Quotes about demand
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“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hard-working artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life’s task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke

Love, Life, Lie, Perfection

“You may successfully resist any and all men, but you cannot successfully resist Jehovah God.... In the name of Jehovah God and His anointed King, Christ Jesus, I demand that you give order to all officials and servants of your government that Jehovah’s witnesses in Germany be permitted to peaceably assemble and without hindrance worship God.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge

[The Evils of Nazism Exposed, Awake!, 1995]

Men, God, Christ

“I am a man with a heart that offends
with its lonely and greedy demands.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"John My Beloved"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Heart

“Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality – it resists and makes demands..”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279

Idea

“The worker's existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer, And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Wages of Labor, p. 20.
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

Life, Dependency

“He worshipped as much in Hindu temples as he did in gurudwaras. When he was sick and about to die, he gave away cows for charity. What did he do with the diamond Kohi-noor? He did not want to give it to the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar which he built in marble and gold, but to Jagannath Puri as his farewell gift. When he had the Afghans at his mercy and wrested Kashmir from them, he wanted the gates of the temple of Somnath back from them. Why should he be making all these Hindu demands? Whatever the breakaway that had been achieved from Hinduism, this greatest of our monarchs bridged in 40 years.”

Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) founder of Sikh Empire (early 19th century)

Khushwant Singh, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

“Nationwide, the nonreligious population is both the fastest growing, and the most despised. I ask you all, why is that? Why are we hated, when we endorse no violence, incite no racism or hatred, and demand nothing more than equal treatment? I'll tell you why: It's easy to hate what you don't know, and the theists don't know us. Well, actually, they do know us, but they don't know they know us, because most atheists in this country are closeted. Bigotry is born of ignorance, but ignorance can be cured. If the atheists weren't closeted, it would be harder to hate us, because in the end, you can't hate what you already love.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

Love, Hate, Country

“There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book I, Ch. 3, sec. 4
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“The Commander in Chief earnestly recommends that the troops not on duty should universally attend with that seriousness of Deportment and gratitude of Heart which the recognition of such reiterated and astonishing interpositions of Providence demand of us.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Notes on general orders to the troops, (20 October 1781), as quoted in The Writings of George Washington (1835) edited by Jared Sparks, Vol. 8, p. 189
1780s

Universe, Heart, Gratitude

“Traffic with one's higher self. Everyone has his good day, when he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that we judge someone only when he is in this condition, and not in his workdays of bondage and servitude. We should, for example, assess and honor a painter according to the highest vision he was able to see and portray. But people themselves deal very differently with this, their higher self, and often act out the role of their own self, to the extent that they later keep imitating what they were in those moments. Some regard their ideal with shy humility and would like to deny it: they fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly. In addition, it has a ghostly freedom of coming or staying away as it wishes; for that reason it is often called a gift of the gods, while actually everything else is a gift of the gods (of chance): this, however, is the man himself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 624
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

God, People, Fear, Freedom

“206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

Thinking, Learning

“Quite apart from the fact that it conflicts with the demands and the content of the word of God, nihilism is a denial of the humanity and of the very identity of the human being. It should never be forgotten that the neglect of being inevitably leads to losing touch with objective truth and therefore with the very ground of human dignity.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998 Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

God, Truth

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

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

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, Dreams, Feeling, Cats

“During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.… The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Manufacturing Consent, lecture at the University of Wisconsin (15 March 1989) https://chomsky.info/19890315/. Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

People, Democracy, Understanding

“When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 78.

Life, Personality

“In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then, in illusory harmony, they are reconciled with the general interest whose demands they had initially experienced as irreconcilable with their own.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Section 14
Culture Industry Reconsidered (1963)

“Halloween seems to last forever, until it is finally time to put on one's costume and demand candy from strangers.”

Daniel Handler book The End

The End (2006)

Time

“Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (…) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909 (new edition, 2006), pp. 64-65.

