Quotes about desire
page 37

“A deep analysis of events of the past makes me firmly believe that these people from other planets are our friends. I am convinced that their desire and their object is to help us and perhaps to protect us from even ourselves, as well as that they mean to ensure the safety and balance of the other planets in our system.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

People, Making love, Past, Help

“When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Thoughts in Westminster Abbey (1711)

Men, World, Beauty, Lying

“Peace we all desire. Peace can only come—peace, I mean, that is worth the name and that satisfies the definition of the word—peace will only come on terms that atonement is made for past wrongs, that the weak and downtrodden are restored, that the faith of treaties is observed, and that the sovereignty of public law is securely enthroned over the nations of the world.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1916-12-19/debates/8572103d-700a-487a-8dd1-c0a99679cc6d/PrimeMinisterSStatement in the House of Commons (19 December 1916) Later life

World, Peace, Faith, Law

“No Continental country has ever been able to understand the temper of the British people, but, while I give them a note of warning of our foreign critics, let me say what is more to the point to my own friends, that unless they bestir themselves Great Britain will be in a position of peril which it has not known in the memory of their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers, and if that position of peril should issue in some great catastrophe...this country will not again easily arise. (Hear, hear.) I do not believe there is going to be war between this country and any great foreign Power. (Hear, hear.) Heaven knows I do not desire it, but I do not believe it. Please remember the absolutely only way in which you can secure the peace which you all desire is that you shall be sure of victory if war takes place.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Cheers.
Speech in Hanley (4 January 1910), quoted in The Times (5 January 1910), p. 7
Leader of the Opposition

War, People, Peace, Way

“This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Heston Airport after his return from Munich (30 September 1938), quoted in The Times (1 October 1938) Oxford Book of Modern Quotes http://hudsoncress.org/html/library/dictionaries/The%20Oxford%20Dictionary%20of%20Modern%20Quotations.pdf(pdf) Prime Minister

War, People, Night

“There are some people who do not desire to draw any conclusions at all. I see, for instance, the other day that the president of the League of Nations Union issued a circular to its members in which he...urged them to commence a campaign of pressure upon members of Parliament and members of the Government with the idea that if we were to pursue the policy of sanctions and even to intensify it, it was still possible to preserve the independence of Abyssinia. That seems to me the very midsummer of madness.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the 1900 Club at Grosvenor House, London (10 June 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in The Times (11 June 1936), p. 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Idea, Drawing, Madness

“The panopticon produces subjects with desires to improve their inner lives. In contrast the superpanopticon constitutes objects, individuals with dispersed identities, who may remain unaware of how those identities are construed by the computer. We are once again back with disappearing bodies.”

David Lyon (1948) British sociologist

§7, p. 115
Surveillance society

“In sum it seems to me that the Covenant, though not without certain ambiguities and loop-holes, is on the whole a wonderfully successful instrument, flexible, comprehensive, and exactly directed to the main evil which it was desired to cure. It does aim straight at the heart of the international anarchy; and it does so by a method which is calculated to stir up the very minimum of opposition. Its normal sanction is the public opinion of the world; its most effective weapon publicity. You cannot punish a nation; you cannot even coerce by force any moderately strong nation. But you can exert a very severe pressure on even the strongest to mend its ways by simply putting a question to its representative at the Assembly, or at one of the permanent Commissions, and publishing its reply.”

Gilbert Murray (1866–1957) Anglo-Australian scholar

Source: The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), p. 131

World, Way, Question, Strong

“The man who is in love with his work will not degrade it for his customer, but while satisfying his customer will honour himself. Thus his desires will be ordered so that he puts working towards finding and following his calling first, and pleasing his customers, second. By this his customers will gain, for he will give of his best; but he will gain more, for he will be laying the foundation of a full life’. This requires great confidence.”

Leon MacLaren (1910–1994) British philosopher

Leon MacLaren, Nature of Society and Other Essays

Love, Life, Making love, Confidence

“First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death

Love, Happiness, Making love, Beauty

“Death in your eyes, Earthman. Nothing in your mind but murder. Can that brain of yours comprehend nothing but battle? Is there no curiosity there? Have you no wonder of why I brought you here? Death awaits you, yes. But a not unpleasant death, and it awaits all, in one form or another. Listen, let me tell you—I have reason for desiring to break through that animal shell of self-defense that seals in your mind. Let me look deeper—if there are depths. Your death will be—useful, and in a way, pleasant. Otherwise—well, the black beasts hunger. And flesh must feed them, as a sweeter drink feeds me...Listen.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

Black Thirst (1934); p. 63
Short fiction, Northwest of Earth (1954)

Death, Hunger, Way, Drink

“First of all, modern propaganda is based on scientific analyses of psychology and sociology. Step by step, the propagandist builds his techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his conditioning — and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology. He shapes his procedures on the basis of our knowledge of groups and their laws of formation and dissolution, of mass influences, and of environmental limitations. Without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda, or rather we still would be in the primitive stages of propaganda that existed in the time of Pericles or Augustus.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 4
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Law, Knowledge, Time

“In the Patanjali Yoga, five fundamental impurities are mentioned: avidya (nescience), asmita (ego), raga (attachement), dvesha (aversion), and abhinivesa (gross worldliness, craving).... They are klesas, very inadequately defined as defilements.... All that we have desired and thought have gone into making them. They are woven into the fabric of our emotions, desires, thoughts. They keep us bound down to a particular life-cycle. They are built up of samskaras, impressions accumulated over repeated births.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Source: Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000), p. 31

Life, Making love, Birth

“I think that there has been clearly expounded the mind of arithmeticians, who, by means of numbers and of names, suppose that they interpret life. Now I perceive that these, enjoying leisure, and being trained in calculation, have been desirous that, through the art delivered to them from childhood, they, acquiring celebrity, should be styled prophets.”

