without two weeks notice--and without six months of unemployment--and without sick leave, vacation, or comp time--without a word of what was to come--on a glorious morning--when nature ran indifferent to the course of man--there came a point when that sunny sky turned into a hellhole of a night—with papers, computers, windows, bricks, bodies falling, and people running and screaming…”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

People, World, Fear, Way

“Of course, the only way to recognize development, especially in yourself, is to see results.”

Jakub Tencl (1978) Czech clinical hypnotherapist and writer

Source: The mystery of life : you are the light, and that's indestructible truth, Tencl, Jakub,, 9781512399882, [United Kingdom? https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/914353319,, 914353319]

Way

“I of course take a negative attitude about a great deal that is happening, and I have said so directly and frankly to many of those who stand at the head of government. They behave well towards me, and many things I asked were carried out. They even proposed that I should take part in their work, but I refused. As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

About the Bolshevik revolution, as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 428

Parting

“I knew, of course, that Americans are embarked on a new direction in seeking solutions for their own health problems. But I had no idea of the strength and pervasiveness of this quest at all strata of society. It was inspiring to talk to people from all walks of life who had developed their own personal health agendas, expending enormous energy to find alternative treatments when they felt mainstream medicine had failed them by providing ineffective treatments or treatments that carried more risk than they wanted to take.”

Jean Carper (1932) American journalist

Miracle Cures (2009)

Life, People, Health, Idea

“This defective approach to scholarship was suffered by different categories of colonial student. Many of them had been handpicked and, so to say, carried certificates of worthiness with them. These were considered fit to become enlightened servants of the colonial administration. The process by which this category of student became fit usually started at an early age, for not infrequently they had lost contact early in life with their traditional background. By reason of their lack of contact with their own roots, they became prone to accept some theory of universalism, provided it was expressed in vague, mellifluous terms. Armed with their universalism, they carried away from their university courses an attitude entirely at variance with the concrete reality of their people and their struggle.”

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

Consciencism (1964), Introduction

Life, People, Age, Reality

“Just what form the future telephone will take, or course, pure speculation. Here is my prophecy: In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?”

Mark R. Sullivan (1896) company director and president

an address given on April 9, 1953, quoted in The Kingston Daily Freeman (p. 1), April 10, 1953; and in The Tacoma News Tribune, April 11, 1953

Thinking, Future

“Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, — the race never dying, the individual never spared, — to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, The Young American (1844)

Love, Men, Age, Making love

“Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. … Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our houses, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. II, ch. 10
History of England (1849–1861)

Men, Bad luck, Happiness, Pleasure

“I don’t know if my writing has the energy you say it does. Of course, if that energy exists, it’s because either it finds no other outlets or, consciously or not, I’ve refused to give it other outlets. Of course, when I write, I draw on parts of myself, of my memory, that are agitated, fragmented, that make me uncomfortable. A story, in my view, is worth writing only if its core comes from there.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On being told that her writing is energeticin “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Making love, Memory, Parting, Drawing

“If it were right to overstep a little the limits of apodictic certainty befitting metaphysics, it would seem worth while to trace out some things pertaining not merely to the laws but even to the causes of sensuous intuition, which are only intellectually knowable. Of course the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except as far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause; and hence space, which is the universal and necessary condition of the joint presence of everything known sensuously, may be called the phenomenal omnipresence, for the cause of the universe is not present to all things and everything, as being in their places, but their places, that is the relations of the substances, are possible, because it is intimately present to all. Furthermore, since the possibility of the changes and successions of all things whose principle as far as sensuously known resides in the concept of time, supposes the continuous existence of the subject whose opposite states succeed; that whose states are in flux, lasting not, however, unless sustained by another; the concept of time as one infinite and immutable in which all things are and last, is the phenomenal eternity of the general cause} But it seems more cautious to hug the shore of the cognitions granted to us by the mediocrity of our intellect than to be carried out upon the high seas of such mystic investigations, like Malebranche, whose opinion that we see all things in God is pretty nearly what has here been expounded.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

God, Lie, World, Law

“The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men, Democracy

“It’s a combination of things that are happening now, Amy, that make it clear to more and more members of Congress that you can’t keep a straight face on all of this incredible indebtedness, talk about all the money that we’ve shoveled out to Wall Street, and credit isn’t loosening up, unemployment is still at all-time highs. We’re projected in Detroit to have more foreclosures on homes than last year. And so, we’ve got to turn with — especially with all the shouts about being fiscally conservative, the way to climb out of this is to reduce the obligations of our government. Here we are in hundreds of billions of dollars of war debt, and our president is saying we now have to have an emergency funding, which is merely another way of saying we’re going to specially fund the Afghanistan surge. It makes no sense. And I think militarily, it is not logical. And, of course, morally, I can’t remember anything like this since Korea and Vietnam…”

John Conyers (1929–2019) American politician from Michigan

Rep. John Conyers and Out of Afghanistan Caucus Oppose Obama Admin’s $33B Escalation of Afghan War, DemocracyNow! https://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/1/conyers (1 July 2010)

Money, War, Making love, Way

“What course of action do you favor?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

“Me? Why, none. Mary, if there is any one thing I have learned in the past couple of centuries, it’s this: These things pass. Wars and depressions and Prophets and Covenants—they pass. The trick is to stay alive through them.”
Methuselah’s Children (p. 539)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“It’s incredible, I think, you know, a.) to be able to meet her through his lens, not just with his honor and respect for her as the monarch, but the love that he has for her as his grandmother. All of those layers have been so important for me so that when I met her I had such a deep understanding and, of course, incredible respect for being able to have that time with her. And we’ve had a really — she’s an incredible woman.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

About meeting The Queen
Engagement interview (November 2017)

