Quotes about declaration
page 8

“The creation mandate was precisely the requirement that man subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. There is not one word of Scripture to indicate or imply that this mandate ever was revoked. There is every word of Scripture to declare that this mandate must and shall be fulfilled. Those who attempt to break it shall themselves be broken.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 14

Exercises

“All men of enlightened understandings, who acknowledge the moral government of God, must also acknowledge, that vice must offend and virtue delight him. In short they must, more or less, assent to the Scripture declaration, “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.””

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 237.

Men, God, Understanding

“Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Penciled note on a scrap of paper in the early 1840's following a physical and mental breakdown, possibly due to mercury poisoning. Silvanus Phillips Thompson, Michael Faraday: His Life and Work http://books.google.com/books?id=HZo-AAAAYAAJ (1898)

World

“It time to declare Salafism outlawed. As sectarian drift, or as affecting the fundamental interests of the Nation, choose the safest way.”

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (1973) French politician

Valls: French Muslims to conduct “all over” the fight against Salafism http://www.archyxx.com/valls-french-muslims-to-conduct-all-over-the-fight-against-salafism/, Archyxx. (July 20, 2016)

Way, Time

“In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies … march. … Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities.”

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

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

Hunger, Law, Food, History

“Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress? It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do |the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA177 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177 1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

Life, Men, Feeling, Democracy

“[O]ur constitutions of government have declared that all men are born free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are the right of enjoying their lives, liberties, and property, and of seeking and obtaining their own safety and happiness. May not the miserable African ask, "Am I not a man and a brother?"”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

In 1819, as quoted in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction https://books.google.com/books?id=Tpb7HAIhWHgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=9780199843282&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz1ILxqfLcAhVDnuAKHda9Ai0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=9780199843282&f=false (2012), by Allen C. Guelzo, Chapter One

Men, Happiness

“In the last few years, we have seen the executive branch declare itself outside the law — in prosecuting a war on terror. The law against torture has been suspended. The balance between the executive and legislative branch has been dismissed by signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive. The executive has declared its right to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely, to tap anyone's phones without court warrants and to detain and torture anyone it decides is an "enemy combatant." In that sense, we have already left the realm of constitutional government in favor of a protectorate outside the law promising to keep us safe (but never from itself).
But this new move to create a de facto dictator for the financial markets, to invest a Treasury secretary with unprecedented powers to buy and sell at close to a trillion dollar level — with no oversight or accountability: this is a new collapse in democratic life and constitutional norms.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"How Democracies Become Dictatorships," http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/how-democracies.html The Daily Dish (29 September 2008)

Life, War, Law, Sense

“Let us contemplate two epochal events in the long human story. One is the annunciation of the unity of God at Mt. Sinai. That same God was said to have made man, alone among living beings, in His image. Implicit in the unity of God was the corresponding unity of the human race. But it was only after more than three thousand years, that the Declaration of this unity was made in Philadelphia. One need not believe in direct divine intervention to think that it has been the peculiar mission of the American people to testify to the unity on earth of God, and of man. Such testimony could take no more evident form than in the denunciation of chattel slavery in the founding itself. That denunciation is prominent beyond doubt or denial, in the documents of the founding. Men of reason can agree with men of faith, that neither God nor man could have devised a more dramatic event than our founding to demonstrate to the world the meaning inherent in this unity.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Men, God, People, World

“So shall we voyd of all craft and sail, with true reason declare how much each man erreth in life, judgement, opinion, and will. Some things there are that so wel do prove themselves, as besides nature nede no profe at all.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

Cardanus Comforte (1574)

Life, Nature

“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
1940s

Bird

“And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay III: "Qui Judicatis Terram," section 54.
Unto This Last (1860)

“Paama sat up slowly, moving as cautiously as if facing a lion who had just declared his intention not to pounce, but to have a friendly chat instead.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 15 “A Lesson on Chances and Choices” (p. 114)

“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional.”

Arlen Specter (1930–2012) American politician; former United States Senator from Pennsylvania

Preparing a bill to allow Congress to sue the president in federal court; reported in "[ Sen. Specter preparing bill to sue Bush http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14020234/", NBC News (July 24, 2006).

“She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, — when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Love, Youth, Passion, Time

“Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 15.11.4-5
Antiquities of the Jews

Love, Life, Men, God

“Now that the Emperor has accepted the Potsdam Declaration, we must lay down our arms. Obeying the Emperor's order, we shall not fight. We must keep peace and order and we shall not make any trouble.”

Seishirō Itagaki (1885–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "Red Star Over Malaya" - Page 130 - by Boon Kheng Cheah - History - 2003.