Hippolytus of Rome Refutation of all Heresies

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Volume 6: Hippolytus, Bishop Of Rome, Volume 1 P. 86
Refutation of All Heresies

Life, Art, Thinking, Childhood

“Being an immortal doesn’t matter to me. If one looks out into the universe and perceives what true immortality would mean in terms of time and space, it takes monstrous hubris to even conceive of personal immortality, much less desire it.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Nell Latimer in Ch. 6 : nell latimer’s book, p. 51
The Visitor (2002)

Universe, Time, Personality

“Monstress, however, was the product of many different ideas; my grandmother’s experience of the Japanese occupation of China, for example, my desire to explore what it is to be monstrous. But it also had to do with women—more precisely the representation of women.”

Marjorie M. Liu (1979) American writer

On her work Monstress in “Marjorie Liu: Making a Monstress” https://www.guernicamag.com/making-a-monstress/ in Guernica (2016 Feb 15)

Women, Idea

“You cannot express universal powers, you cannot manifest the divinity within you (because that divinity is entirely impersonal) if your mind and heart are restricted and imprisoned by your personal desires. You must expand your nature and open it in order to let the sunlight of the spirit stream in to you. Therefore self-forgetfulness and impersonality mean the gaining of wisdom and great and holy power.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 3

Wisdom, Nature, Universe, Heart

“The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Against the Stream (2007)

Life, Pain, Pleasure, Fight

“Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Against the Stream (2007)

Way, Suffering

“It is my tamanna (deep desire) to do something for our society; I am inspired by the desire to live and die for my country; ...I want the glory of Gujarat to reach the whole world. ...I’ve used the mantra of lokprem (love for people) through Lok Kalyan Melas organised by the government to make the administrative machinery an instrument of lokseva (service of the people). ... To the baseless propaganda of the Congress, I have only this to say: Oh lord! Please give wisdom to those indulging in evil propaganda and give strength to those who live by good and good pure thoughts.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

February 20, 2002 The Sanjh Times quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.
2002

Love, Wisdom, People, World

“Individualism spawns hundreds of dangerous diseases: bureaucratism, commandism, sectarianism, subjectiveness, corruption, waste ... It ties up and blindfolds its victims whose every action is guided by their desire for honor and position, not by concern for the interests of the class and the people.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

1950's, On Revolutionary Morality (1958)

People, Disease

“The Mattachine Society holds it possible and desirable that a highly ethical homosexual culture emerge, as a consequence ofits work, paralleling the emerging cultures of our fellow-minorities - the Negro, Mexican, and Jewish Peoples. The Society believes homosexuals can lead well adjusted, wholesome, and socially productive lives once ignorance and prejudice against hem is successfully combated, and once homosexuals themselves feel they have a dignified and useful role to ply in society. The Society, to these ends, is in the process of developing a homosexual ethic- disciplined, moral, and socially responsible.”

Harry Hay (1912–2002) American gay rights activist

Mattachine Society Missions and Purposes (1956)

People, Feeling

“Hope could be dangerous, desire could be catastrophic.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

The Girls and Nugent Miller (p. 24)
Short fiction, Shards of Space (1962)

Hope

“Boredom often stems from the lack of desire to reinvent oneself. To become a Renaissance man or woman, for instance, can take an eternity. Understandably, not everyone wants to be a polymath, but there are so many great books to read, places to visit, ideas to share, new hobbies to discover, and charities to volunteer for – the bucket list is practically endless.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Books, Idea, Understanding, Reading

“Even a large majority of beautiful music, great literature, and wonderful work of arts depicts human suffering, injustice, fears, and unfulfilled desires.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Fear, Beauty, Art, Music

“I never intended to write solely about Arab characters, or even primarily about them, but because they were such a big part of my first two novels and my memoir, people reckoned that was my main literary terrain. It wasn’t really a deliberate decision to move away from Arab characters in my later books, but more a desire to paint on a broader canvas, one that was closer to my day-to-day experience.”

Diana Abu-Jaber (1960) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On character writing in “‘America is not the Final Word:’ An Interview with Diana Abu-Jaber” https://solsticelitmag.org/blog/america-not-final-word-interview-diana-abu-jaber/ in Solstice

People, Books, Decision, Parting

“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655 Leader of the Opposition

Children, Education, Faith, Parent

“You see, if I could believe that I shall see and touch him again, I shall not have lost him. And if I have not lost him, I shall never have had a son. Because I am I through bereavement and because of it. I do not know what I was nor what I shall be. But because of death, I know that I am. And that is all the immortality of which intellect is capable and flesh should desire. Anything else is for peasants, clods, who could never have loved a son well enough to have lost him.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

The Judge to Robert G. Ingersoll
"Beyond" (1933)

Love, Death, Making love

“Putin firmly opposes U.S. policy toward Syria and the threat of force against Iran. But his opposition stems neither from anti-Americanism nor a desire to back the Iranian mullahs or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in their struggles with the West. It is rooted in his obsession with stability. Helping Tehran secure a nuclear weapon and keeping Assad in Damascus are not Putin’s goals. But an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and NATO or the United Nations intervening in Syria to forcibly remove Assad, would increase global volatility.”

Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) (1965) American policy adviser

Dealing With the Real Putin, By Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/opinion/global/dealing-with-the-real-vladimir-putin.html (4 February 2013]

Help

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

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

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Wisdom, Men, Money, War

“Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.”

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

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

War

“Next, the Emperor Nuruddin Jahangir for 22 years spread his gracious shade on the head of the world and its dwellers, gave his heart to his friends and his hand to his work, and gained his desires. The Emperor Shah Jahan for 32 years cast his blessed shade on the head of the world and gathered the fruit of eternal life,—...”

Shivaji (1627–1680) founder of Maratha Empire

....
Letter to Aurangzeb

Life, World, Heart

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14 Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."

World, Communication, Mathematics, Idea

“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Love, Life, Pain, Children

“Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Ch. 57 : How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living; the famous dictum of the abbey of Theleme presented here, "Do what thou wilt" (Fais ce que voudras), evokes an ancient expression by St. Augustine of Hippo: "Love, and do what thou wilt." The expression of Rabelais was later used by the Hellfire Club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, and by Aleister Crowley in his The Book of the Law (1904): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

Men, Nature

“There can thus be no manner of doubt that the Muslim Society in India is afflicted by the same social evils as afflict the Hindu Society. Indeed, the Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more. That something more is the compulsory system of purdah for Muslim women. As a consequence of the purdah system, a segregation of the Muslim women is brought about. The ladies are not expected to visit the outer rooms, verandahs, or gardens; their quarters are in the back-yard. All of them, young and old, are confined in the same room. …She cannot go even to the mosque to pray, and must wear burka (veil) whenever she has to go out. These burka women walking in the streets is one of the most hideous sights one can witness in India. Such seclusion cannot but have its deteriorating effects upon the physical constitution of Muslim women. They are usually victims to anaemia, tuberculosis, and pyorrhoea. Their bodies are deformed, with their backs bent, bones protruded, hands and feet crooked. Ribs, joints and nearly all their bones ache. Heart palpitation is very often present in them. The result of this pelvic deformity is untimely death at the time of delivery. Purdah deprives Muslim women of mental and moral nourishment. Being deprived of healthy social life, the process of moral degeneration must and does set in. Being completely secluded from the outer world, they engage their minds in petty family quarrels, with the result that they become narrow and restricted in their outlook. They lag behind their sisters from other communities, cannot take part in any outdoor activity and are weighed down by a slavish mentality and an inferiority complex. They have no desire for knowledge, because they are taught not to be interested in anything outside the four walls of the house. Purdah women in particular become helpless, timid, and unfit for any fight in life. … Not that purdah and the evils consequent thereon are not to be found among certain sections of the Hindus in certain parts of the country. But the point of distinction is that among the Muslims, purdah has a religious sanctity which it has not with the Hindus. Purdah has deeper roots among the Muslims than it has among the Hindus, and can only be removed by facing the inevitable conflict between religious injunctions and social needs. The problem of purdah is a real problem with the Muslims—apart from its origin—which it is not with the Hindus. Of any attempt by the Muslims to do away with it, there is no evidence.”

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

Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Life, Death, Women, World

“In every country and every human breast there is a natural desire to find a stable equilibrium — something that does not change. We cannot find it in nature, for all the universe is nothing but an infinite mass of changes. But to infer from that that nothing unchanging exists is to fall into the error of the Southern school of Buddhists and the Chârvâkas, which latter believe that all is matter and nothing mind, that all religion is a cheat, and morality and goodness, useless superstitions.”

Charvaka An unorthodox school of Hindu philosophy

Swami Vivekananda as recorded in the complete works of Swami Vivekananda https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Lectures_And_Discourses/The_Hindu_Religion.

School, Religion, Error, Nature

“By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are turned to the earth more than to Heaven; they are the partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Original text: À côté de ces hommes religieux, j'en découvre d'autres dont les regards sont tournés vers la terre plutôt que vers le ciel; partisans de la liberté, non seulement parce qu'ils voient en elle l'origine des plus nobles vertus, mais surtout parce qu'ils la considèrent comme la source des plus grands biens, ils désirent sincèrement assurer son empire et faire goûter aux hommes ses bienfaits : je comprends que ceux-là vont se hâter d'appeler la religion à leur aide, car ils doivent savoir qu'on ne peut établir le règne de la liberté sans celui des mœurs, ni fonder les mœurs sans les croyances; mais ils ont aperçu la religion dans les rangs de leurs adversaires, c'en est assez pour eux : les uns l'attaquent, et les autres n'osent la défendre.
Introduction.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

Men, Faith, Religion, Nature

“Now, as a strong State, we can be ready to pursue a policy of understanding with surrounding States. We want nothing from them. We have no wishes or demands; we desire peace. … No other people can need peace more than we.”

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

Speech in Saarbrücken (9 October 1938), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 10
1930s

People, Peace, Understanding, Strong

“Germany has nothing to win in any European war. What we want is freedom and independence. Because of this desire we were ready to conclude pacts of non-aggression with all our neighbours.”