Life, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“… what is there in the subject of psychology to demand the attention of the manager?
Psychology, in the popular phrase, is " the study of the mind." It has for years been included in the training of all teachers, and has been one of the first steps for the student of philosophy; but it has not, usually, been included among the studies of the young scientific or engineering student, or of any students in other lines than Philosophy and Education. This, not because its value as a " culture subject " was not understood, but because the course of the average student is so crowded with technical preparation necessary to his life work, and because the practical value of psychology has not been recognized. It is well recognized that the teacher must understand the working of the mind in order best to impart his information in that way that will enable the student to grasp it most readily. It was not recognized that every man going out into the world needs all the knowledge that he can get as to the working of the human mind in order not only to give but to receive information with the least waste and expenditure of energy, nor was it recognized that in the industrial, as well as the academic world, almost every man is a teacher.”

Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer

Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 1-2

Life, World, Education, Way

“The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) Source: Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org https://archive.org 26 February 2018 https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala

“Thee, first in peace and honor - we demand The grace and glory of thy martial band. Fam'd for thy valor, for thy virtues more, Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore! One century scarce perform'd its destined round”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

Peace

“The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

The Quest for a True Humanity
I Write What I Like (1978)

Way, Learning

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“The medium is as unimportant as I myself. Essential is only the forming... I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form etc., I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Schwitters (1921) in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 68-69.
1920s

Color, Painting, Clothes

“Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Beauty, Joy

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Money, Pain, People, Lie

“Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit: not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost. Our strife pertains to ourselves — to the passing generations of men — and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.”

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

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

Men, Spring, Evil, Parting

“No one, I think, can deny that the depression of the agricultural interest is excessive. Though I can recall periods of suffering, none of them have ever equalled the present in its instances. … the agricultural interest is suffering from a succession of bad harvest, accompanied, for the first time, by extremely low prices. That is a remarkable circumstance that has never before occurred—a combination that has never before been encountered. In old days, when we had a bad harvest we had also the somewhat dismal compensation of higher prices; but now, when the harvests are bad the prices are lower rather than higher…nor is it open to doubt that foreign competition has exercised a most injurious influence on the agricultural interests of the country. The country, however, was perfectly warned that if we made a great revolution in our industrial system, that was one of the consequences that would accrue. I may mention that the great result of the returns we possess is this, that the immense importations of foreign agricultural produce have been vastly in excess of what the increased demands of our population actually require, and that is why the low prices are maintained…That is to a great degree the cause of this depression.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the House of Lords on the state of agriculture (28 March 1879), reported in The Times (29 March 1879), p. 8.
1870s

Exercises, Thinking, Suffering, Time

“Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?
Cool down mama, cool off
You speak of signs and wonders, I need something other.
I would believe if I was able, but I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Waiting

“We were against oppression, and then we elevated our struggle to demand our rights. We will go against all the dictators, and not only Saleh in Yemen, so we can spread peace.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

Peace

“Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Nature, Suffering

“The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in American never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes. It is not the black child's language that is in question, it is not his language that is despised: It is his experience. A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. A child cannot be taught by anyone whose demand, essentially, is that the child repudiate his experience, and all that gives him sustenance, and enter a limbo in which he will no longer be black, and in which he knows that he can never become white. Black people have lost too many black children that way.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html in "The New York Times (29 July 1979)

Children, People, Truth, Education

“To such a one my answer is that I have arrived at a nourishing kernel in that I have learnt that a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith which he ought to make to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. When they are able, from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture. But when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. And we will so cling to our Mediator, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” that we will not be led astray by the glib talk of false philosophy or frightened by the superstition of false religion. When we read the inspired books in the light of this wide variety of true doctrines which are drawn from a few words and founded on the firm basis of Catholic belief, let us choose that one which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. But if this is not clear, then at least we should choose an interpretation in keeping with the context of Scripture and in harmony with our faith. But if the meaning cannot be studied and judged by the context of Scripture, at least we should choose only that which our faith demands. For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. If both these difficulties are avoided, the reader gets full profit from his reading."”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

I, xxi, 41. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
De Genesi ad Litteram

Wisdom, Books, Faith, Religion

“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

28
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Evil

“BASIC is to computation what QWERTY is to typing. Many teachers have learned BASIC, many books have been written about it, many computers have been built in such a way that BASIC is "hardwired" into them. In the case of the typewriter, we noted how people invent "rationalizations" to justify the status quo. In the case of BASIC, the phenomenon has gone much further, to the point where it resembles ideology formation. Complex arguments are invented to justify features of BASIC that were originally included because the primitive technology demanded them or because alternatives were not well enough known at the time the language was designed.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 1, Computers and Computer Cultures

People, Books, Way, Learning

“The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

People, Hope, Spring, Problem

“For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.”

