Quotes about determination (2337 quotes, page 15)

“So what am I doing? Well I hope that by providing a personal insight into my own journey into greater understanding you will accept my bona fides in this matter. I am deadly serious about this. In an organisation built on a chain of command, senior leaders can make a very real difference when they are determined to implement change, and they are.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Hope , Understanding , Change , Personality

“This is a report of an actual industrial experiment designed to determine why workers resisted job changes and what could be done about the problem. The research arose out of the need to change industrial operations to meet competitive conditions and was instituted after earlier incentives and propaganda procedures had proved ineffectual.”

John R. P. French (1913–1995) American psychologist

Abstract, lead sentences
"Overcoming resistance to change." 1948

Problem , Change

“In this situation, any feeling of gee-wiz exhilaration would be out of place. Consternation and fear would be closer to the mark; but the most appropriate attitude may be a bitter determination to be as competent as we can, much as if we were preparing for a difficult exam that will either realize our dreams or obliterate them.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Fear , Dreams , Feeling

“There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.”

Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) Dutch mathematician and natural philosopher

Book 1, p. 10
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)

Truth , Exercises

“The organization's marketing task is to determine the needs, wants and interests of target markets and to achieve the desired results more effectively and efficiently than competitors, in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer's or society's well-being.”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Philip Kotler cited in: Morgen Witzel, "First Among Marketers". Financial Times. August 6, 2003.

Way

“Before the Treatise, the interest- rate was determined by tastes and objective circumstances, by the persuasibility of income-earners to transfer consumption from the present to the future, and the desire of business men to transfer the means of free enterprise from the future to the present, thus altering the productive possibilities and enlarging the prospective income of the society including themselves.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 162

Men , Business , Future

“The vitality of our network will determine our professional fate.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Source: The Little Big Things: 163 Ways To Pursue Excellence (2010), p. 50.

Fate

“Winning depended to a large extent on the determination of the troops and the officers. The certainty that we were going to win kept up everyone's spirits, from privates to generals.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

Quoted in "Memoirs" - Page 167 - by Andreĭ Andreevich Gromyko, Harold Shukman - 1990

Dependency

“In the passage quoted here from Monteverdi's madrigal [Cruda amarilli, mm.9-19 and 24-30], one sees a tonality determined by the characteristic of the accord parfait on the tonic, by the sixth chord assigned to the third and seventh degrees, by the optional choice of the accord parfait or the sixth chord on the sixth degree, and finally, by the accord parfait, and above all, by the unprepared seventh chord (with major third) on the dominant.”

François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871) Belgian composer

Joseph Fétis, (1844). Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l'harmonie contenant la doctrine de la science et de l'art, 2d ed., p. 166. Brussels and Paris.

Quotes

“The power struggle within the firm determines which conception of control will dominate and how that conception will be translated into concrete strategies. The winners of this struggle will push the organization into a certain direction and maintain that direction as long as their strategies bring positive results.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 17

“Every isolated determinate dynamic system, obeying unchanging laws, will ultimately develop some sort of organisms that are adapted to their environments.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Ashby (1962), quoted in: V. Lawrence Parsegian (1972) This cybernetic world of men, machines, and earth systems'. p. 178: About the principle of self-organization

Law

“Game theory brings to the chaos–theory table the idea that generally, societies are not designed, and that most situations don’t come with a rulebook. Instead, people have their own plans and designs on how things should fit together. They want to determine how the game is played, and they see societal designers as myopic busybodies who would imprison them with their theories.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 372

People , Game , Idea

“At last, after many lives of striving, many lives of working, growing purer and nobler and wiser, life after life, the Soul makes a distinct and clear speaking forth of a will that now has grown strong; and when that will announces itself as a clear and definite purpose, no longer the whisper that aspires, but the word that commands, then that resolute will strikes at the gateway which leads to the Outer Court of the Temple, and strikes with a knocking which none may deny— for it has in it the strength of the Soul that is determined to achieve, and that has learned enough to understand the vastness of the task that it undertakes.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 17