Peace, Fight

“The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, History, Search, Idea

“The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 26

“I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered, again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told. I imagined couples at the altar, standing before the priest, declaring It's not your fault to each other, before kissing in the union.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

The Shared Patio (2005)

Imagination, Kiss

“…If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you… God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience… so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge. This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul", The Telegraph (5 July 2014)
2014
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

God, Victory, Patience

“One thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch himself, but in the orthodox tradition, advanced a most daring hypothesis. This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: This happy conjecture affirmed that there is only one subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity.

Universe

“The new painter owes the abstract artist a debt for giving him his language, but the new painting is concerned with a new type of abstract thought... He [the new painter] is declaring that the art of Western Europe is voluptuous art first, an intellectual art by accident. He is reversing the situation by declaring that art is an expression of the mind first and whatever sensuous elements are involved are incidental to that expression. The new painter is therefore the true revolutionary, the real leader who is placing the artist's function on its rightful plane of the philosopher and the pure scientist who is exploring the world of ideas, not the world of the senses.... so the artist is today giving us a vision of the world of truth in terms of visual symbols.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945, p. 127

Truth, World, Art, Idea

“Ever since Darwin tied knots between human beings and the rest of the animal world, many people have frantically attempted to untie them again, declaring that even though our roots are in the animal world we have left them so far behind as to make any comparisons utterly meaningless. To some extent this is true, because the quality that makes us unique in the biological kingdom is the enormous capacity to learn.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins (1977)

People, World, Learning, Animals

“Operations research has many precursors and allied fields, including Taylorism (after Frederick W. Taylor), scientific management and management science, industrial engineering and systems analysis. As one early textbook explained, the roots of OR "are as old as science and the management function. Its name dates back only to 1940" (Churchman et al. 1957: 3). Certainly its practitioners have expended much energy and ink in search of an acceptable definition of OR. Morse tried unsuccessfully to halt the debate by declaring OR to be 'the activity carried on by members of the Operations Research Society' (Morse 1953: 159) But his colleagues were not so easily dissuaded from debate. Much of the concern with definition focused on the sometimes elusive distinctions between OR and neighbouring fields; the attempt to define, or redefine, OR was also born of the desire to allow the subject to evolve beyond the orthodoxy of wartime experience. Crucial considerations included the balance between model and application, and the complexity of the mathematics involved.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Source: Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences (2003), p. 841.

Search, Mathematics, Science

“Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board – contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and center.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 12

Nature

“Sean Hannity: For what possible reason would he possibly want to destroy America's economy and place in the world. Where is that coming from?
Herman Cain: Where I'm coming from is if you weaken the United States militarily, economically, and culturally, then America is gonna suffer from the same problems that all of— a lot of the other countries suffer from, and that opens the door to some dramatic change in how we run this country.
Sean Hannity: Would that fit into black liberation theology, social, Marxism, redistribution, G. D. America, America's chickens have come home to roost—?
Herman Cain: It fits into what I would call anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-Declaration of Independence. That's what it fits into.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Hannity
Television
2010-04-14
Fox News, quoted in * Herman Cain calls Obama's policies "anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-Declaration of Independence"
Media Matters for America
2010-04-14
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004140078
2011-10-08
regarding President Obama

World, Home, Problem, Thinking

“Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Love, Women, Men, War

“Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, Truth, Democracy, Freedom

“Whenever I had an opportunity to address the people in different parts of our province, I told them clearly that indeed, I was of the opinion that India should not be divided because today in India we have witnessed the result. Thousands and thousands of young and old, children, men, and women were massacred and ruined. But now that the division is an accomplished fact, the dispute is over. " I delivered many speeches against the division of India, but the question is: has anybody listened to me? You may hold any opinion about me, but I am not a man of destruction but of construction. If you study my life, you will find that I devoted it to the welfare of our country. We have proclaimed that if the Government of Pakistan would work for our people and our country the Khudai Khidmatgars would be with them. I repeat that I am not for the destruction of Pakistan. In destruction lies no good. "Neither Hindus nor Muslims, nor the Frontier, not Punjab, Bengal or Sindh stands to gain from it. There is advantage only in construction. I want to tell you categorically I will not support anybody in destruction. If any constructive programme is before you, if you want to do something constructive for our people, not in theory, but in practice, I declare before this House that I and my people are at your service…”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) Indian independence activist

February 1948
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: A True Servant of Humanity by Girdhari Lal Puri pp -188 ? 190

Life, Women, Men, Children

“Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind (pp. 212-213)