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

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism

Happiness, Justice, Revenge, Sense

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”

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

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Health, Age, School, Cars

“There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.”

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

Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 133

Education, Thinking

“Saudi rulers, who have obstructed the path of Allah and Masjid ul-Haraam this year and who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House, are disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the U. S. and on fulfilling their demands. And on this path, they do not shy away from any treason.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

People, World, Faith, Thinking

“The U. S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all that we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.
It is my firm belief that the responsible course of action - for the United States, for Iraq, and for our troops - is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy. This policy that I've laid out is consistent with what I have advocated for well over a year, with many of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and with what the American people demanded in the November election.
When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience, is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried and failed policy opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.
It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back. And it is time to refocus America's efforts on the challenges we face at home and the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.”

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

Floor Statement on Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 (30 January 2007)
2007

War, People, Home, Effort

“Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations - as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness - nature pops up with her inescapable demands.”

C.G. Jung book Alchemical Studies

Alchemical Studies

Game, Nature

“Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Banquet Speech

World, Democracy, Thinking

“Rules for Axioms. I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admittied, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

“I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly — that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union be dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska-law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence because the elections since, clearly demand it's repeal, and this demand is openly disregarded. You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.”

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

1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)

Men, Law, Way, Feeling

“I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.”

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) American political economist

Hardin (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science.

World, Way, Idea, Nature

“What matters is the di¤erence between qualities available and qualities required by the demand side, that is by the organization of production.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

Source: Income Distribution (1975), p. 15; Cited in: Acemoglu, Daron. Technical change, inequality, and the labor market. No. w7800. National bureau of economic research, 2000. p. 11

“[Nasreddin had to don his finest clothes in order to be admitted to a fancy dinner party. ]
He reached over, took a piece of meat and stuffed it in his shirt. He poked the next piece into his cummerbund. Then he jammed one into each pocket of his pants. All eyes were on Nasreddin as he gathered the long sleeves of his cloak and soaked them in the bowl of hot gravy. A stunned guest jumped to his feet and demanded, Effendi! [Sir! ] What is the meaning of your outrageous behavior?" "Well," said Nasreddin Odjah, "when you find yourself in a place where clothes are more welcome than the person wearing them, you must feed the clothes first and the person afterward!"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Flora Joy, Treasures from Europe: stories and classroom activities (2003), "Nasreddin Odjah's Clothes (Macedonia)", , p. 104

Behavior, Personality, Clothes

“The growing extravagance of the people, and the increasing demand for the article of forage in this quarter, have become a very alarming affair. Hay is from sixty to eighty dollars a ton, and upon the rise.* Corn is ten dollars a bushel, and oats four; and every thing else, that will answer for forage, in that proportion. Carting is nine shillings a mile by the ton, and people much dissatisfied with the price. I have represented to the States of Rhode Island and Connecticut the absolute necessity of legislative interposition, to settle the prices of things upon some reasonable footing, of all such articles and services as are necessary for the use of the public in my department. I am going to do the same to the Council of this State. What effect it will have, I cannot say; but, if there is not something done to check the extravagance of the people, there are no funds in the universe that will equal the expense.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

People, Universe

“People get annoyed with you if you treat them like they're automatons that lack free will. It's something that people find very constraining. There's something slave-like about that even. The demand that you don't have actual autonomy and, even worse, that you're not responsible for your choices – it's an insult to someone to suggest to them that they're not responsible for their decisions. To do that to someone, from a legal perspective, you have to argue something like diminished capacity. You are mentally ill, or you don't have the intellectual capacity, or you were under some substance, or you had a brain injury, and that's why you're not responsible for your actions. Part of the respect that you give other human beings is that you acknowledge that they are responsible for their actions. Part of that, too, is that if you do something good, you're also responsible for that. It's got to be more annoying than anything else to strive virtuously, to produce something of extreme value, and then to be treated as if it is a mere deterministic outcome, and that your actual choices had nothing to do with that. It can be extraordinarily punishing.”