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

Speech in the Reichstag (21 May 1935), quoted in The Times (22 May 1935), p. 18
1930s

War, Freedom

“O almighty Lord! I have no desire to accumulate wealth, nor I have any desire to enjoy beautiful women; neither do I want any number of followers of Mine. What I want only is that I may have Your causeless devotional service in my life – birth after birth.”

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) Indian saint

Teachings of Lord Chaitanya - Prabhupada, (1968)

Life, Women, Beauty, Birth

“As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. Indeed, in many poor countries with high infant death rates, like India, the desire to assure oneself of progeny who can provide support in old age is a major reason for high birth rates and large families. The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 4 “Cradle to Grave”, p. 106

Love, Death, Children, Age

“The supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number—for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs—jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 2 “The Tyranny of Controls”, pp. 40-41

People, Support, Personality, Self-confidence

“One of the most persistent traits of of the Western white man has always been his fanatical and almost instinctive assumption that his systems and ideas about the world are the most desirable, and further that people who do not aspire to to them, or at least think them admirable, are savages or enemies.”

Amiri Baraka book Blues People

The idea that Western thought might be exotic if viewed from another landscape never presents itself to most Westerners.
Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), p. 8

People, World, Idea, Thinking

“The political intolerance towards the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches, has prompted an international coalition headed by the US government…a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught…”

Nicolás Maduro (1962) 53rd President of Venezuela

Country

“In a sense, modern philosophy is a series of introductions to introductions to introductions, the movement between them controlled by the pro-tective/pro-textive play of forces about desire.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Appendix B, “Closures and Openings” Section 8 (p. 368; see note on Discussion page)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

Sense

“But whatever you say of them, finally I had to dismiss such notions as the ratiocinations desire can entangle about the most sensible of us.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Source: Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985), Section 4 (p. 164)

“Could it be, he wondered, he’d only thought he’d seen what he’d seen because of his own desires, researches, expectations?”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (pp. 117-118)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“I still feel that style is important for reading pleasure, and sex is important for pleasure in life. Each appeases a different type of desire. And while I find nothing shameful in taking direct erotic pleasure from reading or writing, I don’t think they entail a necessary relation. The processes you have me describing are contingent psychological processes. Neither marks one end nor the other of any necessary or even philosophical relationship…”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

On including sexual themes in his writings in “Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6088/samuel-r-delany-the-art-of-fiction-no-210-samuel-r-delany in The Paris Review (Summer 2011)

Life, Pleasure, Sex, Feeling

“This refusal to listen was a form of stupidity that Martha especially abhorred, and she considered Miles well punished for it. If he had ever taken seriously her passionate desire to leave him, she might not (she now believed) have been driven in practice to show him how little indeed he knew. To pay attention, for Martha, was the prime human virtue; without it, there could be no dignity and no reciprocity.”

Mary McCarthy book A Charmed Life

Source: A Charmed Life (1955), Ch. 5, p. 594

Stupidity, Passion

“The dread of death, an instinct so unfailing in all animals, exists, not because existence is intrinsically so sweet, nor because annihilation is so distressing, but because this bugaboo has been an indispensable safeguard against the suicide of the life process. The expectation of post-mortem consciousness, so prevalent and so insistent among human beings, is a hope arising from the concussion of a desire and a fancy—the desire to persist just referred to, and the fancy or hallucination of a double which originated among savages from shadows, images, dreams, and the like.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Derivation of the Nature of Living Beings, pp. 176–177

Life, Death, Dreams, Hope

“This universe is not an ideal universe. It is impossible, without more fundamental revision of its character than human beings can ever hope to effect, to make of it an ideal place, or anything like an ideal place, for the satisfaction of desires. The cosmic processes which have evolved conscious beings on the earth—and these processes are but the hard-headed tendencies of matter—have so hopelessly nuptialed pleasure and pain that it is impossible to believe that fumbling philosophy will ever be able to divorce them. But we are here, useless and mysterious as it may seem, a set of incompatible vagrants, orphaned here on a dervish-like lump of something, in the midst of immensities so hard and arrogant that no wail from our worm-like larynxes can aught avail. And, so far as we can make out, it is the program of things that we are to remain here. We can not lie down peacefully and perish, for we are possessed by an instinct lashing us to live.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 158–159

Pain, Pleasure, Lie, Making love

“The relation of the inhabitants of the universe to each other most favorable to the satisfaction of the desires of the universe is, therefore, that which will enable the animate universe, as a whole, to attain that relation which an individual living being, if he were alone In the universe, would desire to achieve for himself—a relation such as is sustained to each other and to the whole by the individual cells of a multicellular organism—a relation in which each acts in the interests of all, including himself, and all act in the interests of each.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 146–147

Universe, Relation ships, Animals

“The ideal universe is a universe so ordered or natured as to allow its inhabitants to understand and dominate it sufficient to satisfy their desires, and inhabited by beings with desires so poised and assorted that there is not only not mutual inhibition of desires, but such a dovetailing and intertwining of the consciousnesses that there is mutual aid in the satisfaction of desire—a universe responsive to the whims of its inhabitants, and inhabited by beings socially harmonious and helpful.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, p. 146