Love, Women, People, Religion

“There is a phenomenon in nature unknown, and therefore rejected by physiology and psychology in our age of unbelief. This phenomenon is a state of half-death. Virtually, the body is dead; and, in cases of persons in whom matter does not predominate over spirit and wickedness not so great as to destroy spirituality, if left alone, their astral soul will disengage itself by gradual efforts, and, when the last link is broken, it finds itself separated forever from its earthly body. Equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the ethereal man from the decaying organic mass. The whole difficulty lies in that 1, the ultimate moment of separation between the two is believed to be that when the body is declared dead by science; and 2, a prevailing unbelief in the existence of either soul or spirit in man, by the same science.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XII

Death, Age, Soul, Nature

“The third point that is relied on to justify slaveholding is, that it is Constitutional. That is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. I have heard it declared over and over again that the Constitution guarantees slavery. I deny it. In no article, in no section, in no line, in no word, in no syllable, can there be any recognition of the word 'slave' or 'slavery'. Why, sir. When I came up to take the oath to support the Constitution, a whispered buzz, half in earnest and half jocular, passed around. How can Lovejoy swear to support the Constitution? How can he take the oath? I could take the oath to support the Constitution, because I believe in the Constitution, because I hold to it, because my heart is loyal to it. Every part and parcel and portion of it, I believe in. But, I do not believe in the construction put upon it by those who claim its recognition and sanction of the practice of slaveholding.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA198 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, pp. 198&ndash;199 1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Support, Heart, Parting

“The same church must, in my opinion, also respect that the one whose name is absent from the same declaration out of embarrassment, although he and he alone led Muslims to pray to this one God, so that once again through him, Muhammad, the prophet, this God "has spoken to mankind."”

Hans Küng (1928) Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author

World Religions 129

God

“I say, rather than that apostates should flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie knife, and conquer or die. (Great commotion in the congregation, and a simultaneous burst of feeling, assenting to the declaration.) Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. (Voices, generally, "go it, go it.")If you say it is right, raise your hands. (All hands up.) Let us call upon the Lord to assist us in this, and every good work.”

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

Journal of Discourses 1:83 (March 27, 1853)
Young describing his feelings upon awakening from a dream in which he "saw two ruffians, whom I knew to be mobbers and murderers, and they crept into a bed, where one of my wives and children were..."
1850s

Feeling

“The logic which declares Tengiri to be a satan and denounces Chengiz Khan as an archcriminal but which, in the same breath, proclaims Allah as divine and hails the Ghaznavis, Ghuris, Timurs and Baburs as heroes, is, to the say the least, worse than casuistry.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

“He [Turgot] now, in 1749, at the age of twenty two, wrote… a letter which has been an object of wonder among political thinkers ever since. Its subject was paper money. Discussing the ideas of John Law, and especially the essay of Terrasson which had supported them, he dissected them mercilessly, but in a way useful not only in those times but in these. …Terrasson's arguments in behalf of unlimited issues of paper had been put forth in 1720. …and he declared that the material used for bearing the sign of value is indifferent …and that if a sovereign issues enough of paper promises, he will be able to loan or even to give money in unlimited amounts to his needy subjects. …without danger of depreciation. …Terrasson also made the distinction between the note of a business man and notes issued by a government, that the former comes back and must be paid, but that the latter need not come back and can be kept afloat forever by simple governmental command, thus becoming that blessed thing—worshiped widely, not many years since, in our own country—"fiat money."”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 168-169

Money, Age, Law, Way

“When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

Source: 1980s, P. B. Medawar (1986), Memoir of a thinking radish: an autobiography, Oxford University Press, p. 117.

Fools

“It is impossible to establish unanimity of opinion among mankind, and those who have tried to bring about such unanimity have always failed. I hope, therefore, the friends and promoters of this movement will not commit that great mistake. Let individual liberty be recognised: let individual rights be fully vindicated and respected; but still at the same time, while we recognise differences of opinion, let us feel, and let us declare, that it is possible to have a common platform of action, where we can exchange our sympathies with each other as brethren.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered on July 20th, 1870 at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London, in a meeting held to constitute a Theistic Association in London. See Universal Religion

Hope, Feeling, Time

“If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. The importance of political speculation is not to be under-estimated, as I shall presently disclose. Until the idea is developed and the plan made there can be no action.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Idea

“The love of humanity is a pathological state of a sexual origin which often appears at the age of puberty in nervous and clever people. The excess of phosphorus in the system must get out somewhere. As for hatred of a tyrant, that is a more human sentiment which has full play in time of war, when force and the mob are one. Emperors must be mad fools to decide on declaring wars which substitute an armed nation for their Praetorian Guards. That idiocy accomplished, despotism of course produces revolution until terrorism leads to the inevitable reaction.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Love, War, People, Age