Life , Soul , Understanding , Strong

“From whence are these "rights of individuals" derived, and why should we care? Unless we presume the existence of some greater power that determines what is good, isn't it arbitrary to posit that human survival is more important than private property rights, an equally artificially construed concept? Isn't it arbitrary to assume that some sort of equality is preferable to a system where, say, the poor are assumed to have bad karma? If these 'rights of individuals' are derived only from shared humanity, then do 'individuals' (a thoroughly meaningless term, by the way), begin to lose them when they act inhumanely? And isn't it totally arbitrary to grant rights to humans rather than other creatures anyway?”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Lecture in New Haven, On Constructed Rights (28 February 2013)

Way

“Elsdon was once a market town as some say, and a city according to others; but as the annals of the parish were lost several centuries ago, it is impossible to determine what age it was either the one or the other. There are not the least traces of the former grandeur to be found, whence some antiquaries are apt to believe that it lost both its trade and charter at the Deluge.”

Charles Dodgson (bishop) Anglican bishop

Quoted in Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 4

Age

“[W]hat seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

U.S. v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F.2d 202, 203 (2d Cir. 1926).
Judicial opinions

“He is firm in constitution, as in resolution; industrious, indefatigable, determined and persevering; fixed in opinion, and unbiased in judgment; not over accessible, but studious to reward merit. He is a rock against which the waves of calumny and malice, moved by the gusts of passion natural to envy, have dashed; have washed its sides: he is still immovable on his base. He is in some degree susceptible of adulation, as is every man who has an honest thirst for military fame. He endures fatigue and hardship with fortitude uncommon for a man of his years. I have seen him, in the most severe night of the winter of 1794, sleep on the ground, like his fellow-soldiers, and walk around the camp at four in the morning, with the vigilance of a sentinel.”

Anthony Wayne (1745–1796) Continental Army general

Major William Eaton, commander of the US Marines at Derna, 1806 ("...the Shores of Tripoli..."), of Wayne

Nature , Sleep , Passion , Winter

“That a great General like Bonaparte should be inclined to military means of effecting a military Government is less to be wondered at than lamented…by taking the common & beaten path of Ambition he has…done much against the liberty of mankind in every part of the world…The only good that could come from this Event, so pernicious to the cause of general Liberty, was Peace, and that you see our Ministers are determined to refuse.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to Christopher Wyvill (8 January 1800), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 166.
1800s

World , Peace , Parting

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

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Libertarian Party National Convention (2004)

Women , Men , Marriage

“While we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also - and indeed must - recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)

History

“We are proud of our past and our present and we face the future with unflagging determination.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quotes on Life and its challenges, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=ab878960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.

Past , Future

“In other words, there are in administration things analogous to, if not identical with, the mechanical tracts or deterministic sequence, of physics. If, for example, it is decided by government to accomplish the purpose of providing compensation at given rates for men and women employed in industry who sustain injuries in connection with their occupations, the administrator can, like the engineer, estimate in advance the probable cost of such a design, indicate the types of officers and employees necessary to administer the design, and the administrative procedures appropriate to the whole process from beginning to end. And, as in the case of the hydro-electric engineer, the administrator, later sees the results of his operations and can compare them with his advance estimates. There are more variables and incalculables in human affairs than in hydroelectric affairs, but even so administration achieves pre-determined results with an approximation which is often amazing for its exactness. If administrative designs and estimates were not realized in practice with a high degree of exactness, both industry and government would collapse.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 661

Women , Men

“Ludwig von Bertalanffy's formulation enables exchange processes between the organism, or organisation, and the elements in its environment to be dealt with in a new perspective, it does not deal at all with those processes in the environment itself which are among the determining conditions of the exchanges. To analyse these an additional concept is needed - the causal texture of the environment.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 20, cited in: Academy of International Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa. College of Business Administration (1982) Proceedings of the Academy of International Business: Asia-Pacific Dimensions of International Business, December 18-20, 1982, Honolulu, Hawaii. p. 163

“The new trade theory picture of the world looks something like this: Each country has, at any given time, a set of broad resources—land, skilled labor, capital, climate, general technological competence. These resources define up to a point the industries in which the country can hope to be competitive on world markets. […] But a country's resources do not fully determine what it produces, because the detailed pattern of advantage reflects the self-reinforcing virtuous circles, set in motion by the vagaries of history.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 9 : The Economics of QWERTY

World , Hope , History , Time

“We saw the choices. The audience will be given the opportunity. They can see Him and Her, or they can see Them. … Well, for the cinephiles and the people who really want to commit, I would definitely say, “See Him and Her.” It’s the full experience. … I’ve always thought Him and Her. But it’s funny, in Toronto, when Harvey Weinstein saw the film for the first time, he saw Her and Him, and he was determined. He was like, “That’s how it has to be seen!””

Jessica Chastain (1977) American actress

So it depends.
On her role in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013-2014), written and directed by Ned Benson
Vulture interview (2014)

People , Time , Dependency

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

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

From Kant to Hilbert (1996)

Nature

“Stop worrying about what you cannot control. It’s a total waste of your energy, energy that could otherwise be used to help you focus on what you can influence. I spend large parts of my coaching sessions helping people to sift through their challenges and concerns – helping them to determine what they can change and what they have no control over.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

People , Change , Help , Parting

“The career of Marian Anderson, the world-class contralto who was denied permission to sing in Constitution Hall because of her race, symbolizes the achievements of so many black American musicians. Performing instead at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, she drew an audience of 75,000 and inspired the world not only with her rich musical gifts, but also with her determination and courage.”

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

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

World , Music , Courage , Memory

“Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.
Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

War , World , Way , History

“Our constitutional history started with the States retaining all powers of sovereignty unimpaired, save those conferred upon the National Government. The evolution of the constitutional system has consisted largely in determining the line of demarcation between State and national authority. The cases involved are many and complicated, but there is a fairly good popular understanding of this continuing struggle between these contending sovereignties. Because of better communication and transportation, the constant tendency has been to more and more social and economic unification. The present continent-wide union of forty-eight States is much closer than was the original group of thirteen States.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

History , Communication , Understanding

“So the conciliability of determinism and freedom depends on the fact, if this be a fact, that determinism simply means definiteness (instead of constraining foreordination), while freedom means (instead of unpredictable whim) action spontaneously flowing from the definite guiding intelligence of the agent himself. In short, the desired harmony will fail unless the determinism and the freedom are both alike defined in terms of the one and identical definiteness of the rational nature; but it will be secured if they can be so defined, and are.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.320

Intelligence , Nature , Freedom , Dependency

“It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush its resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population, and not the minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage-slavery. And since the majority of the of the people itself suppresses its oppressors, a "special force" for suppression is no longer necessary. in this sense the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority.. the majority can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power devolve upon the people generally, the less need is there for the existence of this power.”

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

3.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

People , Communication , Sense

“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

'Memorandum dated March 2003' in Steven Weisman ed., "Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary"

Truth , Change , Success

“Our debt to Hayek is very substantial. He helped to establish a freedom-based approach of evaluation through which economic systems can be judged (no matter what substantive judgments we arrive at). He pointed to the importance of identifying those services that the state can perform well and has a social duty to undertake. Finally, he showed why administrative psychology and propensities to corruptibility have to be considered in determining how states can, or cannot, work and how the world can, or cannot, be run.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

"An insight into the purpose of prosperity", Financial Times (September 20, 2004)
2000s, "An insight into the purpose of prosperity," 2004

World , Freedom , Help

“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 25

Religion , Art , Sleep , Science

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

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

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

Life , Men , Democracy , Imagination

“It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Trevor Kavanagh, "We shall prevail .. terrorists shall not", The Sun, 8 July 2005, p. 18
7 July 2005, statement from Scotland's Gleneagles Hotel, in response to the terrorist attack on the London Underground.
2000s

Life , Death , People , World

“Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror.”

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

As quoted in Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994), p. 203.
Attributions

“Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events. The mind depends upon the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter. This fact offers ample opportunity to make the best of bad situations—changing your perception of the world is often as good as changing the world—but it also allows a person to be miserable even when all the material and social conditions for happiness have been met. During the normal course of events, your mind will determine the quality of your life.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 204

Life , World , Suffering , Appearance

“Initial formation of policy domains and the rules they create affecting property rights, governance structures, and rules of exchange shape the development of new markets because they produce cultural templates that determine how to organize in a given society.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The architecture of markets, 2001, p. 40

“The Sultan, contrary to the disposition of man, which induces him to prefer a soft to a hard couch, and the splendour of the cheeks of pomegranate-bosomed girls to well-tempered sword blades, was so offended at the standard which Satan had raised in Hind, that he determined on another holy expedition to that land.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 33 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Girl

“A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he may also exercise power over him by shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?”

Steven Lukes (1941) British sociologist

Power: A Radical View (1974)

Exercises

“The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own heroes — ideals for heroes — and they don't need to be told elaborate lies.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

People

“It is sheer nonsense to expect that any human being has yet been able to attain such insight into the problems of society that he can really identify the central problems and determine how they should be solved. The systems in which we live are far too complicated as yet for our intellectual powers and technology to understand.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. x

Understanding , Problem

“People are apt to forget that the coming of the Christ necessitates a period of intensive preparation by Him; He, too, works under law and is subject to control from various sources—just as are all human beings, but in a much lesser degree. His reappearance is conditioned and determined by the reaction of humanity itself; by that reaction He must abide. His work is subject also to certain phases of spiritual and cyclic timing and to impressions from sources to be found on higher levels than those upon which He normally works.”

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

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter IV: The Work of the Christ Today and in the Future

People , Law , Time , Christ

“Figure 12-6 pulls together in a simplified way the main elements of income determination. Without saving and investment, there would be a circular flow of income between business and the public: above, business pays out wages, interest, rents, and profits to the public in return for the services of labor and property; and below, the public pays consumption dollars to business in return for goods and services.
Realistically, we must recognize that the public will wish to save some of its income, as shown at the spigot Z. Hence, businesses cannot expect their consumption sales to be as large as the total of wages, interest, rents, and profits.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

8th ed., 1970, p. 218
1940s, Economics (1948-)

Way , Business

“There is consensus among States, judges of international tribunals and professors of international law that self-determination is not only a principle but also a right that has achieved the status of jus cogens.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the right of self determination http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly

Law

“To want a job that exercises a man’s capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the “sole prerogative” to determine the products.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 37.

Exercises

“Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 62, "Olitski, Kelly, Hamilton: Dogma and Talent" : On Jules Olitski, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Hamilton

Art

“There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.”

Frederick Russell Burnham (1861–1947) father of scouting; military scout; soldier of fortune; oil man; writer; rancher

Scouting on Two Continents (1926)

Sense , Night

“Slave-owning culture … gives rise to the teleological explanation of the Universe, which reaches its subtlest form in Plato’s or Aristotle’s philosophies, in which all phenomena are determined by Ideas or Forms. These correspond to the plans formed in the mind of the slave-owner which his slave passively fulfils.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

Idea , Universe

“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on…The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations…Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp, 81-82.
1840s

Men , People , Law , Hope

“Condoleezza Rice: But I don’t remember the al‐Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.
Richard Ben-Veniste: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB [Presidential Daily Briefing] warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?
Condoleezza Rice: I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

testimony before the 9/11 Commission http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/, describing the August 6 PDB, May 19, 2004.

Country

“Economic and monetary union…is incompatible with independent sovereign states with control over their own fiscal and monetary policies. It would be impossible…to have irrevocably fixed exchange rates while individual countries retained independent monetary policies…such a system could never have the credibility necessary to persuade the market that there was no risk of realignment. Thus EMU inevitably implies a single European currency, with monetary decisions…taken not by national Governments and/or central banks, but by a European Central Bank. Nor would individual countries be able to retain responsibility for fiscal policy. With a single European monetary policy there would need to be central control over the size of budget deficits and, particularly, over their financing. New European institutions would be required, to determine overall Community fiscal policy and agree the distribution of deficits between individual Member States…It is clear that Economic and Monetary Union implies nothing less than European Government…and political union: the United States of Europe. That is simply not on the agenda now, nor will it be for the forseeable future.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House (25 January 1989), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 910.

Communication , Decision , Future , Country

“If for the entire universe we conceive the same magnitude to be determined, consistently and with due regard to all circumstances, which for a single body I have called entropy, and if at the same time we introduce the other and simpler conception of energy, we may express in the following manner the fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat.
1. The energy of the universe is constant.
2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

Ninth Memoir. On Several Convenient Forms of the Fundamental Equations of the Mechanical Theory of Heat.
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Law , Universe , Time

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

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

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

Love , World , Family , Way

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts
1990s, 1990

Women , War , Children , World

“Rather, we heirs of Enlightenment think of enemies of liberal democracy like Nietzsche or Loyola as, to use Rawls’s word, “mad.” We do so because there is no way to see them as fellow citizens of our constitutional democracy, people whose life plans might, given ingenuity and good will, be fitted in with those of other citizens. They are crazy because the limits of sanity are set by what we can take seriously. This, in turn, is determined by our upbringing, our historical situation.”

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) American philosopher

"The priority of democracy to philosophy"

Life , People , Way , Democracy

“I have never definitely broken with Christianity nor renounced it. To attack it has never been my thought. No, from the time when there could be any question of the employment of my powers, I was firmly determined to employ them all to defend Christianity, or in any case to present it in its true form.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Point of View for My Work as An Author, Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Walter Lowrie 1939, 1962 P. 77
1840s, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1848)

Question , Time

“In the first century and in the twentieth, the individual Christian must determine his own course of action in the light of the spirit and teaching of Jesus. He gave Peter, James and John no definite program or mechanism by which they could overcome slavery, idolatry, licentiousness, and militarism, and he gives the Christian of today no scheme of overcoming militarism and oppression. It is by lives lived in the spirit of human brotherhood and worship toward God that he seeks to overcome slavery and idolatry, and it is by lives of aggressive good-will and love at all times and under all circumstances that he seeks to overcome militarism and oppression.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 103

Love , God , Light , Time

“Vibrant human diversity is now commonplace in major cities throughout the world. Some celebrate such a mix of human diversity. Others deplore it, preferring that so-called races be separated both geographically and reproductively. Even today, some people retain the once-popular belief that the 'white' race is superior in intellect, health, and other attributes. Although far more people reject the notion of white supremacy today than in the past, its legacy remains, as evidenced by economic stratification, ongoing segregation, and classification by racial categories. Even among those who reject the supposed superiority of a particular ethnicity over any other, the perception of distinct, genetically determined human races often persists.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 9–10.

People , Health , World , Past

“The outline of our lives, like the candles flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 1, Peering Through The Eyepiece Of Randomness, p. 4

Fate

“I believe that our Tibetan ability to combine spiritual qualities with a realistic and practical attitude enables us to make a special contribution, in however modest a way. This is my hope and prayer.
In conclusion, let me share with you a short prayer which gives me great inspiration and determination:
: For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I, too, abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
:* This last statement is a traditional form of the Bodhisattva vows.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel lecture (1989)

World , Hope , Way

“It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. We need all the ingenuity we possess to avert the holocaust.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

"The One Un-American Act," Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award
Other speeches and writings

Fate

“[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 31–2

Men , World , Way , Nature

“To a degree which is difficult to determine, the esoteric impulse in twentieth-century music, literature and the arts reflects calculation. It looks to the flattery of academic and hermeneutic notice. Reciprocally, the academy turns towards that which appears to require its exegetic, cryptographic skills.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 6 (p. 38).

Art , Music , Literature , Appearance

“The BNP isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined to sell them. Basically, that means to use saleable words – such as freedom, identity, security, democracy. […]
Once we're in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, then perhaps one day the British people might change their mind and say, 'yes, every last one must go'. But if you hold that out as your sole aim to start with, you're not going to get anywhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity. […]
There's a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas, and the British National Party isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined now to sell them, and that means basically to use the saleable words, as I say, freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

– talking to the American Friends of the BNP —

People , Democracy , Idea , Freedom

“When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life , Hunger , Books , Beauty

“In which the technical apparatus of production and distribution (with an increasing sector of automation) functions, not as the sum-total of mere instruments which can be isolated from their social and political effects, but rather as a system which determines a priori the product of the apparatus as well as the operations of servicing and extending it. In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the Opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. xlvii

“We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

People , World , Fear , Hope

“The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), p. 696, as cited in Social Cognitive Psychology: History and Current Domains (1997), David F. Barone, James E. Maddux, Charles R. Snyder . p. 20

Problem , Freedom

“An organization is a subordinate system of a specific larger system, the cooperative system, whose components are physical, biological, and personal systems. The relations with other organizations… are outside this specific cooperative system. Other organizations are a part of the social environment of the organization. It is for this reason I have used the phrase "complex of organizations" rather than "system." Usually the most significant relationships of a unit organization are those with the specific cooperative system of which it is a part. It is this system which primarily and on the whole in most instances determines the chief conditions of the organization's existence.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 98-99, footnote

Parting , Personality

“In Iraq, the fight has been difficult, yet daily life has improved dramatically over the past 20 months, thanks to the courage of the Iraqi people, a determined coalition of nations, and a surge of American troops. The United Nations has provided the mandate for multinational forces in Iraq through this December. And the United Nations is carrying out an ambitious strategy to strengthen Iraq's democracy, including helping Iraqis prepare for their next round of free elections. Whatever disagreements our nations have had on Iraq, we should all welcome this progress toward stability and peace, and we should stand united in helping Iraq's democracy succeed.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Life , People , Peace , Democracy

“Okay bear with me this'll be a little tough. You should know this isn't the first time I thought about leaving. I thought about it some twenty years ago when a check that would soon become a part of Cincinnati folklore, made me see life from the bottom. To be honest, a thought about ending it all crossed my mind, but a more reasonable alternative seemed to be 'hey how about just leaving town? Running away? Starting life over, some place else?' You see, in political terms as well as human, here in Cincinnati, I was dead. But then in the, probably, the luckiest decision I ever made, I decided 'No! I'm staying put!' I would withstand all the jokes, all the ridicule. I'd pretend it didn't hurt, and I would give every ounce of my being to Cincinnati. 'Why in time,' I was thinking, 'you'd have to like me. Or if not like me, at least respect me.' And I'd run for council even unendorsed. And I'd prove to you I could be the best public servant you ever had, or I'd die trying. Be it as a mayor, an anchor, or a commentator, whatever it took, I was determined to have you know that I was more than a check and a hooker on a one night stand. But something happened along the way. Maybe it's God's way of teaching us. I don't know, but you see? In trying to prove something to you, I learned something about me. I learned that I had fallen in love with you. With Cincinnati. With you who taught me more about life, and caring, and forgiving, and also most importantly, giving. Giving something back. Which is part of the reason… I have been… Excuse me. So sad this week. why… Why it's so hard to say goodbye. God bless you, and goodbye.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

his final commentary at NBC's WLWT in Ohio, January 1993
This American Life http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/04/258.html, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One.

Love , Life , God , Sadness

“It's utterly incomprehensible to me how someone could say we don’t need a teaching authority of the Church. If we have five Bible scriptures and 18 opinions regarding them, who is to determine? Either it's the fact that My intellect is better than yours; I've studied more than you; I can persuade better than you can; I'm more passionate than you that makes my opinion win over yours. Or we have a teaching authority that says, The rule book says this is how you settle this issue.”

Ulf Ekman (1950) Swedish chaplain

Ulf Ekman Says Prophetic Word Confirmed His Catholic Conversion http://www.charismanews.com/world/43126-ulf-ekman-says-prophetic-word-confirmed-his-catholic-conversion Charisma News by Likas Berggren, 3/14/2014

Books , Study , Passion

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

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

Letter to the Abbé Arnoux (19 July 1787) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0275
1780s

People , Law , Hope , Way

“Nevertheless. among all the temptations I will have to resist today. There would be the temptation of memory: to recount what was for me. and for those of my generation who shared it during a whole lifetime. The experience of Marxism. The quasi-paternal figure of Marx, the way it fought in us with other filiations, the reading of texts and the interpretation of a world in which the Marxist inheritance was-and still remains, and so it will remain-absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist in order to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that still bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

World , Way , Fashion , Memory

“The election's coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you're praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.
Now let me say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8 — and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear.
This is one thing, friends, that all politicians tend to agree on. Both John McCain and Barack Obama, I flat out asked them "what is your definition of marriage?" and they both said the same thing. It is the traditional, historic, universal definition of marriage: one man and one woman, for life. … There are about 2% of Americans are homosexual or gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2% of the population determine — to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture, and every single religion, for 5,000 years. … So I urge you to support Proposition 8, and pass that word on. I'm going to be sending out a note to pastors on what I believe about this, but everybody knows what I believe about it, and they heard me at the civil forum when I asked both Obama and McCain on their views.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

regarding California Proposition 8 to amend the state constitution to not recognize same-sex marriage, as quoted in "News & Views 10/23/2008 Part 3 (Prop 8)" in Pastor Rick's News and Views (23 October 2008) http://www.saddleback.com/blogs/newsandviews/index.html?contentid=1502

Life , Marriage , People , Religion

“There mere idea that the planning authority could ever possess a complete inventory of the amounts and qualities of all the different materials and instruments of production of which the manager of a particular plant will know or be able to find out makes the whole proposal a somewhat comic fiction. Once this is recognised it becomes obvious that what prices ought to be can never be determined without relying on competitive markets.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, "Two Pages of Fiction" (1982)

Idea

“The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself.”

Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (1788–1856) Scottish metaphysician (1788–1856)

As quoted by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). p. 573.

Education

“This lesson was firmly in the minds of those who made the American Constitution. They proposed to adopt institutions under which the people should be supreme, and the government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. They were determined to be a sovereign people under a government having such powers as they from time to time should confer upon it by a written constitution. They did not propose to be under the tyranny of either the executive or the legislature.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People , Time

“Corruption undermines public confidence in our country and institutions. It is a huge cost to the economy. Combating it will take courage, determination and perseverance. The most effective means of doing it is by creating a climate not receptive to corruption.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Address to Transparency International Fiji book launch, 9 December 2005.

Confidence , Courage , Perseverance , Country

“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

“Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next - a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please - your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 9

Decision , Freedom , Appearance , Time

“The executive in every walk of life, whether he knows it or not, directs social forces and determines the destiny of countless people, not only those who work in his immediate organization but among the larger public as well. He should comprehend this and recognize his responsibility. The role of statesman is thrust upon him by the nature and demands of the position he occupies. To fulfill it he mnst be a philosopher. But he cannot be a successful philosopher unless he understands the inherent life of institutions, the reasons why people in institutional situations behave as they do. This knowledge is the philosophy and technique of management.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 1, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 418-9

Life , People , Understanding , Nature

“I never plan a stanza, words cluster like chromosomes determining the procedure, later, I may influence or thin it.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

“In 1993 Osama bin Laden began speaking in detail to Muslim and Western journalists about his beliefs, goals, and intentions, and began publishing commentaries on these matters in the media…. While bin Laden's words have not been a torrent, they are plentiful, carefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the Unites States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (pp. 45-6).
2000s

War , World , History , Problem

“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

“The utopian element in politics lies in the ability to disentangle the image of possible human association from forms of life that make people's material and moral ability depend on their acceptance of predetermined hierarchical and communal divisions. The struggle of this visionary politics is to deny the identification of society with a limited repertory of social forms. Such a repertory imprisons all experiments in practical collaboration, in self-expression and reconciliation, within a determinate scheme of ranks and divisions, of authoritative ideals, and of accepted contexts for the realization of these ideals.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 12

Life , People , Communication , Dependency

“To understand the relationship between behavior and brain one has to begin by defining the function, or computational goal, of a complete behavior. Only then can a neuroscientist determine how the brain achieves that goal.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Source: Paul W. Glimcher (2004). Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain.

Behavior , Understanding

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People , Business

“It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

In Ladies Home Journal, May 1958

Way , Exercises

“In developing his theory of gravitation, Newton assigned to every material body another property which is called its gravitational mass. Gravitational mass determines the force exerted by the body on other bodies, and so its function appears to be quite distinct from that of inertial mass. Nevertheless, the two are found to be identical in magnitude. Newton made experiments to verify this remarkable equality by swinging a pendulum with a bob which could be made with different materials. The period of the swing depended on the ratio of the inertial and gravitational masses of the pendulum, but in all cases it was found to be the same… In 1890 Eötvös made a much more refined test with the aid of a… torsion balance. Repeated experiments showed that inertial mass and gravitational mass were equal to within one part in 100 million. Einstein suggested that this was because inertia and gravitation are identical.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

p, 125
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Appearance , Parting , Dependency

“Proportion applies to sculpture as to painting; perspective determines the contour; chiaroscuro gives relief through the disposition of lights and shadows in their relationship with the background; color gives the appearance of life... The colorists, the men who unite all the phases of painting, have to establish, at once and from the beginning, everything that is proper and essential to their art. They have to mass things in with color, even as the sculptor does with clay, marble or stone; their sketch, like that of the sculptor, must also render proportion, perspective effect, and color.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

15 April 1851, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Life , Men , Art , Color

“We now face five years of an unbridled Conservative government that is intent on swingeing cuts, further attacks on society’s most vulnerable and on our NHS. This will severely limit what can be achieved but I am determined to work tirelessly to do what I can to make sure local people are heard in Parliament and protected from the worst of what is to come.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Column: Jo Cox – After a hard day’s night, the real work starts http://www.batleynews.co.uk/news/local/column-jo-cox-after-a-hard-day-s-night-the-real-work-starts-1-7264438 (16 May 2015)

People

“We had a very good side with an experienced batting lineup and strong variety in our bowling but going into the tournament, it was not the most settled time for Sri Lankan cricket, with some disputes going on. But all of this actually brought us closer together as a team; it made us even more determined to do our job for the supporters and the country. In the end, it was an emotional way for myself and Mahela to sign off from our Twenty20 international careers.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Kumar Sangakkara on Mahela as a coaching consultant for England, quoted on The Guardian, "Kumar Sangakkara: England made smart move on mentor Mahela Jayawardene" http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/13/kumar-sangakkara-england-mahela-jayawardene-world-twenty20-sri-lanka, March 13, 2016.

Way , Support , Strong , Time

“We the Chinese nation have the spirit to fight the enemy to the last drop of our blood, the determination to recover our lost territory by our own efforts, and the ability to stand on our own feet in the family of nations.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

“On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism” (December 27, 1935)

Family , Effort , Fight

“But let the word go forth from this time and place that the torch has been passed on to a new generation. A generation that is acutely aware of its unique destiny as the hope of our long-suffering people. A generation that is desperately challenged by the rapid developments taking place all over the world, a generation that is encouraged by all the possibilities of technology, a generation that is determined to earn its place in history; a generation of hope.”

Bukola Saraki (1962) Nigerian politician

Inaugural Address (2003)

People , World , Hope , History

“And I think that if everybody maintains a strong determination and will, only very few would not be able to become reasonable horsemen through lack of the minimal physical condition.”

Bem Cavalgar (1391–1438) King of Portugal

Part II

Thinking , Strong

“The feelings and images aroused by the visible world are very difficult to express or are perhaps inexpressible with words because they are determined by forms, colors, space and light.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in an interview with L. Vitali, 1957; as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 295
1945 - 1964

World , Color , Feeling , Light

Quotes about determination page 15

Quotes about determination
page 15