Understanding, Nature, Universe, Help

“All over the non-human world, with few exceptions, each being seeks the satisfaction of his own desires, if not with positive disregard for the happiness and misery of the rest of the universe, at least with sincere unconcern. There is no courtesy, sympathy, or amenity there—a cold, heartless, implacable world of strangers.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, p. 123

Happiness, World, Universe, Sincerity

“All conscious beings are struggling, struggling to keep themselves in joint with their environment. Those things and creatures and events that aid them in their struggles are desirable and they call them good, and those things and creatures and events that oppose and defeat the satisfaction of desires are called bad.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Right and wrong exist as conceptions of mind, because there are portions of the universe capable of happiness and misery. Erase sentiency from the universe and you erase the possibility of ethics. Every conscious portion of the universe, therefore, has ethical relations to every other conscious portion (man, woman, worm, Eskimo, oyster, ox), but not to inanimate portions (clod, cabbage, river, rose), because the ones are sentient and the others are not.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 81–82

Bad luck

“Man, in satisfying his desires, in avoiding misery and achieving happiness, strives to do two things with the inanimate universe: to manage it and to foreknow it. The inanimate is not devoted to us. We are not birdlings cuddled in an order of things where we need simply to yawn and be filled. We must bestir ourselves, or be in a position to compel others to bestir themselves for us, or perish. We are waifs, brought into existence by a universe whose solicitude for us ended with the travail that brought us forth. The inanimate universe is our mother, but without the blessed mother-love. The first thing we are conscious of, and about the only thing we ever absolutely know, is that we are whirling around in a very helpless manner on a whirligig of a ball, out of whose substance by the sweat of our brows we must quarry our existence. The universe is practically independent of us. But we, alas, are not independent of it. The food we eat, our raiment, our habitations, our treasures, our implements of knowledge, and our means of amusement are all portions of the inanimate, which we living beings must somehow subtract from the rest. In order to obtain these indispensable portions of the universe about us, we must halter it and control it and compel it to produce to the tune of our desires.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 19–20

Love, Happiness, Making love, Food

“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.”

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

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

Life, Pleasure, Time, Personality

“The more i watched how boys and girls behaved, the more i read and the more i thought about it, the more convinced i became that this behavior could be traced directly back to the plantation, when slaves were encouraged to take the misery of their lives out on each other instead of on the master. The slavemasters taught us we were ugly, less than human, unintelligent, and many of us believed it. Black people became breeding animals: studs and mares. A Black woman was fair game for anyone at any time: the master or a visiting guest or any redneck who desired her. The slavemaster would order her to have six with this stud, seven with that stud, for the purpose of increasing his stock. She was considered less than a woman. She was a cross between a whore and a workhorse. Black men internalized the white man’s opinion of Black women. And, if you ask me, a lot of us still act like we’re back on the plantation with massa pulling the strings.”

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

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, Ch.6, pp. 176-177

Women, Men, People, Behavior

“We live in an age where people are constantly trying to find remedies for pain, instead of learning how to sublimate it into divine music, the way Begum Akhtar did. For, the mercurial diva from Lucknow sang the poetry of Ghalib and many others in a manner that would make even pain seem desirable.”

Begum Akhtar (1914–1974) Indian musician

By Namita Devidayal in Pain gave the singer her song, 10 October 2009, 2 January 2014, Times of India http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-10-10/mumbai/28060204_1_begum-akhtar-music-lovers-divine-music,

Pain, People, Age, Making love

“The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).

Love, God, Making love, Perfection

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches. Use auto-suggestion, have faith, imagination and overcome fear and time is your opposite player as in checkerboard.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

As quoted in Self-Motivation Through Risk Taking! : Are You Leading Or Do You Wither with Problems? (2005) by M. Nadarajan Munisamy

Fear, Faith, Imagination, Time

“Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child, we find it is interested in everything and spontaenously apprehends, comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever-expanding inventory of experiences. … Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to understand all and put everything together.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Life, Understanding, Nature

“No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Making love

“The desire to continue to feel yourself guilty arguably finds its endpoint in modern European liberal societies: the first societies in human history who, when they are hit, ask what they did to deserve it. Unassuageable historical guilt carries over into the present.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Feeling, History

“So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.”

Jordan Peterson book 12 Rules for Life

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back

“I was borne and baptized in the bosome of the Church of England established by Law; in that profession I have ever since lived, and in that I come now to dye; This is no time to dissemble with God, least of all in matter of Religion; and therefore I desire it may be remembred, I have alwaies lived in the Protestant Religion, established in England, and in that I come now to dye. What Clamours and Slanders I have endured for labouring to keepe a Uniformity in the externall service of God, according to the Doctrine and Discipline of this Church, all men know, and I have abundautly felt.”

William Laud (1573–1645) Archbishop of Canterbury

Speech http://downloads.it.ox.ac.uk/ota-public/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A43/A43512.html on the scaffold at Tower Hill before his execution (10 January 1645)

Men, God, Religion, Law

“I support the freedom of parents to adopt circumcision for any religious or cultural ritual as desired. Actually have attended a brit milah myself and felt privileged to be there. Thanks Mikael. Always up to parents.”