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

Other

People, Decision, Parting

“My dear friends, now and forever, I renounce, have renounced and will go on renouncing copyrights. My only wish is that these books be sold at low price, affordable to the poor, affordable to all the children of God. I wish that even the poorest, most destitute citizen be able to obtain these books with the few pennies he carries in his pocket. In fact, I do not have any income; I do not demand anything in exchange for my works. Whosoever wants to publish them, let him publish for the benefit of deiseased mankind.”

Samael Aun Weor (1917–1977) Colombian writer

The 1976 Gnostic Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico

God, Children, Books

“It [Islam] has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'… This abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact… You cannot just say you came out of nothing.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

As quoted in VS Naipaul launches attack on Islam" in The Guardian (4 October 2001) https://web.archive.org/web/20170412063202/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/04/afghanistan.terrorism9

People, History, Past

“Let us notice some more of the stale charges against Republicans. You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section — gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started — to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe that the principle which our fathers who framed the Government under which we live thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.”

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

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)

Question, Change

“You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons… full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire… You are therefore properly the king of desire. …equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth… It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

Men, Personality

“Islam is an ideology aiming for world domination rather than a religion. It demands that the state be regulated according to Islamic law. As a consequence, it wants to rule over all other religions, ideologies and political visions. Islam is based on the Koran, which according to the Islamic faith is a book written by Allah himself. Hence, it leaves no room for interpretation. The Koran commands Muslims to conquer the world, if necessary through violence. There is no freedom in Islam. Because of its global aims, it is a threat to freedom everywhere.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"DECKER: 5 Questions with Geert Wilders", The Washington Times (14 September 2012) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/14/geert-wilders-5-questions-with-decker/ 2010s

Books, World, Faith, Religion

“One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Nobel lecture (1978)

Love, Life, God, Success

“Only a seaman realises to what great extent an entire ship reflects the personality and ability of one individual, her Commanding Officer. To a landsman, this is not understandable—and sometimes it is even difficult for us to comprehend—but it is so! A ship at sea is a different world in herself, and in consideration of the protracted and distant operations of the fleet units, the Navy must place great power, responsibility and trust in the hands of those leaders chosen for command. In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire and morale of the ship. He is the Commanding Officer. He is the ship. This is the most difficult and demanding assignment in the Navy. There is not an instant during his tour as Commanding Officer that he can escape the grasp of command responsibility. His privileges, in view of his obligations, are almost ludicrously small; nevertheless, this is the spur which has given the Navy its great leaders. It is a duty which richly deserves the highest, time-honoured title of the seafaring world—Captain.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Command at Sea: the Prestige, Privilege and Burden of Command

World, Understanding, Distant, Time

“I am far from wanting to resist the demands of my time, except when they are purely a matter of fashion. Instead, I continue to hope that time itself will destroy its own offspring, perhaps quite soon. But I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it up to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or a maggot.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote in 'Caspar David Friedrich's Medieval Burials', Karl Whittington - http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring12/whittington-on-caspar-david-friedrichs-medieval-burials undated

Age, Hope, Fashion, Time

“The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.”

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

Speech on the floor of the US Senate (3 April 2006). "Obama Fence Statement" https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4652652/obama-fence-statement, starting at about 2:05. 2006

People, Age, Law, Country

“Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

Prologue
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998)

People, Religion, History, Idea

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

People, Beauty, Art

“We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?”