“The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, and in 1776, that's exactly what they meant. Women could not vote, women could not own property, and blacks were considered property. After 200 years of enlightenment, we have realized that gender and race are inappropriate distinctions for determining who has individual rights. Anytime Gov gives you permission they let you know that you have permission by giving you a permit or a license. If you have a marriage license, what permission do you have to do now that you did not have permission to do before, who gave you that permission, and who gave them the authority to give you that permission in the first place?”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Libertarian Party National Convention (2004)

Women, Men, Marriage

“When I arrived to take command of the war in June 2009, in addition to the rising violence and sense of insecurity, I found a creeping, fatalistic pessimism, as though the fight were over, the effort failed. Some pointed to history and declared the country intractable. Few countries or NGOs were leaving, but many wanted to. There was growing unease with the viability of the mission. Indeed, in those early days, as I assessed the war, I wasn't sure the mission could be done. Although I'd known it would be difficult, the situation was even worse than I'd anticipated. I was further cautioned by the fact that I would be the twelfth commander to lead the NATO effort in Afghanistan, the latest in a succession of experienced professionals. Any solution would not only be a military one; it had to encompass much more. But as we looked closer and considered a range of strategies, I concluded that it was possible. The intimidating specter of Afghanistan as an impossible challenge belied the reality. The obstacles were numerous, but the accrued problems were not insoluble, just incredibly difficult.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 277-278

War, History, Problem, Reality

“I do not think that, practically or morally, we can defend a policy of saving every distinctive local population of organisms. I can cite a good rationale for the preservation of species, for each species is a unique and separate natural object that, once lost, can never be reconstituted. But subspecies are distinctive local populations of species with broader geographic range. Subspecies are dynamic, interbreedable, and constantly changing: what then are we saving by declaring them all inviolate?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"The Golden Rule: A Proper Scale for Our Environmental Crisis", p. 43
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Nature, Thinking, Change

“He [Pericles] reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, a group of feeble old men who held their jobs for life and whose duty it was to declare everything null and void… [Footnote] He also revoked their right to censor the private lives of the citizens. This was nasty of Pericles, for about the only pleasure the old fellows had was catching some citizen doing what he shouldn't. After that, they had to use their imaginations.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Pericles

Life, Men, Pleasure, Imagination

“They did not deny the existence of authority. They recognized it and undertook to abide by it, and through obedience to it secure their freedom. They made their appeal and rested their cause not merely upon earthly authority, but in the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence asserted that they proposed 'to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.' And as they closed that noble document in which they submitted their claims to the opinions of mankind they again revealed what they believed to be the ultimate source of authority by stating that they were also 'appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of' their 'intentions.'.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God, World, Law, Nature

“What I declare and believe to have demonstrated in this work as well as in earlier papers is that following the finite there is a transfinite (transfinitum)--which might also be called supra-finite (suprafinitum), that is, there is an unlimited ascending ladder of modes, which in its nature is not finite but infinite, but which can be determined as can the finite by determinate, well-defined and distinguishable numbers.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

From Kant to Hilbert (1996)

Nature

“I have been an active member of Mandela's ANC since the end of the 60's or the beginning of the 70's. Hassan II, the King of Morocco, talked me into helping fund the ANC. […] I remember that at the time, the South African President, who must have been Vorster, was putting a lot of pressure on our ministers, so that they come to South Africa. A number of French ministers accepted these invites. I too was frequently asked to go… The leaders of South Africa wanted to make us believe that the apartheid was normal, or did not exist. I declared officially and most clearly, urbi et orbi, that I wouldn't set a foot there as long as the apartheid would exist.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

J'ai été militant de l'ANC de Mandela depuis la fin des années soixante, le début des années soixante-dix. J'ai été approché par Hassan II, le roi du Maroc, pour aider au financement de l'ANC. [...] Je me souviens qu'à l'époque, le président sud-africain, que devait être Vorster, exerçait d'énormes pressions auprès de nos ministres pour qu'ils viennent en Afrique du sud. Un certain nombre de ministres français ont accepté ces invitations. Moi aussi, j'ai été très sollicité... Les dirigeants de l'Afrique du Sud voulaient nous faire croire que l'apartheid était normal, ou n'existait pas. J'ai déclaré officiellement, et de la manière la plus claire, urbi et orbi que je n'y mettrais pas les pieds tant que l'apartheid existerait.
L'Inconnu de l'Élysée, Pierre Péan, Fayard, 2007, p. 8 et 9

Time, Help

“Because finally, “the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience” is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider “the declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia as the basis and foundation of government,” it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

§ 15. Often misquoted as “Religion is the basis and foundation of government.”
1780s, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)

People, Religion, Exercises, Nature

“That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent." It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man." Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…". And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine." And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state."”