Love, Making love, Understanding, Thinking

“Of course it’s disheartening. It’s a shame that that is the climate in this world to focus that much on that or that that would be discriminatory in that sense. But I think, you know, at the end of the day I’m really just proud of who I am and where I come from and we have never put any focus on that. We have just focused on who we are as a couple. So when you take all those extra layers away and all of that noise, I think it makes it really to just enjoy being together and tune all the rest of that out.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

On the question as to her feelings about the media's obsession with her ethnicity
Engagement interview (November 2017)

World, Making love, Thinking, Sense

“To say that capitalism is a failed system is not, of course, to suggest that its breakdown and disintegration is imminent. It does, however, mean that it has passed from being a historically necessary and creative system at its inception to being a historically unnecessary and destructive one in the present century.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?, 2019

“In hearing of these different possibilities, people sometimes exclaim rashly that there could of course be no thought in a Master’s mind of choosing any but that course which most helps humanity - a remark which greater knowledge would have prevented them from making. We should never forget that there are other evolutions in the solar system besides our own, and no doubt it is necessary for the carrying out of the vast plan of the Logos that there should be adepts working on all the seven lines to which we have referred. Surely the choice of the Master would be to go wherever his work was most needed - to place his services with absolute selflessness at the disposal of the Powers in charge of this part of the great scheme of evolution.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

People, Making love, Knowledge, Help

“It is a religion in so far as, having shown us the course of ordinary evolution, it also puts before us and advises a method of shortening that course, so that by conscious effort we may progress more directly towards the goal.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

A Textbook of Theosophy (1912), Chapter One

Religion, Effort

“It is a new age that we are entering, the age of Aquarius, and of course this is an astronomical, not an astrological event. It is to do with the relationship now being formed in cosmos between our solar system and the constellation of Aquarius. For the next 2,500 or so years we will be absorbing the cosmic energy of Aquarius, which will transform all life on the planet. It is a synthesizing energy: it draws together, fuses and blends, while the energy of Pisces, the age now ending, has separated and divided the world. This process will go forward for 2,500 years and, gradually, humanity will understand the reality of its spiritual nature. This has enabled the Masters to begin to come into the world…”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Ageless Wisdom, An Introduction to Humanity's Spiritual Legacy (1996)

Life, Age, World, Understanding

“What makes karma a major problem for people is their inability to deal with it, to recognize their own responsibility for it, and to do something about it. Most people blame their problems on other people or on circumstances: it was their upbringing, the fact that their parents did not love them, or got divorced, or left them wanting, or that their husband left them, or did not leave them. All these experiences are shed onto someone else, but of course it is all to do with karma, our own responsibility.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Love, People, Making love, Problem

“If identical goods were being produced at widely differing efficiency in different parts of the United Kingdom or if the United Kingdom and Germany, or Japan, or the United States, were part of a single unit with a single currency, then of course the less efficient producers would be knocked out. That is why Germany is so keen for Britain to go into the European Monetary System, so that it can wipe out the British industries which it is in competition.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in London (21 March 1980), quoted in Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 97

Parting

“There is a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which comes over persons who are trapped or imprisoned, when all their efforts to attract attention and assistance bring no response. This is the kind of feeling which you in Walsall and we in Wolverhampton are experiencing in the face of the continued flow of immigration into our towns. We are of course in a minority – make no mistake about that. Out of over 600 parliamentary constituencies perhaps less than 60 are affected in any way like ourselves. The rest know little or nothing and, we might sometimes be tempted to feel, care little or nothing. Only this week a colleague of mine in the House of Commons was dumbfounded when I told him of a constituent whose little daughter was now the only white child in her class at school. He looked at me as if I were a Member of Parliament for central Africa, who had suddenly dropped from the sky into Westminster. So far as most people in the British Isles are concerned, you and I might as well be living in central Africa for all they know about our circumstances.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Walsall (9 February 1968), quoted in Still to Decide (Elliot Right Way Books, 1972), p. 290
1960s

People, Making love, School, Way

“I have been concerned to find out that many of our best trained students who have completed the higher levels of education at university or polytechnic have no desire to join industry. Their preferences are to stay in academic life or to find their way into the civil service. There seems to be a need for more technological bias in science teaching that will lead towards practical applications in industry rather than towards academic studies. Or, to take other examples, why is it that such a high proportion of girls abandon science before leaving school? … Why is it that 30,000 vacancies for students in science and engineering in our universities and polytechnics were not taken up last year while the humanities courses were full?”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech https://www.theguardian.com/education/thegreatdebate/story/0,,574645,00.html to Ruskin College, Oxford University (18 October 1976) <br class="br">Prime Minister

Life, Education, School, Way

“In my own world, sir, sad to say, human prejudice is matched only by human folly. Not a soul claims to be prejudiced, of course, as there are few who would describe themselves as fools…”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Elric, chewing on a piece of barely palatable salt beef, remarked that this seemed a quality of a good deal of society, throughout the multiverse.
Book 2, Chapter 4 “Land at Last!” (p. 241)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

World, Sadness, Fools, Soul

“Outright predators, of course, I understand. I am among them. There is no denying that the feats of predators can be just as gruesome as those of the unlovely parasites: the swathing and sipping of trapped hummingbirds by barn spiders, the occasional killing and eating of monkeys by chimpanzees. If I were to eat as the delicate ladybug eats, I would go through in just nine days the entire population of Boys Town. Nevertheless, the most rapacious lurk and charge of any predator is not nearly so sinister as the silent hatching of barely visible, implanted eggs. With predators, at least you have a chance.”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"The Horns of the Altar", pp. 237–238
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1976)

Boy, Understanding, Chance

Quotes about course page 41

Quotes about course
page 41