Quotes about desire
page 26

“"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…"”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

On the Alder Tree
Phantastes (1858)

Love, Beauty, Heart

“I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years now, and a lot of the time I avoid going to restaurants. I eat at home. … I’ve never had any desire to eat meat. In fact, when I was a kid I would have a really difficult time eating meat at all. It had to be the perfect bite, with no fat or gristle or bone or anything like that…. I don’t judge people who eat meat—that’s not for me to say—but the whole thing just sort of bums me out.”

Tobey Maguire (1975) actor from the United States

"Tobey Maguire - Web Exclusive", interview in Parade.com (1 April 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20070930165114/http://www.parade.com/export/sites/default/articles/editions/2007/edition_04-01-2007/Tobey-Maguire. Quoted in "The Green Quote: Tobey Maguire Prefers To Eat At Home", in Ecorazzi.com (24 July 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/07/24/the-green-quote-tobey-maguire-prefers-to-eat-at-home/.

People, Home, Time, Perfection

“"Still – and for all Obama's heavy hinting to the contrary – Islam has no "human rights." The ideas of individual rights and the dignity of man are distinctly Western, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. And while dialogue is dignified; dhimmitude is not, even if it achieves a desired, if temporary, effect."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“B. Hussein in History Wonderland,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=511 WorldNetDaily.com and Taki’s Magazine, August 21, 2009. 2000s, 2009

Idea

“The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse — as a luxury befitting a young man.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

Source: De L'Amour (On Love) (1822), Ch. 1

Men, Way, Fashion, Horse

“The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Money, Democracy

“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

“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

People

“Such desire is in him
merely to see the hearthsmoke leaping upward
from his own island, that he longs to die.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

I. 58–59 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“You hear people say that all the time: "You can't put the genie back in the bottle"; "you're asking people to forget." But that's just another attempt to rationalize craziness by calling it human nature. And it's a variant of the old racist intelligence theory: because the Hopi didn't invent backhoes, they must not be curious. Sure, people are naturally curious but about what? Would you or I aspire to create the neutron bomb? Of course not. But the fact that I don't want to create a neutron bomb doesn't mean I'm not curious. Curiosity is not value-free. Certain types of curiosity arise from certain mindsets, and our culture's curiosity follows the logic of alienation not simple wonder, or the desire to learn.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (2002)

People, Intelligence, Nature, Learning

“A truly great architecture grew up in Mexico after the time of the Conquest of Cortez. It was probably not on account of any lack desire on the part of the early Fathers that architecture was not transplanted to California in the days of the Missions. It is apparent their simple crude touches of ornament, that Padres were trying to simulate the richness of the churches of Mexico City and Puebla—they were pitifully limited, however, not only in wealth but also in the skill of the workmen had at hand.”

Clarence Stein (1882–1975) American architect

A Triumph of Spanish Colonial Style (1916)

Time, Parting, Wealth

“In all probability
I'll lose my virility
And you your fertility
And desirability,
And this liability
Of total sterility
Will lead to hostility
And a sense of futility,
So let's act with agility
While we still have facility,
For we'll soon reach senility
And lose the ability.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

When You Are Old And Grey
Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953)

Hostility, Sense

“Our situations are arranged by higher agents to allow us to become tired of trying to manipulate the material energy. Due to not being properly appreciative of the beauty of relationship with the Lord, humankind is given a temporary arena in which to act out our desires. This environment is designed to frustrate, disgust, and disappoint us, to make us contemplative and introspective. Ultimately it is meant to drive us away from the temporary world in favor of that which is eternal. This is arranged for us to finally realize that our happiness lies not in dabbling with the material energy but in serving the Lord unconditionally, thus becoming whole again.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 4: Fire and Brimstone, Horns and Tail, p. 66

Happiness, World, Beauty, Disappointment

“Now he was indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his mind rust whilst his hands grew horny. Enough that for the present he had an aim which he saw as a reality.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. XXVIII