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

Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, Happiness, Democracy

“In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription : —
“ Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was
“ desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers
“ how long it would last, and was informed by
“ them, that after eleven hundred years, a king
“ named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the
“ other temples in Kaslimeer.”
The King was surprised, though vexed, that the Hindoo prophet should have predicted the truth, and declared, if they had placed the plate against the wall, he would have preserved the temple to belie the prophet. Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, “Destroyer of Idols.””

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

People, Truth

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

Pleasure, Tear

“A year before the dawn of the fifteenth century, Timur had claimed to have invaded Hindustan to destroy its infidels and idolators.1 In the year 1400 India was predominantly Hindu; Muslims comprised less than 2 per cent of the population. … Timur might have made his declaration merely as a champion of Islam, and yet he was not wrong in his assessment of the Hindu population of India.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

“Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence. Therefore, we, citizens of the United States, and the oppressed people who, by a recent decision of the Supreme' Court, are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, together with all other people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and establish for ourselves the following Provisional Constitution and Ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties, and to govern our actions.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

Preamble.
Provisional Constitution and Ordinances (1858)

War, People, Truth, Law

“Three days after Richard Henry Lee introduced the Resolution of Independence, it was voted to appoint a committee to "prepare a declaration to the effect of the said first resolution." The committee, appointed on the following day, consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. On the 28 of June, the committee reported to Congress the draft of a declaration which, with modifications, was finally agreed to by Congress on the 4 of July. This is the document which is popularly known as the Declaration of Independence.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922)

“On the eve of its coming to power, industrial workers composed nearly one-third of the Nazi Party membership and constituted its largest occupational groups. The party adopted the Red Flag, declared May 1 a paid national holiday, and required its members to address one another as Genossen or ‘comrades.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 220

Holiday

“The original intent of the 14th Amendment, and of the Congress and the American people who ratified it, can best be understood in the light of the change it effected in antecedent constitutional law. Taney's opinion in Dred Scott was still in effect as the Civil War came to an end. By it Negroes, whether free or slave, could not be citizens of the United States. Although the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it did not settle the question of Negro citizenship. This was however decided by the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The intent of this sentence could however be frustrated if it were possible to make distinctions within citizenship, by which some citizens would have more rights, and others less. It was to prevent this that the Amendment went on to declare that "No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Logic of the Colorblind Constitution (2004)

War, People, Law, Question

“But in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 29

Hurt

“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, World, Faith

“First, Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, the facts. About a year ago, the legislative mill nearly came to a halt when the Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or the pork barrel system radically altered the budget landscape. Declared as unconstitutional by the High Court were the following, and I quote:”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Quotes, Decision

“We are not accustomed to threats here,” Lorivade declared.
“I make no threat. I speak only of inevitable consequences.”

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 3, Chapter 10 (p. 317)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

“The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.
The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Saturday Pioneer (3 January 1891)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

War, Decision, Loss, Time

“the only man woman or child who wrote
a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical
errors “is dead”
beautiful Warren Gamaliel Harding
“is” dead
he's
“dead””

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

W [ViVa] (1931) XVII

Beauty, Error, Dead

“The five great saints and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons. Emperors, kings and presidents who enjoyed opulence and power on earth, and even journalists who had worldwide fame, have now placed themselves at the forefront of the column of the true love revolution. Together they have sent to earth a resolution expressing their determination in the light of my teaching of the true family ideal. They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been announced on every corner of the globe.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Declaring the Era of the Peace Kingdom, Address to the United States Congress http://www.unification.net/2004/20040323_1.html (2004-03-23)

Love, World, Family, Way

“Dadaism has launched an attack on the fine arts. It has declared art to be a magic opening of the bowels, administered an enema to the Venus of Milo, and finally enabled 'Laocoon and Sons' to ease themselves after a thousand-year struggle with the rattlesnake. Dadaism has reduced positive and negative to utter nonsense. It has been destructive in order to achieve indifference.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

1910-20s
Source: Isms in Art, (Hans Arp and El Lissitzky, The isms of art, 1924), published in 1925

Art, Indifference

“The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as "Western civilization," they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Regulation"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Money, People, Communication, Business

“In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,—probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Suffering, Falseness, Country

“However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.”

Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist

Electrical Papers (1882), Vol. I; Preface, p. vii; Maxmillan and Co., London and New York. Full Text http://www.archive.org/details/electricalpaper00heavgoog.

Motivation, Animals

“What was the origin of our slave population? The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown. We declared our independence, and the prohibition of a further importation was among the first acts of state sovereignty. Virginia was the first state which instructed her delegates to declare the colonies independent. She braved all dangers. From Quebec to Boston, and from Boston to Savannah, Virginia shed the blood of her sons. No imputation then can be cast upon her in this matter. She did all that was in her power to do, to prevent the extension of slavery, and to mitigate its evils.”