Andrew Yang (1975) American entrepreneur

19 March 2019 reported on 21 March 2019 by Israel National News http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/260697

Support, Parent, Freedom

“Crumb’s comics are, to be frank, kind of sexist. He has also at times used racist imagery in his comics, to satirical but nonetheless unpleasant effect. The goddesses he manufactures are powerful but they’re not human. They’re iron buttocks, straining shirts. But Kominsky-Crumb is a person, and she draws through the experience of being desired by and desiring Robert Crumb. In this sense, the show is engaging and delightful but also, in a mutual kind of way, redemptive.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

Josephine Livingstone, “Comics’ Filthy Grandfather and the Woman Who Loves Him” https://newrepublic.com/article/140387/comics-filthy-grandfather-woman-loves, The New Republic, (February 3, 2017). About

Way, Sense, Time, Drawing

“In beginning this practice of meditation it is desirable to watch closely its physical effects. Methods prescribed by those who understand the matter ought never to cause headache or any other pain, yet such results do sometimes occur in particular cases. It is true that meditation strains the thought and attention a little further than its customary point in any individual, but that should be so carefully done, so free from any kind of excess, as not to cause any physical ill-effects. Sometimes a person takes it up too strenuously and for too long at a time, or when the body is not in a fit state of health, and the consequence is a certain amount of suffering. It is fatally easy to press one’s physical brain just a little too far, and when that happens it is often difficult to recover equilibrium. Sometimes a condition may be produced in a few days which it will take years to set right; so anyone who begins to feel any unpleasant effects should at once stop the practice for a while and attend to his physical health, and if possible consult someone who knows more than he does about the subject.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Masters and the Path (1925), Ch.4

Pain, Health, Feeling, Understanding

“The rapid changes in the world of thought, arising from the nearness of the Coming of the World-Teacher, render useful some information as to a part of the world in which he lives, information which may, perhaps, to some extent prepare the public mind for his teachings.Be that as it may, I desire to associate myself with the statements made in this book, for the accuracy of nearly all of which I can personally vouch; and also to say on behalf of my colleague as well of myself, that the book is issued as a record of observations carefully made and carefully recorded, but not claiming any authority, nor making any demand for acceptance. It makes no claim to inspiration, but is only an honest account of things seen by the writer.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Annie Besant, Forward
The Masters and the Path (1925)

Books, World, Making love, Teachers

“Many of the dead very considerably retard the process of dissolution by clinging passionately to the earth which they have left; they simply will not turn their thoughts and desires upward, but spend their time in struggling with all their might to keep in full touch with the physical plane, thus causing great trouble to any one who may be trying to help them. Earthly matters are the only ones in which they have had any living interest, and they cling to them with desperate tenacity even after death. Naturally as time passes on they find it increasingly difficult to keep hold of things down here, but instead of welcoming and encouraging this process of gradual refinement and spiritualization they resist it vigorously by every means in their power… thereby not only causing themselves a vast amount of entirely unnecessary pain and sorrow, but also very seriously delaying their upward progress and prolonging their stay in astral regions to an almost indefinite extent. In convincing them that this ignorant and disastrous opposition to the cosmic will is contrary to the laws of nature, and persuading them to adopt an attitude of mind which is the exact reversal of it, lies a great part of the work of those who are trying to help.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 12

Death, Pain, Law, Nature

“The subject of a coming Avatar or World Teacher or Christ is one that has enthralled men of all backgrounds and teachings for centuries. Even the most sceptical will often express the wish that such a desirable event were possible, however unlikely. To these, this paper is presented as an interesting hypothesis.”

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

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Men, World, Teachers, Christ

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

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

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

Life, Education, School, Way

“You desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 2 “In Which Old Acquaintances Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached” (p. 226)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Selfishness

“This was Elric’s dream, more coherent now than it had ever been. This was his dream and it was why he traveled the world, why he refused the power which was his, why he risked his life, his mind, his love and everything else he valued, for he believed that there was no life worth living that was not risked in pursuit of knowledge and justice. And this was why his fellow countrymen feared him. Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

Love, Life, People, Age

“It is wonderful that certain people and circles still believe I have the aspiration to become Chancellor and receive nightmares from this thought. How often I have declared that I would have to be a fool if I wanted to strive for this really unenviable position! I have already achieved some time ago everything a soldier can achieve, I hold a post that involves little work and no agitation or anger, and I know the position of a Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II only too well that I would have to be mad to desire it.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. December 1901

People, Fools, Time, Madness

“To say I desire war is absurd. I only wish one thing: that our enemies renounce completely the idea of attacking us. I know too well what war is and am convinced that it is my duty as an honest man to wish that it be used only as a last resort, as much in the interests of my Fatherland as in the interests of the entire world.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee, quoted in the Le Petit Parisien newspaper, c. 1888

War, World, Idea

“The Jewish question will always remain a difficult one. In this case also the State should not take up the role of prosecutor and should not tolerate attacks by Christians upon the Jews; but it should not give the Jews the kind of protection they demand in their newspapers. It would be the most effective way of combatting Jewish doctrine for Christians to worship the Golden Calf less and to become simpler in their habits and in their desires. We should not forget that many Christians are as bad as the Jews in their covetousness and that they despoil as pitilessly anyone who falls into their hands.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, November 1890

Bad luck, Way, Question, Forgetting

“My work is to teach and spread the knowledge of the Ageless Wisdom wherever I can find a response, and I have been doing this for many years… In all the above, I have told you much; yet at the same time I have told you nothing which would lead you to offer me that blind obedience and the foolish devotion which the emotional aspirant offers to the Guru and Master Whom he is as yet unable to contact. Nor will he make that desired contact until he has transmuted emotional devotion into unselfish service to humanity--not to the Master.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Extract from a Statement by the Tibetan

Wisdom, Making love, Knowledge, Time

“When we talk about the concern of the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in Downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue; this is a quality-of-life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have—their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist… People are dying. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here, and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families? I don’t think so…This is about American lives. And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis. And if… if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing…”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

“Tell That to the Families in Flint”: AOC Demolishes GOP Claim That Green New Deal Is “Elitist”, DemocracyNow, https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/28/tell_that_to_the_families_in Video only: This is not an elitist issue: AOC on... inaction on climate change –video, Guardian News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5M8vvEhCFI (26 March 2019) Quotes (2019)

Life, People, Health, Family

“There is one point more which has been troubling me very much of late and one which I want you to think carefully and that is the question of Hindu-Mohamedan unity. I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think, it is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming and admitting the sincerity of the Mohamedan leaders in the Non-cooperation movement, I think their religion provides an effective bar to anything of the kind. You remember the conversation, I reported to you in Calcutta, which I had with Hakim Ajmalkhan and Dr. Kitchlew. There is no finer Mohamedan in Hindustan than Hakimsaheb but can any other Muslim leader override the Quran? I can only hope that my reading of Islamic Law is incorrect, and nothing would relieve me more than to be convinced that it is so. But if it is right then it comes to this that although we can unite against the British we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on British lines, we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on democratic lines. What is then the remedy? I am not afraid of seven crores in Hindustan but I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity or desirability of Hindu-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Quran and Hadis? The leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed? I hope not. I hope learned mind and wise head will find some way out of this difficulty.”

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) Indian author and politician

in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Religion, Law, Hope, Way

“The Atlantic Treaty is not aggressive. It is purely defensive. Those who attack it as offensive do so from a bad conscience. They take just the same line as the Nazis did when every attempt by the nations to get together was denounced as the encirclement of Germany. We seek by the pact to gain for the nations a sense of security which they so ardently desire. We seek by the organization of security to make the world safe against aggression and by pooling of strength to reduce the burden of armaments.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
Prime Minister

Bad luck, World, Making love, Sense

“Prof Sarabhai had the keen desire that Indian must be independent in rocket manufacturing\, hence he always full of zeal to do something new.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

“In appreciating the value of space activities to a developing nation, one should recognize some inherent problems. They arise from the glamour that is associated with space activities. There is a real danger that developing nations may adopt a space program largely for this glamour, devoting resources not through a recognition of the values of which we are talking about here, but from a desire to create a sham image nationally and internationally. International cooperation in space activities may stimulate this state of affairs.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

Quoted in "The Power of the Space Club"
Source: [Paikowsky, Deganit, The Power of the Space Club, 2017, Cambridge University Press, 9781107194496, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=e9AoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157#v=onepage&q&f=false, 12 September 2019, en]

Problem

“When they return to take· over they desire more than anything else to see the integrity of the social institutions of the South unimpaired. They desire to see ·white supremacy maintained. Apove all things they do not desire to see the election laws of the South or the powers of the States in defining the qualifications of electors tampered with. Those boys are fighting to maintain the rights of the States. Those boys are fighting to maintain white supremacy and the con-trol of our election machinery.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

Congressional Records https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1944-pt1/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1944-pt1-17-1.pdf#page=9 (January 31, 1944) 1940s

Law, Boy, Fight

“Let words proceed as they please, provided only your soul keeps its own sure order, provided your soul is great and holds unruffled to its ideals, pleased with itself on account of the very things which displease others, a soul that makes life the test of its progress, and believes that its knowledge is in exact proportion to its freedom from desire and its freedom from fear.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CXV: On the Superficial Blessings

Life, Fear, Making love, Soul

“Do you desire another case? Take that of the younger Marcus Cato, with whom Fortune dealt in a more hostile and more persistent fashion. But he withstood her, on all occasions, and in his last moments, at the point of death, showed that a brave man can live in spite of Fortune, can die in spite of her. His whole life was passed either in civil warfare, or under a political regime which was soon to breed civil war.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind

Life, Death, Hostility, War

“Why should I not regard this as desirable—not because the fire, burns me, but because it does not overcome me?”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVII: On Ill-Health and Endurance of Suffering

“I should prefer to be free from torture; but if the time comes when it must be endured, I shall desire that I may conduct myself therein with bravery, honour, and courage. Of course I prefer that war should not occur; but if war does occur, I shall desire that I may nobly endure the wounds, the starvation, and all that the exigency of war brings. Nor am I so mad as to crave illness; but if I must suffer illness, I shall desire that I may do nothing which shows lack of restraint, and nothing that is unmanly. The conclusion is, not that hardships are desirable, but that virtue is desirable, which enables us patiently to endure hardships.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXVII: On Ill-Health and Endurance of Suffering

War, Courage, Suffering, Time

“An academic debate on any subject should concentrate on the pros and cons of the arguments presented by the two (or more) opposing sides in the debate; it should be conducted in an open and sincere atmosphere; and the natural desire (not academically wrong in itself) to win the debate should not be allowed to overpower the academic desire to arrive at the truth… And an academic debate cannot be won by the simple expedient of name-calling and label-sticking, and consequent disqualification of the opposing side from even taking part in the debate.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

Truth, Nature, Parting, Sincerity

“If the next government is sincere in its desire to reach an agreement with Europe, it must try to get more time. If it does not, the British parliament will insist on getting a new postponement. I will remain a member of the House of Commons. I will do everything in my power from my position to make sure that parliament blocks a Brexit without agreement.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

Philip Hammond will 'not exclude' backing no confidence vote to stop no-deal Brexit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49044966 BBC News (19 July 2019) 2019

Making love, Time, Housing, Sincerity

“No deal was never our desire or intended scenario but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely.”

Michel Barnier (1951) French politician

Brexit: MPs push to prevent no-deal in law https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47789298 BBC News (2 April 2019) 2019

“Sandino embodied the desire for liberty of a people who were systematically subjected to the attack of Yankee intervention and subjected to imperialist exploitation an domination. The same marines who murdered the Filipino people thousands of miles from our country, arrivied to soak Nicaraguan territory in blood in those days.”

Daniel Ortega (1945) President of Nicaragua

Nothing Will Hold Back Our Struggle for Liberation (1979)

People, Country

“I appeal to the English-speaking people of South Africa not to allow themselves to be hurt, though I can feel their sadness. A framework has fallen away, but what is of greater importance is friendship and getting together as one nation – as white people who have to defend their future together. Now there is a chance of standing together – one free country standing together on a basis which is the desire of friendship with Great Britain.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

In response to a comment by Douglas Mitchell (leader of the opposition) that South Africa was retreating into isolation, as quoted in The New Republic https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rRI1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=wqULAAAAIBAJ&pg=5390%2C4506760, Glasgow Herald (30 May 1961)

Friendship, People, Sadness, Feeling

“I believe both Scotland and the UK should stay in the EU. Scotland benefits from being part of the EU, and the EU benefits from having Scotland a part of it. No SNP parliamentarian has expressed a desire to campaign for the out campaign - though they are not prevented from doing so. I am determined to make the positive case for continued membership in a reformed EU.”

Nicola Sturgeon (1970) First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party

Scottish Lib Dem conference: Leader Tim Farron in staunch defence of EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35674306 BBC News (27 February 2016) 2016

Making love, Parting

“Some one will say, Does he not know without a monitor both what our difficulties are, and what is meet for our interest, so that it seems in some measure superfluous to solicit him by our prayers, as if he were winking, or even sleeping, until aroused by the sound of our voice? Those who argue thus attend not to the end for which the Lord taught us to pray. It was not so much for his sake as for ours. … It is very much for our interest to be constantly supplicating him; first, that our heart may always be inflamed with a serious and ardent desire of seeking, loving and serving him, while we accustom ourselves to have recourse to him as a sacred anchor in every necessity; secondly, that no desires, no longing whatever, of which we are ashamed to make him the witness, may enter our minds, while we learn to place all our wishes in his sight, and thus pour out our heart before him; and, lastly, that we may be prepared to receive all his benefits with true gratitude and thanksgiving, while our prayers remind us that they proceed from his hand.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 20, Section 3
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Love, Making love, Sleep, Learning

“The German who is still free from all Slav or Celtic alloy has a distinctive character and vies with all his equals. When he is allied with other races, provided he has the necessary patience and endurance he always succeeds in becoming, the chief, the directing will, as the husband must be in a household. I have no desire to offend the Slavs, but it is very necessary to recognise that their character has much of the feminine in it: they have charm, intelligence, artifice, address, and often the Germans appear heavy and clumsy beside them. But we always carry the day, and that is why I would like to say to you: when you are doing business with your Slav rivals, even at moments of the most violent anger and in the most critical situations, always retain the profound conviction, the most profound but secret conviction, that you are fundamentally their superiors, and that you always will be so.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Speech to a Deputation from Syria (15 April 1895), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 104
1890s

Secret, Intelligence, Business, Appearance

“The child’s desire to have distinctions made in his ideas grew stronger every day. Having learned that things had names, he wished to hear the name of every thing supposing that there could be nothing which his father did not know. He often teased him with his questions, and caused him to inquire concerning objects which, but for this, he would have passed without notice. Our innate tendency to pry into the origin and end of things was likewise soon developed in the boy. When he asked whence came the wind, and whither went the flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limitation of his own powers, and wished to understand how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what things he may hope ever to give account of to himself or others. The anger of the child, when he saw injustice done to any living thing, was extremely grateful to the father, as the symptom of a generous heart. Felix once struck fiercely at the cook for cutting up some pigeons. The fine impression this produced on Wilhelm was, indeed, erelong disturbed, when he found the boy unmercifully tearing sparrows in pieces and beating frogs to death. This trait reminded him of many men, who appear so scrupulously just when without passion, and witnessing the proceedings of other men. The pleasant feeling, that the boy was producing so fine and wholesome an influence on his being, was, in a short time, troubled for a moment, when our friend observed, that in truth the boy was educating him more than he the boy.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Book VIII – Chapter 1
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Death, Men, Truth, Education

“Honesty and facts are almost irrelevant. Getting attention is key, causing offence is desirable, and provoking a physical response is the jackpot.”

Thorsten J. Pattberg (1977) German philologist

Essays (2013-2019)

Quotes about desire page 37

Quotes about desire
page 37