Life, Hostility, Question, Reality

“Some consider… all wants of the body as shame, disgrace, and defect to which they are compelled to attend; this is chiefly the case with the sense of touch, which is a disgrace to us according to Aristotle, and which is the cause of our desire for eating, drinking, and sensuality. Intelligent persons must, as much as possible, reduce these wants, guard against them, abstain from speaking of them, discussing them, and attending to them in company of others. Man must have control over all these desires, reduce them as much as possible, and only retain of them as much as is indispensable. His aim must be the aim of man as man, viz., the formation of ideas, and nothing else. The best and sublimest among them is the idea which man forms of God, angels, and the rest of the creation according to his capacity. Such men are always with God, and of them it is said, "Ye are princes, and all of you are children of the Most High."”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

(Ps. lxxxii. 6) This is man's task and purpose.
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.8

Men, God, Children, Angels

“We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 129-130

Peace, Disappointment, Soul, Understanding

“[He] would know many nights on which he would succumb to women whom a combination of over-eagerness and alcohol would make him think desirable, only to clutch his head in the morning on discovering that he had got into bed with some vast relative of Oliver Hardy's or with some flighty Bela Lugosi look-alike.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

Le quedaban por conocer muchas noches en las que sucumbiría a mujeres que su avidez y el alcohol le harían juzgar deseables, para llevarse a la mañana siguiente las manos a la cabeza al descubrir que se había metido en la cama con descomedidas parientes de Oliver Hardy o con casquivanas émulas de Bela Lugosi.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 1. Fiebre y lanza [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear] (2002), p. 59

Women, Alcohol, Thinking, Night

“All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while—only so long as they are eating and drinking—but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Love, Pain, Pleasure, Drink

“Many so called primitives are afraid of cameras. They think it can capture their soul and take it away. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, sexual intensity, a sexual intensity of pursuit.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)

Soul, Thinking

“That soul is on the certain path toward light which, sincerely desiring the light, constantly submits to the claims of the light as they are made known. That soul cannot stay in darkness, any more than a flower opening its petals broadly to the sun can stay in shadow.”

Wayland Hoyt (1838–1910) American Baptist Minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 389.

Soul, Flowers, Light, Sun

“Organization is the arrangement of personnel for facilitating the accomplishment of some agreed purpose through allocation of functions and responsibilities. It is the relating of efforts and capacities of individuals and groups engaged upon a common task in such a way as to secure the desired objective with the least friction and the most satisfaction to those for whom the task is done and those engaged in the enterprise.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

John M. Gaus, Leonard Dupee White, and Marshall E. Dimock. Frontiers of public administration. (1936).

Way, Effort

“There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 70
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

People

“The greatest hope I have for our country is in the widespread kindling of that real desire for education which I regard as almost the only fruit of the war on which I can look with satisfaction…we are apt to lose sight of the importance of education as an end in itself. If you regard education solely from the point of view of enabling you to earn a salary, useful as that may be, you miss one of the best things for which education stands.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 76-77.
1927

War, Education, Hope, Country

“Take patience as your pillow, hug poverty, discard lusts, oppose your desires and know that you are seen by God, so look at how you are.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 479
Religious Wisdom

God, Patience

“But this instinctive falsification of the world view is only of limited effectiveness. Again and again the ressentiment man encounters happiness, power, beauty, wit, goodness, and other phenomena of positive life. They exist and impose themselves, however much he may shake his fist against them and try to explain them away. He cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence. Averting his eyes is sometimes impossible and in the long run ineffective. When such a quality irresistibly forces itself upon his attention, the very sight suffices to produce an impulse of hatred against its bearer, who has never harmed or insulted him. Dwarfs and cripples, who already feel humiliated by the outward appearance of the others, often show this peculiar hatred—this hyena-like and ever-ready ferocity. Precisely because this kind of hostility is not caused by the “enemy's” actions and behavior, it is deeper and more irreconcilable than any other. It is not directed against transitory attributes, but against the other person's very essence and being. Goethe has this type of “enemy” in mind when he writes: “Why complain about enemies?—Could those become your friends—To whom your very existence—Is an eternal silent reproach?” (West-Eastern Divan). The very existence of this “being,” his mere appearance, becomes a silent, unadmitted “reproach.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Other disputes can be settled, but not this! Goethe knew, for his rich and great existence was the ideal target of ressentiment. His very appearance was bound to make the poison flow.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Hostility, Happiness, World

“When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what’s going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to H.P. Bremmer, 17-11-1930, City Archive The Hague, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 50 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1930's

Life, Way, Painting

“Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree. Up until the very end, these were important reasons for the outbreak of war, and from Japan's point of view, this is a matter of great regret.”