James Monroe (1758–1831) American politician, 5th President of the United States (in office from 1817 to 1825)

Speech in the Virginia State Convention for altering the Constitution https://books.google.com/books?id=R9ctAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22The+evil+commenced+when+we+were+in+our+Colonial+state%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBmoVChMIwM7FxfHTxwIViPM-Ch3fiQrs#v=onepage&q=%22The%20evil%20commenced%20when%20we%20were%20in%20our%20Colonial%20state%22&f=false (2 November 1829)

Evil

“The theory of three person in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM. … Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God.”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 256:9–11, 361:11–13 (1867).

God, Christ, Personality

“My poetry is a declaration of war, not an exordium to defeat. It is not the defeated soldier's drumbeat of despair, but the fighting warrior's will to win. It is not the de-spirited voice of dejection but the stirring shout of victory.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

New York September 7, 2000 Asia Society Annual Dinner
Quotes from ataljee.org

War, Victory, Fight, Despair

“What magic is this” asked one young German thickly.
”Not magic. Science. Preferable to magic.”
“Oh really?” said Sagitta in a freezing tone, and William blushed.
“You yourself have said there are very few people with the talent of magic. Science is open to all.”
“When knowledge ends, only faith remains,” said Armand.
“So we should abandon the pursuit of knowledge lest we diminish faith? That’s stupid,” said William belligerently.
“The simple folk of village and cottage are happier if they’re not confused with things beyond their understanding,” declared Sagitta.
“Sagitta, how do we know it’s beyond their understanding?”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

“Because if it weren’t they wouldn’t be common,” cried Solms-Braunfels, and there was another shout of laughter from the table.
Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 8 (p. 89)

People, Stupidity, Faith, Understanding

“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i. e. all the Glory of it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Benjamin Rush (21 June 1811); published in Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (1892), p. 287 http://books.google.com/books?id=5d8hAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22Jefferson+ran+away+with+all+the+stage+effect+of+that%22; also quoted in TIME magazine (25 October 1943) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796192-2,00.html 1810s

“Relations between the United States and the Third Reich opened in 1939 on a distinctly sour and strident note. It began when Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, speaking to a Zionist Society dinner in Cleveland at the end of 1938, declared Hitler had taken Germany back to "a period when man was unlettered, benighted, and brutal." The November pogrom demonstrated Hitler counted "the day lost when he can commit no crime against humanity." Ickes attacked Ford and Lindbergh for accepting decorations from the "same hand" that was "robbing and torturing thousands of fellow human beiongs."”

Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952) American politician

Zionist Society Dinner Speech, Cleveland, OH (Dec. 1938) as quoted by Michael Zalampas, Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in American Magazines, 1923-1939 (1989) p.171

“Our conceptions of liberty under the law are not narrow and cramped, but broad and tolerant. Our Constitution guarantees civil, political and religious liberty; fully, completely and adequately; and provides that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States'. This is the essence of freedom and toleration solemnly declared in the fundamental law of the land.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Law, Freedom

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6. His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. … When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.””

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Proverbs 8:22-30. Patriarchs and Prophets 34.1 https://egwwritings.org/?ref=en_PP.34.1&para=84.75

God, Happiness, Peace, Way

“"When I published my book "The Origins of the Bulgarians" in 1907, from which it came out that the Bulgarians were something better than what was being thought of for them, I was declared a patriot and, therefore, which is outside the law. Everyone who criticized me has criticized me not in content, not because the data I have stated is untrue, but because I was a patriot who reported facts that the Bulgarians were both valiant and cultural when, in the opinion of my opponents, it was obvious that the Bulgarians were created by nature as a fertilizer on foreign fields … My chauvinism, proving that Thrace and Macedonia were old Bulgarian lands, threatened on the one hand Russia, which aspired to South Thrace as a hinterland of the Dardanelles and on the other hand - Pannonian Slavs who aspired to Thessaloniki. The opinion of Paninese Slavs was also supported by Bulgarian scientists.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Books, Law, Support, Nature

“There is no more important object in nature, no object more worthy of contemplation, and if a famous philosopher and statesman of the past declares agriculture to be the worthy business of a free citizen (Cic. de off. I. 42.) it would also be an equally worthy business for him to get acquainted with the soil, without which agriculture is not conceivable.”