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

Speech at The Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (December 1925) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“If, being duke and peer, you would not be contented with my standing uncovered before you, but should also wish that I should esteem you, I should ask you to show me the qualities that merit my esteem. If you did this, you would gain it, and I could not refuse it to you with justice; but if you did not do it, you would be unjust to demand it of me; and assuredly you would not succeed, were you the greatest prince in the world.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

World, Justice

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

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

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

Help

“He neither seeks nor avoids talking about his enemies. When he does speak of them, it is with pride without disdain, humor without rancor, reproach without bitterness, frankness without spite. And in the same way, he speaks of his rivals for glory only with deserved praises that conceal no hidden venom, which can certainly not be said of the praise they sometimes give him. But what I find in him that is most rare in an Author and and even in a sensitive man is the most perfect tolerance in matters of feelings and opinions, and the putting aside of all partisan spirit, even in his own favor; wanting freely to state his opinion and his reasons when the issue demands it, and even doing so with passion when his heart is agitated; but not blaming people for not adopting what he feels any more than he puts up with anyone's wish to deprive him of his feeling; and giving everyone the same freedom of thought as he insists on having for himself. I hear everyone talk about tolerance, but he is the only truly tolerant person I have known.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

People, Way, Feeling, Freedom

“It is a characteristic of the great that they demand far less of other people than of themselves.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Merkmal großer Menschen ist, daß sie an andere weit geringere Anforderungen stellen als an sich selbst.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 35.

People

“We will continue to pursue the strategy of boosting domestic demand and ensure fast and balanced economic and social development in China. This will create more opportunities for China-U. S. economic cooperation and trade. We will continue to advance the reform of the RMB exchange rate regime, take positive steps in such areas as expanding market access, increasing imports, and strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, and further expand China-U. S. economic cooperation and trade.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, White House speech (2006)

“Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990)
It All Adds Up (1994)

Alcohol, World, Thinking, Country

“You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. That's how freedom works. It also demands you do your homework. Again and again, I hear gun owners say, how can we believe anything the anti-gun media says when they can't even get the facts right? For too long, you have swallowed manufactured statistics and fabricated technical support from anti-gun organizations that wouldn't know a semi-auto from a sharp stick. And it shows. You fall for it every time.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997)

Support, Freedom, Time

“Claggert: We must serve the law, sir, or give up the right and privilege of service. It is only within that law that we may use our discretions according to our rank.
Captain Vere: You're so intelligent and so lucid for the rank you hold, Master At Arms.
Claggert: I thank you, sir.
Captain Vere: Yes, that's no flattery, Mr. Claggart. It's a melancholy fact. It's sad to see such qualities of mind bent to such a sorry purpose. What's the reason for it?
Claggert: I am what I am, sir. And what the world has made me.
Captain Vere: The world? The world demands that behind every peacemaker there be the gun, the gallows, the jail. Do you think it will always be so?
Claggert: I have no reason not to, sir.
Captain Vere: You live without hope?
Claggert: I live.
Captain Vere: But remember, Mr. Claggart, that even the man who wields the whip cannot defy the code we must obey and not be broken by it. That will be all.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Billy Budd (1962)

World, Sadness, Law, Hope

“Modern production sets rapidly rising demands not only on machines, on technology, but also and primarily on the workers, on those who create these machines and control this technology. For ever larger segments of workers specialised knowledge and a high degree of professional training, man’s general cultural standard, are becoming an obligatory condition of successful work.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Soviet Youth and Socialism http://leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/3.1-Youth.and.Culture

Knowledge, Success, Training

“What I demand you is almost impossible, for one has to defeat our history. And nevertheless, if one does not defeat it, one has to know a rule that imposes itself: nationalism, this is war! War is not solely past, it can be our future, and these are you, ladies and gentlemen deputies, who are the guardians of our peace, our security and our future.”

François Mitterrand (1916–1996) 21st President of the French Republic

Lecture held at European Parliament (17 January 1995)

War, Peace, History, Past

“Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

Love, Life

“Encourage therefore his inquisitiveness all you can, by satisfying his demands, and informing his judgement, as far as it is capable. When his reasons are any way tolerable, let him find the credit and commendation of it, without being laugh'd at for his mistake be gently put into the right; and if he shew a forwardness to be reasoning about things that come in his way, take care, as much as you can, that no body check this inclination in him, or mislead it by captious or fallacious ways of talking with him. For when all is done, this is the highest and most important faculty of our minds, deserves the greatest care and attention in cultivating it: the right improvement, and exercise of our reason being the highest perfection that a man can attain to in his life.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 122
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Life, Way, Exercises, Perfection

“For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans: the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means also taking full responsibility for our own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism. They must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”

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

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Life, Children, Health, School

“p>To the new International that is now in the irreversible process of preparation we can contribute the ideas of worldwide organization and the world state; the English can suggest the idea of worldwide exploitation and trusts; the French can offer nothing….
Thus we find two great economic principles opposed to each other in the modern world. The Viking has become a free-tradesman; the Teutonic knight is now an administrative official. There can be no reconciliation. Each of these principles is proclaimed by a German people, Faustian men par excellence. Neither can accept a restriction of its will, and neither can be satisfied until the whole world has succumbed to its particular idea. This being the case, war will be waged until one side gains final victory. Is world economy to be worldwide exploitation, or worldwide organization? Are the Caesars of the coming empire to be billionaires or universal administrators? Shall the population of the earth, so long as this empire of Faustian civilization holds together, be subjected to cartels and trusts, or to men such as those envisioned in the closing pages of Goethe’s Faust, Part II? Truly, the destiny of the world is at stake….
This brings us to the political aspects of the English-Prussian antithesis. Politics is the highest and most powerful dimension of all historical existence. World history is the history of states; the history of states is the history of wars. Ideas, when they press for decisions, assume the form of political units: countries, peoples, or parties. They must be fought over not with words but with weapons. Economic warfare becomes military warfare between countries or within countries. Religious associations such as Jewry and Islam, Huguenots and Mormons, constitute themselves as countries when it becomes a matter of their continued existence or their success. Everything that proceeds from the innermost soul to become flesh or fleshly creation demands a sacrifice of flesh in return. Ideas that have become blood demand blood. War is the eternal pattern of higher human existence, and countries exist for war’s sake; they are signs of readiness for war. And even if a tired and blood-drained humanity desired to do away with war, like the citizens of the Classical world during its final centuries, like the Indians and Chinese of today, it would merely exchange its role of war-wager for that of the object about and with which others would wage war. Even if a Faustian universal harmony could be attained, masterful types on the order of late Roman, late Chinese, or late Egyptian Caesars would battle each other for this Empire—for the possession of it, if its final form were capitalistic; or for the highest rank in it, if it should become socialistic.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Men, War, People, World

“I always believed that at some time fate would take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating myself. I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopher to educate me, a true philosopher whom one could follow without any misgiving because one would have more faith in him than one had in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles by which he would educate you?—and I reflected on what he might say about the two educational maxims which are being hatched in our time. One of them demands that the educator should quickly recognize the real strength of his pupil and then direct all his efforts and energy and heat at them so as to help that one virtue to attain true maturity and fruitfulness. The other maxim, on the contrary, requires that the educator should draw forth and nourish all the forces which exist in his pupil and bring them to a harmonious relationship with one another. … But where do we discover a harmonious whole at all, a simultaneous sounding of many voice in one nature, if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom everything, knowledge, desire, love, hate, strives towards a central point, a root force, and where a harmonious system is constructed through the compelling domination of this living centre? And so perhaps these two maxims are not opposites at all? Perhaps the one simply says that man should have a center and the other than he should also have a periphery? That educating philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also know how to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me, be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws of motion.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.2, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), pp. 130-131
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Love, Men, Hate, Fate

“I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life, Effort, Time

“A man must read widely, a little of everything or whatever he can, but given the shortness of life and the verbosity of the world, not too much should be demanded of him. Let him begin with those titles no one should omit, commonly referred to as books for learning, as if not all books were for learning, and this list will vary according to the fount of knowledge one drinks from and the authority that monitors its flow.”

José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 117

Life, Books, World, Drink

“I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago. I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics. So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need…The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions.”

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

In a video posting, announcing his candidacy for President of the United States (16 January 2007) http://www.barackobama.com/video/from_barack_transcript/ 2007

Money, Way, Problem, Thinking

“Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“It is not without reason that this verse [Ps 70:1] has been chosen from the whole of Scripture as a device. It carries within it all the feelings of which human nature is capable…. 'Come to my help, O God; Lord, hurry to my rescue'…. The thought of this verse should be turning unceasingly in your heart. Never cease to recite it in whatever task or service or journey you find yourself. Think upon it as you sleep, as you eat, as you submit to the most basic demands of nature. This heartfelt thought will prove to be a formula of salvation for you. Not only will it protect you against all devilish attack, but it will purify you from the stain of all earthly sin, and will lead you on to the contemplation of the unseen and the heavenly and to that fiery urgency of prayer which is indescribable and which is experienced by very few. Sleep should come upon you as you meditate on this verse until as a result of your habit of resorting to its words you get in the habit of repeating them even in your slumbers.”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

Conferences X

God, Feeling, Nature, Thinking

“The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the States; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or in envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to do justice to others.”

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

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Family, Justice, Envy, Wealth

“[I am dynamite]I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

"Why I am a Destiny", 1
Ecce Homo (1888)

Fate, Decision, Memory

“As a man's conduct is controlled by public fact, so is her religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of Goddess. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church. While men unaided cannot deduce the rules of their faith, neither can they assign limits to that faith by the evidence of reason; they allow themselves to be driven hither and thither by all sorts of external influences, they are ever above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant; this is why women have always too much or too little religion. As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief; for faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other. In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect; remember that if we ask the Almighty to give heed to our words, we should at least give heed to what we mean to say.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Women, Men, Truth, Faith

“No two beings, and no two situations, are really commensurable with each other. To become aware of this fact is to undergo a sort of crisis. But it is with this crisis in our moral awareness as a starting-point, that there becomes possible that cry from us towards the creative principle, and that demand by it on us, which each must answer in his own way.”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), p. 25

Way, Cry

“What makes me cautiously optimistic about my successor and the shift from campaign mode to governance is there’s something about the solemn responsibilities of that office, the extraordinary demands that are placed on the United States -- not just by its own people but by people around the world -- that forces you to focus, that demands seriousness. And if you’re not serious about the job, then you probably won’t be there very long because it will expose problems. Even when you’re doing a job, even when you are attentive, there are so many things that come across your desk that people are going to question you, and you’re going to have opponents and you’re going to have critics, and you figure that out pretty fast when you’re sitting there. And I think the President-elect is going to see fairly quickly that the demands and responsibilities of a U. S. President are not ones that you can treat casually, and that in a big, complex, diverse country, the only way that you can be successful is by listening and reaching out and working with a wide variety of people.”

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

2016, News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany (November 2016)

People, World, Way, Question

“Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

“During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis that the Jews of different countries would be assimilated and that the Jewish question would thus disappear, as it were, automatically. The historical development of the last quarter of a century has not confirmed this view. Decaying capitalism has everywhere swung over to an intensified nationalism, one aspect of which is anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has loomed largest in the most highly developed capitalist country of Europe, Germany. […]
The Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. […]
We must bear in mind that the Jewish people will exist a long time. The nation cannot normally exist without common territory. Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. […]
Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements freely consented to, or rather demanded, by certain nationalities or parts of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the planned economy. This is the great historic perspective as I see it. To work for international Socialism means to work also for the solution of the Jewish question.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Excerpts of Trotsky’s interview with Jewish Telegraphic Agency (18 January 1937); as quoted in Trotsky and the Jews (1972) by Joseph Nedava, p. 204

People, Youth, Spring, Communication

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

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

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

Life, War, Fear, Way

“The human race is trying to work out: 'well, what's the ultimate sacrifice?' It's something like that. The ultimate sacrifice of value. Well, the Passion story - and I told you was foreshadowing - is that there is a supreme sacrifice demanded on the part of the Mother, and there's a supreme sacrifice demanded on the part of the Father, all at the same time. That makes the supreme sacrifice possible. And hypothetically, that's the one that renews. That's the sacrifice that renews and redeems. It's a hell of an idea, man. And the things about it is: I don't know if it's true. But I know that its opposite is false. And generally the opposite of something that's false is true. If the mother doesn't make the sacrifice, then you get the horrible Oedipal situation in the household, which is its own catastrophic hell. If the maternal sacrifice isn't there, then that doesn't work. If the paternal sacrifice isn't there - if the father isn't willing to put his son out into the world, then that's a non-starter because the kid doesn't grow up. And if the son isn't willing to do that, then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility. So if those three things don't happen, it's chaos, it's cataclysmic, it's hell. If they do happen, is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, 'How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?”

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

Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is: well, you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know."
Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts

Children, Truth, World, Idea

“It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream — individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization. During the war practically the only courage I ran across was mass courage, the courage that comes of being one of a herd, and anyone who examines this phenomenon more closely will find it to be compounded of some very strange elements: a great deal of vanity, a great deal of fear — yes, fear of staying behind, fear of being sneered at fear of independent action, and fear, above all, of taking up a stand against the mass enthusiasm of one's fellows.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

War, Fear, Courage, Time

“To be an individual and to be yourself you don't have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy — the will, the effort — we waste trying to become that! If that energy is released, what is it that we can't do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world!”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: Thought is Your Enemy (1990), Chapter III: The Robot Is Dreaming

World, Effort

“The two preponderant forces at work are technological development, which made for a relative increase in demand and hence in the income ratio… and increased access to schooling, which made for a relative decrease.”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

Source: Income Distribution (1975), p. 35; Cited in: Acemoglu (2000, p. 16)

School

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

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

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Truth, World, History, Courage

“And as I’ve said elsewhere, a free press helps make a nation stronger and more successful, and it makes us leaders more effective because it demands greater accountability.”

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

Remarks by President Obama and President Kenyatta of Kenya in a Press Conference at Kenyan State House in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-and-president-kenyatta-kenya-press-conference 2015

Success, Help

“Modern Feminism has two distinct sides to it: (1) an articulate political and economic side embracing demands for so-called rights; and (2) a sentimental side which insists in an accentuation of the privileges and immunities which have grown up, not articulately or as the result of definite demands, but as the consequence of sentimental pleading in particular cases. In this way, however, a public opinion became established, finding expression in a sex favouritism in the law and even still more in its administration, in favour of women as against men.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

Chapter 1 Historical https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fraud_of_Feminism/Chapter_1 The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

Women, Men, Law, Sex

“These lectures have shown very clearly the difference between Roger and me. He's a Platonist and I'm a positivist. He's worried that Schrödinger's cat is in a quantum state, where it is half alive and half dead. He feels that can't correspond to reality. But that doesn't bother me. I don't demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don't know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus paper. All I'm concerned with is that the theory should predict the results of measurements. Quantum theory does this very successfully. It predicts that the result of an observation is either that the cat is alive or that it is dead. It is like you can't be slightly pregnant: you either are or you aren't.”

Stephen Hawking book The Nature of Space and Time

During a debate with Roger Penrose in 1994 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=LstaQTXP65cC&lpg=PP1&dq=nature%20of%20space%20and%20time&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Feeling, Cats, Reality, Dead

“… to put an end to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the bodies of an incalculable number of people who were destroyed by the disease. So we were forced to build crematoria, and on this account they are loosing a bond for us. "He also stated that he punished the culprit if the atrocities occurred in the camps." On the Einsatzgruppen: "The war on the Eastern front made the demands more difficult for our soldiers. A terrible climate, never-ending distances, an enemy population and constantly apparent partisans. Just because it was difficult, the troops prevailed. So they were forced to destroy entire villages if there was resistance and gunfire from such a village. Russians are not ordinary enemies, we can not understand their mentality. In the most desperate situations, they would refuse to capitulate. If, because of these difficulties in the East, the Jewish people suffered large casualties, it must be remembered that the German people also suffered severely."”

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

April 20, 1945 in a meeting with Norbert Masur, a representative of the World Jewish Congress.

War, People, Disease, Understanding

Quotes about demand page 2

Quotes about demand
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