Hideki Tōjō (1884–1948) former Prime Minister of Japan and Minister of War executed in 1948

Prison journal
1940s

War, Way, Effort

“Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As against his party, he is only as a feather against a whirlwind. In the hands of his party, Mr. Cleveland is as clay in the hands of the potter.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (1888). 1880s

Color, Exercises, Support

“The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action…”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 148

Knowledge

“For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III

God, Angels, Imagination, Nature

“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

“The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

“Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review, LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4.

Truth

“Foreign relations. At no period in the past 12 years have our foreign relations been in such a satisfactory condition as they are at the present time. Our actions in the recent months have greatly strengthened the American policy of permanent peace with independence. The attitude which our Government took and maintained toward an adjustment of European reparations, by pointing out that it wits not a political but a business problem, has demonstrated its wisdom by its actual results. We desire to see Europe restored that it may resume its productivity in the increase of industry and its support in the advance of civilization. We look with great gratification at the hopeful prospect of recuperation in Europe through the Dawes plan. Such assistance as can be given through the action of the public authorities and of our private citizens, through friendly counsel and cooperation, and through economic and financial support, not for any warlike effort but for reproductive enterprise, not to provide means for unsound government financing but to establish sound business administration ' should be unhesitatingly provided.”

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

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

Wisdom, Peace, Hope, Business

“To resist, it is not enough to say No – it is necessary to desire!”

Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer

Aesthetics of the Oppressed (2006)

“Mathematics is an ancient discipline. For as long as we can reliably reach into the past, we find its development intimately connected with the development of the whole of our civilization. For as long as we have a record of man's curiosity and his quest for understanding, we find mathematics cultivated and cherished, practiced and taught. Throughout the ages it has stood as an ultimate in rational thought and as a monument to man's desire to probe the workings of his own mind.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Postscript, p. 150.
Enigmas Of Chance (1985)

Age, Mathematics, Understanding, Past

“Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.”

Malcolm Bradbury book The History Man

Page 84.
The History Man (1975)

“Leonard D. White's desire "to organize his own knowledge" reminds us of how much hacking away at a jungle has to be done at such an early stage in the study of and reporting on a new field.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

John M. Gaus, 1958. "Leonard Dupee White—1891–1958." Public Administration Review 18(2): p. 233

Knowledge, Study

“Your Excellency's favor of the 22d was delivered to me this afternoon. I am happy to find you have wrote so fully to Congress, upon the disagreeable consequences that may follow from starving the Quarter master's department at this critical season. I wish it may have the desired effect, and rouse their attention; but I must confess I am afraid the stupor is so great, that nothing can alarm their fears, or pro mote a spirit of industry.”

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

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Happiness, Fear, Season

“The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first movement of our Revolution…. Taking advantage of political tempests (the cabinet) aimed to effect in an exhausted and dismembered France a change of dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI…. Pitt…. is an imbecile, whatever may be said of a reputation that has been much too greatly puffed up. A man who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean, is desirous of contending with the French people, could not have conceived of such an absurd plan elsewhere than in a madhouse.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Quotes from speeches (17 November 1793 & 26 January 1794) in La Révolution: III – Le Gouvernement Révolutionnaire (1883) by Hippolyte Taine, translated as The Revolution Vol. 3 (1885), by John Durand, Book 7 : The Governors, p. 144, footnote 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=dCBKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144

People, Change

“…whereas the vices of Messalina were in themselves venial, being mostly a passion for sensual gratification which subordinated all things to its encompassing, Agrippina lived solely for power, frightening enough in a man but terrifying in a woman…. she would sleep with anyone, though not for physical pleasure, only for political advantage. She was cursed or blessed with a certain sexual coldness, knowing as much as a temple prostitute about the arousing of male passion and the procurement of its ecstatic release but keeping herself aloof, despite an occasional simulation of desire and the odd false orgiastic shudder and scream of fulfilment, from a process she found distressingly bestial when it was not frankly comic.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Pleasure, Sleep, Passion, Falseness

“"I quit. I can't play anymore. I lack the desire to do it. "”

Romário (1966) Brazilian association football player

Parei. Não dá mais. Não tenho mais vontade.
Source: Veja Magazine; 1886 Edition. January 5th, 2005.
Context: Announcing his retirement.

“When I reflect on the natural world and its glorious messages for us, I remember our responsibility to restore and preserve it, to work toward a sustainable future in which the human community lives in harmony with nature. We have a sacred duty to the earth itself, to one another, and to all the other species that inhabit our planet, to live in a state of friendship with the natural world, enhancing its life by simplifying our needs and desires.”

Wayne Teasdale (1945–2004) American writer

Source: A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life (2003), p. 8

Life, Friendship, World, Communication

“My life may be much happier to-morrow
Hunger and love that press against the body,
The two eternal needs we recognise,
Desires that so relentlessly pursue one,
May get me down or raise me to the skies
And make me a Don Bradman or Don Juan.”

Gavin Ewart (1916–1995) English poet

"Days of Contempt", line 4, from Poems and Songs (1939)

Love, Life, Hunger

“In a business world that is changing faster than ever before, the top performing firms create a stable base – they digitize their core processes and embed those processes into a foundation for execution. This stable foundation makes a company both more efficient and more agile than its competitors. With global supply chains, pressure for ever faster time to market, more complex regulation, and huge shifts in customer demographics and desires, companies cannot predict the future. But they can decide what makes them great. And then they can create a low cost, high quality core of stability and constancy in a turbulent world. With a strong digitized core great companies slide smoothly into the next opportunity while their competitors stumble.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

p, viii
Enterprise architecture as strategy, 2006

World, Business, Strong, Change

“When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)

Men, Hate, Fear, Family

“True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them — the desire to do right — is precisely the same.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to General P.G.T. Beauregard (3 October 1865)
1860s

Men, Motivation

“Organizational culture consists of four distinguishable but interrelated components. They include shared basic values, behavioral norms, different types of artifacts, and behaviors… Values can be defined as "a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means, and ends of action." Norms differ from values by a higher degree of specificity and a higher relevance for actual behaviors (Katz and Kahn 1978, p. 43). The shared values within an organization form the basis for the development of these norms, which legitimate specific behaviors. More specifically, we define norms as expectations about behavior or its results that are at least partially shared by a social group (O'Reilly 1989; Thibaut and Kelley 1959). Artifacts include stories, arrangements, rituals, and language that are created by an organization and have a strong symbolic meaning (Schein 1992; Trice and Beyer 1993). The symbolic meaning of artifacts is more important than any instrumental function (Hatch 1993). In contrast, behaviors refer to organizational behavioral patterns with an instrumental function.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A multiple-layer model of market-oriented organizational culture", 2000, p. 450

Behavior, Strong

“Shykh Nuruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi was the most important disciple of Shykh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi, founder of the second most important sufi silsila after the Chishtiyya, who died in Baghdad in 1235 AD. Ghaznavi had come and settled down in India where he passed away in 1234-35 AD. He served as Shykh-ul-Islam in the reign of Shamsuddin Iltutmish (AD 1210-1236), and propounded the doctrine of Din Panahi. Barani quotes the first principle of this doctrine as follows in his Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi. “The kings should protect the religion of Islam with sincere faith… And kings will not be able to perform the duty of protecting the Faith unless, for the sake of God and the Prophet’s creed, they overthrow and uproot kufr and kafiri (infidelity), shirk (setting partners to God) and the worship of idols. But if the total uprooting of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of kufr and the large number of kafirs and mushriks (infidels and idolaters), the kings should at least strive to insult, disgrace, dishonour and defame the mushrik and idol-worshipping Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and the Prophet. The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced… Owing to the fear and terror of the kings of Islam, not a single enemy of God and the Prophet can drink water that is sweet or stretch his legs on his bed and go to sleep in peace.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231
Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

God, Fear, Peace, Faith

“The health of the soul is to have its faculties, reason, high spirit and desire happily tempered, with the reason in command and reining in the other two, like restive horses. The special name of this health is temperance, that is σωφροσύνη or “thought-preserving,” for it creates a preservation of one of our powers, namely that of wise-thinking.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

171.
On the Virtues

Health, Soul, Thinking, Horse

“I give all my printed books to Samuel Peach, son of Samuel Peach, in my Will named, and desire that this may be a codicil to my last Will and Testament, and taken as part thereof, as witness my hand, this third day of December. in the year of our Lord 1761.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), Memoirs of Mr. Bradley

Books, Parting

“A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest, as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.”

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

"Discourses on Davila: A Series of Papers on Political History," No. 4 Gazette of the United States (1790–1791)
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)

Heart

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Variant translation: Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
IV, 3.
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Men, Art, Soul, Mountain

“Love and desire are both thoroughly human. Our problem with them is that they orient us toward very different goals. Love seeks control, stability, continuity, certainty. Desire seeks surrender, adventure, novelty, the unknown. In love we are searching for points of attachment, anchoring, something we know we can count on. In desire we are searching both for missing, disowned pieces of ourselves and for something beyond ourselves, outside the borders of self-recognition that, under ordinary circumstances, we protect so fiercely.Erotic passion destabilizes one's sense of self. When we find someone intensely arousing who makes possible unfamiliar experiences of ourselves and an otherness we find captivating, we are drawn into the disorienting loopiness of self/other. We tend to want to control these experiences and the others who inspire them. Thus emotional connection tends to degrade into strategies for false security that suffocate desire.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 91-92

Love, Search, Problem, Sense

“But we have an opportunity before us to reassert our desire and to lend the force of our example for the peaceful adjudication of differences between nations. Such action would be in entire harmony with the policy which we have long advocated. I do not look upon it as a certain guaranty against war, but it would be a method of disposing of troublesome questions, an accumulation of which leads to irritating conditions and results in mutually hostile sentiments. More than a year ago President Harding proposed that the Senate should authorize our adherence to the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice, with certain conditions. His suggestion has already had my approval. On that I stand. I should not oppose other reservations, but any material changes which would not probably receive the consent of the many other nations would be impracticable. We can not take a step in advance of this kind without assuming certain obligations. Here again if we receive anything we must surrender something. We may as well face the question candidly, and if we are willing to assume these new duties in exchange for the benefits which would accrue to us, let us say so. If we are not willing, let us say that. We can accomplish nothing by taking a doubtful or ambiguous position. We are not going to be able to avoid meeting the world and bearing our part of the burdens of the world. We must meet those burdens and overcome them or they will meet us and overcome us. For my part I desire my country to meet them without evasion and without fear in an upright, downright, square, American way.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Hostility, War, World, Fear

“Finally, and of central importance, the special life of the saint—fully separate from the "natural" life of wants and desires—could no longer play itself out in monastic communities set apart from the world. Rather, the devoutly religious must now live saintly lives in the world and amid its mundane affairs. This rationalization of the conduct of life—now in the world yet still oriented to the supernatural—was the effect of ascetic Protestantism’s concept of the calling.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 4 : The Religious Foundations of This-Wordly Asceticism

Life, World, Communication, Nature

“White sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,
Thy happy homeward course to run
And winged hope, with heart of fire,
To gain the bliss of thy desire.”

William Winter (1836–1917) American writer

Arthur, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Happiness, Hope, Sun, Heart

“Longing and desire goes further than instant satisfaction. That's human nature.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

via Nika, Colleen. "Exclusive: Anna Sui Discusses Her Spring 2012 Show and Punk Rock Heritage". Rolling Stone (September 14, 2011). http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/exclusive-anna-sui-discusses-her-spring-2012-show-and-punk-rock-heritage-20110914

Nature

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life, God, Age, Fear

“…the purpose of a picture is not veracity to fact so much as truthfulness to idea; that is to say, it is not a question of what eye sees nor even what the brain imagines, but it is a question of what kind of production best awakens in the mind of the beholder the ideas which the maker of the picture desires him to receive.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, The consideration of some examples of sharp and suppressed definition, p. 37

Truth, Imagination, Idea, Question

“Fear and Sex are the two most effective weapons that are used against the people. Tempering desire motivates liberation.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

People, Fear, Sex, Motivation

“It seems that religion only knows how to react violently, out of vengeance. Again this is because it’s a belief system rooted in dichotomy and bigotry, with little or no desire to consider extenuating circumstances and NO ability to question itself objectively.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, How is secular humanist governance better than theocracy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/09/07/how-is-secular-humanist-governance-better-than-theocracy/ (September 7, 2013)

Religion, Question

“Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, by Gerda Lerner, ch.5 (1969).

Education, Law

“Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also."
"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald at the Theatre"
Reginald (1904)

Books, Reading, Wealth

“It is not necessary to stress the general desire of all the people of this country for the promotion of peace. It is the leading principle of all our foreign relations. We have on every occasion tried to cooperate to this end in all ways that were consistent with our proper independence and our traditional policies. It will be my constant effort to maintain these principles, and to reinforce them by all appropriate agreements and treaties. While we desire always to cooperate and to help, we are equally determined to be independent and free. Right and truth and justice and humanitarian efforts will have the moral support of this country all over the world. But we do not wish to become involved in the political controversies of others. Nor is the country disposed to become a member of the League of Nations or to assume the obligations imposed by its covenant.”

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

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

People, Truth, World, Peace

“Some people, many who profess to be yogis, argue that vegetarianism is not a healthful diet for everyone. We agree that vegetarianism is not for everybody; it is only for those who desire happiness and peace. It is definitely a must for those who are interested in enlightenment.”

Sharon Gannon (1951) American yoga teacher

Jivamukti Yoga: Practices for Liberating Body and Soul, coauthored with David Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), p. 65 https://books.google.it/books?id=D_9oFtc1ZLMC&pg=PA65.

Happiness, People, Health, Peace

“From this perspective, the common experience of the fading of romance over time may have less to do with the inevitable undercutting of idealization by reality and familiarity than with the increasing danger of allowing oneself episodic, passionate idealization in a relationship that one depends on for security and predictability. Intense excitement about another is a dangerous business; it often is much safer to surrender to it with a person one cannot possibly spend much time with or will never see again. Sustaining desire for something important from someone important is the central danger of emotional life. What is so dangerous about desiring someone you have is that you can lose him or her. Desire for someone unknown and unobtainable operates as a defense against desire for someone known and obtainable, therefore capable of being lost.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 114

Life, Business, Reality, Passion

“I was angry with you about him, furious that he so much as set eyes on you. I would rather kill you than see you lie in his arms.” “is that love then? A thing that leads to murder?” “I don’t know. In all honesty, I don’t know. You’re mine. What’s mine I keep, I rule, and give my body over to defend. I offer you my honor, and my life. That’s not an easy thing. Its within your power to break my pride, and take that life, insignificant though it is.” “you put it very simply.” “its not. Such a gift rouses strange passions, fears of treachery, and deep distrust. I’m not immune to them.” “no one told me it would be like this. Perhaps it won't go into words, what I feel for you. Its not desire, yet I love your touch, the warm softness of your flesh against mine.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Love, Life, Lie, Fear

“There are many for whom the Qualification of Desirelessness is a difficult one, for they feel that they are their desires — that if their distinctive desires, their likings and dislikings, are taken away from them, there will be no self left. But these are only they who have not seen the Master; in the light of His holy Presence all desire dies, but the desire to be like Him.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

§ II
1910s, At the Feet of the Master (1911)

Feeling, Light

“Only today can art be metaphysical, and it will continue to be so. Art will free itself from the needs and desires of men. We will no longer paint a forest or a horse as we please or as they seem to us, but as they really are.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Source: 1915 - 1916, 100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915), p. 445

Men, Art, Horse, Painting

“Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and in personal originality. But if you asked me to prove what I believe, I couldn't. You can spend your whole life trying to prove what you believe; you may hunt for reasons, but it will all be in vain. Yet our beliefs are like our existence; they are facts. If you don't yet know what to believe in, then try to learn what you feel and desire.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap." Unsourced variant: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way." The earliest published version of this variant appears to be The Human Side of Scientists by Ralph Edward Oesper (1975), p. 58 http://books.google.com/books?id=-J0cAQAAIAAJ&q=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&dq=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&hl=en, but no source is provided, and the similarity to the "Life Magazine" quote above suggests it's likely a misquote. Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 136

Life, Feeling, Learning, Personality

“On bourgeois ground … change is impossible anyway even if it were desired. In fact, bourgeois interest would like to draw every other interest opposed to it into its own failure; so, in order to drain the new life, it makes its own agony apparently fundamental, apparently ontological. The futility of bourgeois existence is extended to be that of the human situation in general, of existence per se.”

Ernst Bloch book The Principle of Hope

The Principle of Hope (1959), N. Plaice, trans. (1986), p. 4

Life, Failure, Change, Drawing

“The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

On the Mona Lisa, in Leonardo da Vinci The Renaissance http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-1.html (1873)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Too many in Washington display a ruling class mentality and congressional term limits would go a long way towards restoring the citizen-legislator ethos of the Founding Fathers, Americans of all political background overwhelmingly support term limits, yet term limits have floundered in Congress. An approach that phases in congressional term limits reconciles the self-interest of members of Congress with the public–s desire to see these changes enacted and gives us the best chance to make term limits a reality.”

Ron DeSantis (1978) Florida politician

DeSantis Takes New Approach to Term Limits https://desantis.house.gov/press-releases?ID=CE85F6D8-D64B-4278-B99C-FF03D323DE2C (May 4, 2015)

Way, Support, Reality, Change

“My good Mama, I am always the same.... always the same happy life, always fresh for seeing, vigorous for running, and diligent for one end... The Mont Blanc is our alarm clock in the morning, our vis-a-vis are the folk on the other side of the lake of Geneva, (8 leagues). I could not say that we get along badly, though we do dispense with the ceremony of saluting each other and saying bon jour when we look out at the window, for we don't meddle in our neighbors' affairs. Our sight carries fifty leagues about us, and we are equally everywhere, although only occupying the space of our two feet. I am delighted with having received my stretchers in order to commence my view of the Alps. I burn with the desire of fulfilling the difficult task of giving upon canvas an idea of the immensity which surrounds me in order to distribute its benefits to those less fortunate than myself... I ask without scruple, because it seems to me that I have something to give. I have so much confidence in myself, mon Dieu, when I examine myself.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote of Th. Rousseau, in a letter to his mother, late Summer 1834, from the Alps, Switzerland; as cited in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye by Charles Sprague Smith, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 152-53
1830 - 1850

Life, Happiness, Confidence, Idea

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

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

Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/06/remarks-president-trump-people-poland-july-6-2017 (6 July 2017) 2010s, 2017, July

Confidence, Courage, Question, Time

“Self-denial, the surrendering of immediate desires, is a prerequisite of the Christian life. This is noticeably absent in the gospel of Consumer Christianity.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Life

“Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

Children, Horse

“We know, deep down, that repression is not the wave of the future. We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity. We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”

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

2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Hope, Way, Democracy, Failure

“Ebbinghaus: Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time.
Croce: Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression.
Dittrich: Language is the totality of expressive abilities of individual human beings and animals capable of being understood by at least one other individual.
Eisler: Language is any expression of experiences by a creature with a soul.
B. Erdmann: Language is not a kind of communication of ideas but a kind of thinking: stated or formulated thinking. Language is a tool, and in fact a tool or organ of thinking that is unique to us as human beings.
Forbes: Language is an ordered sequence of words by which a speaker expresses his thoughts with the intention of making them known to a hearer.
J. Harris : Words are the symbols of ideas both general and particular: of the general, primarily, essentially and immediately; of the particular, only secondarily, accidentally and mediately.
Hegel: Language is the act of theoretical intelligence in its true sense, for it is its outward expression.
Jespersen: Language is human activity which has the aim of communicating ideas and emotions.
Jodl: Verbal language is the ability of man to fashion, by means of combined tones and sounds based on a limited numbers of elements, the total stock of his perceptions and conceptions in this natural tone material in such a way that this psychological process is clear and comprehensible to others to its least detail.
Kainz : Language is a structure of signs, with the help of which the representation of ideas and facts may be effected, so that things that are not present, even things that are completely imperceptible to the senses, may be represented.
De Laguna: Speech is the great medium through which human co-operation is brought about.
Marty: Language is any intentional utterance of sounds as a sign of a psychic state.
Pillsbury-Meader: Language is a means or instrument for the communication of thought, including ideas and emotions.
De Saussure: Language is a system of signs expressive of ideas.
Schuchardt. The essence of language lies in communication.
Sapir: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

Géza Révész (1878–1955) Hungarian psychologist and musicologist

Footnote at pp. 126-127; As cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 313-314
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, 1956

Way, Soul, Intelligence, Communication

“All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better.”

Charles Buxton (1823–1871) English brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician

Source: Notes of Thought (1883), p. 189

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Alcohol, Beauty, Cars

“You know that weird cat dance that cats do late at night where they go completely stir-crazy and they run around the apartment and you don't know what the hell they're doing? I often feel like that. I dye my hair constantly because I can't sit still with one hair color. That's a perfect example of trying to satisfy some hunger. I want change; I want constant stimuli. I love to fly because I love the high. All of these are like itch kind of things. Sometimes I need to completely get away. I'll get in the car and I'll drive for as long as I can drive. Sometimes it's a sexual urge. I don't need to explain that; it's pretty self-explanatory. It's a craving, a desire. Sometimes it's food. I'm just a giant, big ol' consumer. I want, I need, I crave, I can't say no. I have no control and I'm a complete control freak. It's just crazy”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

laughs
Asked where her "itches" come from
Attributed

Love, Hunger, Food, Cars

“Passion was animal flesh, raw desire gnawing and ripping at its early limitations. These passions were to be feared only if undirected by the conscience of the higher self. Mind was the key to the process of enlightenment. Hence reason was the first principle, light itself.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Emanations, Destinies, p. 4
Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (2007)

Fear, Light, Passion, Animals

“All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section II: “What Is Progress?”, p. 48 http://books.google.com/books?id=MW8SAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA48&dq=%22All+that+progressives+ask%22 1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

“People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 2
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

People, Secret, Hope

“All my life I've been working on the work - every canvas a sentence or paragraph of it. Each picture is only an approximation of what you want. That's the beauty of being an artist; you can never make the absolute statement, but the desire to do so as an approximation keeps you going.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html Undated

Life, Beauty

“The monastic man is an artist.The philosopher
Appoints man’s place in music, say, today.
But the priest desires. The philosopher desires.

And not to have is the beginning of desire.
To have what is not is its ancient cycle.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract

Music

“In Chaos Magic, beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as tools for creating desired effects. To fully realize this is to face a terrible freedom in which nothing is true and everything is permitted, which is to say that everything is possible, there are no certainties, and the consequences can be ghastly.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: Liber Kaos (1992), p. 75

Freedom

“I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.”

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

1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Thinking, Sense, Success, Country

“The number one rule of today's marketing – the key secret of those who seek to control your beliefs and habits in order to take your money, your votes, your time or whatever else it is they desire from you – is to always keep in mind that nobody really believes they can be manipulated.”

Brian Vaszily (1970)

"The One Real Reason You Are Stressed Out, Overweight, Depressed or Angry" http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/04/05/the_one_real_reason_you_are_stressed_out_overweight_depressed_or_angry.htm, SixWise.com, undated (accessed 2006-06-23)

Money, Secret, Time

“It takes more than an invading army or crusaders or a demolition squad with sledge-hammers to establish the domain of Truth… Similarly, it is not that easy to get over ‘falsehood’… True spiritual demolition involves the demolition of desire-gods and ego-gods, the demolition of the false gods that reside in conceited theologies, in pretentious revelations and fond belief…”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Understanding Islam Through Hadis, Voice of India, Second Reprint, 1987, Pp. 115-16.
Understanding Islam Through Hadis (1983)

God, Truth, Falseness