Friedrich Albert Fallou (1794–1877) German jurist and lawyer

Es giebt ja in der ganzen Natur keinen wichtigeren, keinen der Betrachtung würdigeren Gegenstand und wenn ein berühmter Philosoph und Staatsmann der Vorzeit (Cic. de off. I. 42.) den Ackerbau für das würdigste Geschäft eines freien Bürgers erklärt, so muß es auch ein ebenso würdiges Geschäft für ihn sein, sich mit dem Boden bekannt zu machen, ohne welchen kein Ackerbau denkbar. in Pedology or General and Special Soil Science Prospectus, Dresden 1862. http://books.google.com/books?id=ng8-AAAAcAAJ&pg=PP5. Translation by Google Translate Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid adquiritur, nihil est agri cultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius. 'For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture' Cicero De officiis (On Dutiable Action). Book I, Section 42. Translation by Cyrus R. Edmonds (1873), p. 73

Business, Nature, Past

“The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar instutitions is to deny the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that he has inalienable rights.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

As quoted in letter to the citizens of the twelfth congressional district (29 June 1839), The Hingham Patriot, MA. As quoted in Thomas Huges Rare and Early Newspaper catalog, No. 141
Letter to the 12th Congressional District (1839)

Men, Truth

“Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Jasper John's quote, from: Marcel Duchamps 1887 – 1968, in 'Artforum' 7 no. 3, November 1968, p. 6
1960s

Art, Thinking, Change

“"Non-fiction", on the other hand, declares itself to be the carrier of fact, an expression of reality, and thus of truth. Why then does most fact-based work have a remarkably short shelf life? The reply might be that additional facts come along. That we are learning all the time. In that case, it was never an expression of reality or truth. And even if the facts are overtaken, the arguments built upon them should not date with such terrifying rapidity. Decade-old serious "non-fiction" often seems arcane, irrelevant. The written style itself seems to become old-fashioned. Two-centuries-old decent "fiction" on the other hand can easily remain fresh.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

On Equilibrium (2001)

Life, Truth, Fashion, Reality

“It was for all the members of the Cabinet a relief. Never before had a declaration of war been welcomed with such satisfaction. France having done all that was incumbent upon her to maintain peace and war having nevertheless become inevitable, it was a hundred times better that we should not have been led, even by repeated violation of our frontiers, to declare it ourselves. It was indispensable that Germany, who was entirely responsible for the aggression, should be led into publicly confessing her intentions. If we had had to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have been contested, national unanimity would have been smashed, it would probably have meant Italy would have been forced by the clauses of the Triple Alliance to side against us.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Diary entry (3 August 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 140.

War, Peace, Time

“Mister Gladstone is an Englishman and a scholar. Had he walked by the side of that soldier, remembering Cromwell's Ironsides who trusted in God and kept their powder dry, and the old Continental militia, I think he would not have declared as he did that 'Jefferson Davis had created a nation', but he would rather have said, 'If Bunker Hill sends the first soldiers to this war, it is already decided. My lords and gentlemen, John Bull had better touch no American bonds which Bunker Hill does not endorse.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

God, War, Thinking

“When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall,
Bubble up from the heart to the tongue,
And Meekness is writhing in torment and thrall,
By the hands of Ingratitude wrung, —
In the heat of injustice, unwept and unfair,
While the anguish is festering yet,
None, none but an angel or God can declare
"I now can forgive and forget."”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Forgive and Forget, l. 1-8.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

God, Angels, Forgiveness, Heart

“This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

"Virginia Resolution of 1798" (December 1798)
1790s

Exercises, Sense, Evil

“This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, Law, Nature, Sense

“There are certain great sentiments which simultaneously possess many minds and make what we call the spirit of the age. That spirit at the close of the last century was peculiarly humane. From the great Spanish Cardinal Ximenes, who refused the proposal of the Bishop Las Casas to enslave the Indians; from Milton, who sang, 'But man over man He made not Lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free', from John Selden, who said, 'Before all, Liberty', from Algernon Sidney, who died for it, from Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Richard Baxter, the Dissenter, with his great contemporary, George Fox, whose protest has been faithfully maintained by the Quakers; from Southern, Montesquieu, Hutcheson, Savage, Shenstone, Sterne, Warburton, Voltaire, Rosseau, down to Cowper and Clarkson in 1783 — by the mouths of all these and innumerable others Religion, Scepticism, Literature, and Wit had persistently protested against the sin of slavery. As early as 1705 Lord Holt had declared there was no such thing as a slave by the law of England. At the close of the century, four years before our Declaration, Lord Mansfield, though yearning to please the planters, was yet compelled to utter the reluctant 'Amen' to the words of his predecessor. Shall we believe Lord Mansfield, who lived in the time and spoke for it, when he declared that wherever English law extended — and it extended to these colonies — there was no man whatsoever so poor and outcast but had rights sacred as the king's; or shall we believe a judge eighty-four years afterwards, who says that at that time Africans were regarded as people 'who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

I am not a lawyer, but, for the sake of the liberty of my countrymen, I trust the law of the Supreme Court of the United States is better than its knowledge of history.
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Age, Religion, Law

“While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

“The reference to the source of authority should be definite. Such vague phrases as the following, common though they are, are worthless as proof : —
Statistics gathered with great care show —
It may be said on substantial authority —
Many prominent men agree —
Competent authorities say —
We could give hundreds of cases to show —
Recent writers on this subject declare —
One had better not pretend to prove anything than to seek to cover bare assertions with such flimsy material.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 59; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 77)

Men

“He had a deep appreciation of this action, but always refused to support the Napoleonic regime. After Waterloo he insisted that Napoleon must abdicate and that the nation must guarantee his life and liberty. When the Bourbons were restored he denounced usurpations in the name of royalty, as he had formerly denounced usurpations in the name of liberty. As a consequence he was charged with treason. He defied the Assembly to try him on such a charge. 'During the whole of a life devoted entirely to liberty I have constantly been attacked by the enemies of that cause', he declared. 'I demand a public inquiry within the walls of this chamber and in the face of this nation.”

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

As his enemies dared riot meet the challenge, he was acquitted.
1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Life, Support

“Kantians, of course, will think that I have lost the plot from the start, and that only confusion can result from failure to make these essential, utterly fundamental divisions between “is” and “ought,” fact and value, or the descriptive and the normative, in as rigorous and systematic a way as possible, just as I think they have fallen prey to a kind of fetishism, attributing to a set of human conceptual invention a significance they do not have. … In some contexts, a relative distinction between the facts and human valuations of those facts, or norms, might be perfectly useful. But the division makes sense only relative to the context, and can’t be extracted from that context, promoted, and declared to have absolute standing.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 16-17.

Way, Failure, Thinking, Sense

“I don’t believe in western morality, i. e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: "Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)." The first Israeli prime minister who declares that he will follow the Old Testament will finally bring peace to the Middle East. First, the Arabs will stop using children as shields. Second, they will stop taking hostages knowing that we will not be intimidated. Third, with their holy sites destroyed, they will stop believing that G-d is on their side. Result: no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war. Zero tolerance for stone throwing, for rockets, for kidnapping will mean that the state has achieved sovereignty. Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”

Manis Friedman (1946) American rabbi

Answer for the question "How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?" for the "Moment" magazine. http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2009/2009-06/200906-Ask_Rabbis.html On the Israeli-Arab conflict

Women, Men, War, Children

“The number of times I have been declared dead is statistically insignificant, although admittedly non-zero.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[d5oimc$32d$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Time, Dead

“On the other hand, Hindu saints used to assuage the outraged feelings of Hindus and encourage them reconvert to Hinduism. For instance Harihar and Bukka, sons of the Raja of Kampil, converted to Islam by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, fled his court. At the instance of sage Vidyaranya they reverted to Hinduism and founded the Vijayanagar kingdom to resist the expansion of Muslim power in the South. Like Vidyaranya, there were scores of Bhakta saints who were helping people to resist injustice and retain their original religion. In Maharashtra, Namdeva in the fourteenth century declared that people were blind in insisting upon worshipping in temples and mosques, while His worship needed neither temple nor mosque.69 Such courageous denunciations were infectious and these spread in Gujarat, Bengal, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, Raidas, Dhanna, Sain, Garibdas and Dadu Dayal and a host of others spoke out in the same idiom openly and repeatedly. They came from all classes of society - Raidas was a chamar, Sain was a barber while Pipa was a Raja, Raja of Gauranggarh - but they were all respected and listened to. Of these the three most important saints who turned Bhakti into a movement were Kabir, Nanak and Chaitanya.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 6

People, Religion, Feeling, Courage

“To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.”

Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) French philosopher

A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties & His Education, Vol. I (1773)

Books, Fools, Reading

“As apt and applicable as the Declaration of Independence is today, we would do well to honor that other historic document drafted in this hall — the Constitution of the United States. For it stressed not independence but interdependence — not the individual liberty of one but the indivisible liberty of all.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

“We sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now, we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies, more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist.
But we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on, to grab this land from whomever, and we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.
And so it goes with most great nation-states, which feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business, and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry, up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.”

Paul Harvey (1918–2009) American broadcaster

Commenting on historical military and social policies, during his ABC News broadcast (23 June 2005); quoted in "Agression Dominates the Airwaves" by Saul Landau, at Transnational Institute (19 July 2005) http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=1859&username=guest@tni.org&password=9999&publish=Y.

Men, Way, Feeling, Business

“Apart from these three acts, Mr. President, the Court further declared VOID “the use of unprogrammed funds despite the absence of a certification by the National Treasurer that the revenue collections exceeded the revenue targets for non-compliance with the conditions provided in the relevant GAA.””

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget