Quotes about difference
page 62

“For such fields deep historical studies can have considerable contemporary relevance and hence fall within the boundaries of the field itself. Weber and Durkheim are still studied by sociologists, just as Adam Smith and Ricardo are still studied by economists, whereas Galilean and Newtonian studies are not part of physics but of an altogether different discipline, the history of science.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 472

History, Study, Science, Parting

“President Herbert Hoover promised “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens. … It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming. …The researchers found that, when it’s all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius. … Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what’s good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!”

Kathy Freston American self-help writer

"Vegetarian is the New Prius", in the HuffPost (18 January 2007) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html.

Health, Food, Cars, Water

“What is new poetry? The difference is not mere details of form, measure rhyme schemes or diction, but a return to contemporary speech, thought, imagination and spiritual life, coupled with oriental (Japan & China) and cosmopolitan influences, and a direction of vision, with perfection of form and delicacy of feeling.”

Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) American poet and editor

The New Poetry -An anthology ed Monroe & Henderson Macmillan 1918
The New Poetry (1918)

Life, Feeling, Imagination, Perfection

“Let us suppose that an explosion occurs on Mars, which is observed by an astronomer on earth, who records the instant when he sees the flash. If light travelled instantaneously with an infinite velocity, this instant would coincide with the time… recorded by the… observer on Mars. In this way a meaning could be attached automatically to absolute time and the simultaneity of events at different places; indeed, the classical theory is now regarded as the limiting form of Einstein's theory when the velocity of light becomes infinite. But as there is a mass of experimental evidence supporting the view that light takes a finite time to travel… the terrestrial observer must correct the time recorded on his watch. This correction… will depend on assumptions concerning the velocity of light and the measurement of distance. Thus the concept of a world-wide simultaneity ceases to be a primitive idea.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

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

World, Way, Travel, Idea

“Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

As quoted in the film Der Bauhaus, produced by TV-Rechte in Germany (1975)
Attributed from posthumous publications

Art, Change, Holiday

“… style without substance is nothing, the substance in the story was the most important thing. Of course, there is a layer of style. If I were a director working in a different era, I would have had to be at MGM. I don't think I'd probably know how to make anything but enhanced reality, because that's what comes naturally to me.”

Tom Ford (1961) American fashion designer

A singular man, Shapiro, Gregg, December 24, 2009, The Bay Area Reporter, April 18, 2016 http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=film&article=704,

Nature, Thinking, Reality

“There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il n'y a qu'une sorte d'amour, mais il y en a mille différentes copies.
Maxim 74.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love

“Another way of emphasizing this diversity is to argue that if one cannot forecast (predict), one does not have a theory, and that forecasting is the weakest link in the chain of the management sciences at present. Indeed, if one cannot predict one cannot measure, and if one cannot measure, then there is no "theory."
This argument will seem entirely too strong to some. We do "forecast" in terms of probability distributions, and we do make measurements in terms of "costs." Of course, the management scientist has done all sorts of things with the concept of cost which few cost accountants would condone. But in the laboratory and outside it in industrial studies, one sees the emergence of a cost concept which eventually should revolutionize the measurements in managerial policy-making.
Theory and fact are just two sides of the same coin, but the two sides of a coin are different, and this difference will continue to characterize the development of management science.”

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

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 8 1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Way, Study, Strong, Science

“Different subunits within an organization may confront different external demands. To cope with these various environments, organizations create specialized subunits with differing structural features. For example, some subunits may exhibit higher levels of formalization than others; some may be more centralized in decision making; some may be oriented to longer planning horizons. The more varied the types of environments confronted by an organization, the more differentiated its structure needs to be.”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

Source: Institutions and Organizations., 1995, p. 89 (2001: 103)

Decision

“Don't mistake vivacity for wit, thare iz about az mutch difference az thare iz between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&q=%22Don't+mistake+vivacity+for+wit+thare+iz+about+az+mutch+difference+az+thare+iz+between+lightning+and+a+lightning+bug%22&pg=PT30#v=onepage (1870)

“Eliminative materialism also doubts that the correct neuroscientific account of human capacities will produce a neat reduction of our common-sense framework, but here the doubts arise from a quite different source. As the eliminative materialists see it, the one-to-one match-ups will not be found, and our common-sense psychological framework will not enjoy an intertheoretic reduction, because our common-sense psychological framework is a false and radically misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity. On this view, folk psychology is not just an incomplete representation of our inner natures; it is an outright misrepresentation of our internal states and activities. Consequently, we cannot expect a truly adequate neuroscientific account of our inner lives to provide theoretical categories that match up nicely with the categories of our common-sense framework. Accordingly, we must expect that the older framework will simply be eliminated, rather than be reduced, by a matured neuroscience.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 43; Partly cited in: Advances in Descriptive Psychology (2006), p. 43

Behavior, Nature, Sense, Falseness

“The heterodox current in Judaism led by Jesus seems to have had no notion of an immortal soul, created by God and then infused into the body: immortality meant being raised from the dead in the body one had in life, then living for ever in a world without decay or corruption. In the Christian religion invented by Paul and Augustine, which was strongly influenced by Plato, immortality meant something quite different – a life out of time, enjoyed by the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ of the departed. How this Platonic immortality could preserve anything like the persons that once lived was not made clear.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Cross-correspondences (pp. 32-3)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, God, World, Religion

“Various perspectives exist in an enterprise, such as efﬁciency, quality, and cost. Any system for enterprise engineering must be capable of representing and managing these different perspectives in a well-deﬁned way.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Michael Grüninger and Mark S. Fox (1995) " The role of competency questions in enterprise engineering http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/enterprise-modelling/papers/benchIFIP94.pdf." Benchmarking—Theory and Practice. Springer US, 1995. 22-31.

Way

“How do we teach a child — our own, or those in a classroom — to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have — or need — answers.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.16
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Love, People, Understanding, Question

“We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice. I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my 'right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth', if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.”

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

1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)

Life, Fear, Justice, Forgetting

““The loan of a jacket is little hardship,” Fox replied mildly. “I retain my shirt, waistcoat, trousers, and much else besides. Truly the vast difference in the quantity of fabric allocated to fashionable men and women is inexplicable.”

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 11, “Prisoners” (p. 166)

Women, Men, Fashion

“A man who is spiritually more developed than others is in a difficult situation, unless he is protected by his position and the fear that position instills. Such a man becomes a loner : his standards are different, useless to others, but they still set him apart.”

Meša Selimović book Death and the Dervish

Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), Part II, page. 245.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

Fear

“Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. […] Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.””

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
"Evolution as Fact and Theory", pp. 254–55 (originally appeared in Discover Magazine, May 1981)
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Truth, World, Idea, Science

“Over the last decade, media were taken over by people who think that their ideals, opinions and way of life are superior to others and so they have the mission to tell others how to live, what to think and what to do. Those people have learned that there is a very easy way of manipulating others with guilt and fake goodwill. They will tell you that you should be ashamed, because you are privileged. You are white, you are healthy, you are rich and it's your fault that there are others who are not as lucky as you. So you must redeem those crimes by doing what those social justice warriors think will please those who are not privileged enough. And if you don't, they will jump on you and give you a hard time. Nobody wants to be called sexist, misogynistic, rape culture supporter, and everybody kind of agrees that it's great to help people who were not as lucky as them, so for some time this works. The problem is that this is not enough. At the same time, these people persuade those that are not so lucky that they are victims. They make enemies out of people. They ostracize different opinions.”

Daniel Vávra (1975) Czech entrepreneur

Daniel Vavra GamerGate Interview http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/gamergate-interviews/12400-Daniel-Vavra-GamerGate-Interview (October 10, 2014)

Life, People, Justice, Way

“Unless you think that the majority of people are living successful lives, chances are that at some point you will have to act differently from those around you. Success can take many forms and it is often about standing out from the crowd or being above average, spotting when the crowd moves one way and making sure that you move the other.”

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, Way, Thinking, Chance

“If nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try and be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that! Gaze into the fire, the clouds and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak - surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it is permitted or would please your teachers or your father or some God. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earth bound, a vegetable.”

Hermann Hesse book Demian

Source: Demian (1919), p. 180

God, People, Way, Nature

“Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book II, Ch. 11.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Thinking

“Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing—
Torture is positively paid to sing.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On Torture: A Public Singer"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Singing

“It took Francis Galton several years to figure out that correlation and regression are not two concepts – they are different perspectives on the same concept. The general rule is straightforward but has surprising consequences: whenever the correlation between two scores is imperfect, there will be regression to the mean.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 17, "Regression to the mean", page 181 (ISBN 9780141033570).

“Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

“The blossom is out in full now, it’s plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white. It’s the whitest, frothiest blossomest blossom that ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)

Tree

“I am not sure it can ever be used… I don't think we ought to use this thing unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn’t a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Regarding nuclear weapons, as quoted in Harry S. Truman: A Life https://books.google.com/books?id=7UXSMj3OF4oC&pg=PA344&lpg=PA344&dq=%22It+is+used+to+wipe+out+women+and+children+and+unarmed+people,+and+not+for+military+uses.+So+we+have+got+to+treat+this+differently+from+rifles+and+cannon+and+ordinary+things+like+that.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=xoePU9q9JU&sig=Lxl_x7toU7Y3oD_zKKSZQ2zD29k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA2oVChMIw7D1wb6dxwIVSjI-Ch3ibAd2#v=onepage&q=%22It%20is%20used%20to%20wipe%20out%20women%20and%20children%20and%20unarmed%20people%2C%20and%20not%20for%20military%20uses.%20So%20we%20have%20got%20to%20treat%20this%20differently%20from%20rifles%20and%20cannon%20and%20ordinary%20things%20like%20that.%E2%80%9D&f=false, by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 344

Women, Children, People, Understanding

“Although each of our armed services is unique and different, the U. S. Army holds a special position of significance and trust. Its ranks come from the people, the country's roots, and it is closest to the people. In foreign confrontations the United States is not committed until its land forces- its Army- is committed. And in the event of hostilities, the Army historically has borne the brunt of war, the human cost, taking the great bulk of the casualties. The Army as an institution knows this and has been traditionally reluctant to go to war, its leaders seeking to insure that war is truly necessary and that our civilian leaders exploit all other avenues before taking that final step.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 209

Hostility, War, People, Country

“Ideals as to what should be the attitude of different nations and different classes toward each other, Christian people already have. Surely it is high time that we should also have definite ideas as to the weapons we are justified in using in seeking to bring about conditions that seem to us to be desirable.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Foreword p. 9
The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921)

People, Idea, Time

“Japan gets the most of ordinary people by organizing them to adapt and succeed. America, by getting out of their way so that they can adjust individually, allows them to succeed. It is not that Japan has no individualists and America no organizations, but the thrusts of the societies are different. Japan has distorted its economy and depressed its living standard in order to keep its job structure and social values as steady as possible. At the government's direction, the entire economy has tried to flex almost as one, in response to the ever-changing world. The country often seems like a family that becomes more tightly bound together when it must withstand war, emigration, or some other upheaval. America's strength is the opposite: it opens its doors and brings the world's disorder in. It tolerates social change that would tear most other countries apart. The openness encourages Americans to adapt as individuals rather than as a group.”

James Fallows (1949) American journalist

More Like Us : Making America Great Again (1989), ch. 3

War, People, World, Family

“[Pelsaert laments] “the utter subjection and poverty of the common people-poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe.” He continues: “There are three classes of people who are indeed nominally free, but whose status differs very little from voluntary slavery-workmen, peons or servants and shopkeepers. For the workmen there are two scourges, the first of which is low wages. Goldsmiths, painters (of cloth or chintz), embroiderers, carpet makers, cotton or silk weavers, black-smiths, copper-smiths, tailors, masons, builders, stone-cutters, a hundred crafts in all-any of these working from morning to night can earn only 5 or 6 tackas (tankahs), that is 4 or 5 strivers in wages. The second (scourge) is (the oppression of) the Governor, the nobles, the Diwan, the Kotwal, the Bakshi, and other royal officers. If any of these wants a workman, the man is not asked if he is willing to come, but is seized in the house or in the street, well beaten if he should dare to raise any objection, and in the evening paid half his wages, or nothing at all. From these facts the nature of their food can be easily inferred… For their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little khichri… in the day time, they munch a little parched pulse or other grain, which they say suffices for their lean stomachs… Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking… Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet or perhaps two… this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires… the smoke from these fires all over the city is so great that the eyes run, and the throat seems to be choked.””

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7
Jahangir’s India

Life, People, Food, Home

“As spirits transport themselves from point to point with the rapidity of thought, they may be said to see everywhere at the same time. A spirit's thought may radiate at the same moment on many different points; but this faculty depends on his purity. The more impure the spirit, the narrower is his range of sight. It is only the higher spirits who can take in a whole at a single glance.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 155.

Time, Dependency

“I think there's a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. You know, my hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We've got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

ask by AP reporter about being associated with Texas secession at Austin Tea Party rally, 2009-04-15
2009-04-15
Rick Perry / Austin Tea Party : On Secession and "Right Wing Extremism"
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5xTxcFA398
2009

People, Hope, Thinking

“I have a weakness for Egyptian sculpture: its figures are sculptured gods, sculptured ideas. Very different in expression, Hindu sculpture is based on very similar assumptions... The oriental people are much more artistic than we. When nations grow old, their art grows complicated and soft.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 406

God, People, Art, Idea

“The country faces big challenges and we can address these challenges together with parties from different backgrounds and ideologies who share the concerns and interest as the people of Iraq.”

Raid Jahid Fahmi (1950) Iraqi politician

Interview with Al Jazeera (25 May 2018)

People, Country

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good” - that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

God, People, Books, World

“My concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

" What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/12/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/" (2009)

Imagination, Question, Appearance

“What I can offer you is no different than a shovel. You’ve got the gold mine, and all I’m offering you is the shovel. What does a shovel do? It allows you to dig for the gold. It allows you an access. There are very particular techniques that I am talking about, and from there, you can have an experience is beautiful, an experience that is soothing. That’s all.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Melbourne, Australia March 26, 1985
1980s

Beauty

“The greatest hero of Greece was Hercules. He was a personage of quite another order from the great hero of Athens, Theseus. He was what all Greece, except Athens, most admired. The Athenians were different from the other Greeks, and their hero therefore was different. Theseus was, of course, bravest of the brave, as all heroes are; but, unlike other heroes, he was as compassionate as he was brave, and a man of great intellect as well as great bodily strength. It was natural that the Athenians should have such a hero, because they valued thought and ideas, as no other part of the country did. In Theseus their ideal was embodied. But Hercules embodied what the rest of Greece most valued. His qualities were those the Greeks in general honored and admired. Except for unflinching courage, they were not those that distinguished Theseus. Hercules was the strongest man on earth, and he had the supreme self-confidence magnificent physical strength gives. He considered himself on an equality with the gods.”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (1942), Ch. 11

God, Confidence, Idea, Courage

“The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves'. Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what's really going on, like the colors of competing gangs.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Why Aren't We There Yet?"

Color, Democracy, Understanding, Fight

“A comparative social science requires a generalized system of concepts which will enable the scientific observer to compare and contrast large bodies of concretely different social phenomena in consistent terms.”

Albert K. Cohen (1918–2014) American criminologist

David Aberle, Albert K. Cohen, A. K. Davis, Marion J. Levy Jr. and Francis X. Sutton, (1950). T"he functional prerequisites of a society." Ethics, 60(2), p. 100; cited in: Neil J. Smelser (2013), Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences. p. 189

Science

“Is there any such thing as "an education"? The answer that is made by the devotees of the dogma of individual differences is No; there are as many different educations as there are different individuals; it is "authoritarian" to say that there is any education that is necessary, or even suitable, for every individual.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Education

“Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter II

Religion, Imagination, Fashion

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep", and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U. N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U. S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.”

George H. W. Bush book A World Transformed

A World Transformed (1998) by George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft; also as an excerpt http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm in Time Magazine in 1998.

Hostility, War, World, Hope

“There is a kind of synergy between the different forms of work, you’ll learn things from one sort of work that will have tremendous application in another. They all tend to pull each other forward.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Learning

“I have not built any theory. I have only tried to build up sensitive eyes, as my book says. And I have tried to achieve that by aiming at very distinct color relationships again – like how do they influence each other? Change each other in light and in intensity, in transparency, opacity? How do they change each other in all different directions? That we make all the students aware, through experience, that color is the most relative medium in art, and that we never really see what we see. All neighboring means which occur every minute different, not only in changing light but also by our changing moods. And in the end, the study of color again is a study of ourselves.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Books, Art, Color, Mood

“Tony Blair: Has the Prime Minister secured even the minimal guarantee from the Euro-rebels that, on a future vote of confidence on Europe, they will support him?
John Major: I can sense the concern in the right hon. Gentleman's voice. Perhaps he would like to tell me whether he has received the support of the 50 MPs who defied his Front Bench over Maastricht; of the 40 who defied him over European finance; on a single currency, where the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was in dispute with the deputy leader of the Labour party; and on clause IV, which half his, I think he called them, infantile MEPs want to keep. He does not, and his deputy leader does one day and does not the next. These are party matters. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what his position is?
Tony Blair: There is one very big difference—I lead my party, he follows his.”

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

Hansard http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199495/cmhansrd/1995-04-25/Orals-2.html, House of Commons 6th series, vol. 258, cols. 655-6. Prime Minister's Question Time, 25 April 1995. 1990s

Confidence, Support, Thinking, Sense

“Time study is the art of recording, analyzing, and synthesizing the time of the elements of any operation, usually a manual operation, but it has also been extended to mental and machinery operations.
It is one of the many remarkable inventions of Dr. Taylor while he was working at the Midvale Steel Works. It differs from the well-known process of timing the complete operation, as, for instance, the usual method for timing the athlete, in that the timing of time study is done on the elements of the process. Much ridiculous criticism has been put forward by well-meaning but uninformed persons, who claim that timing a worker down to a three hundredth of a minute is unkind, inhuman, and conducive to the worst form of slavery ever known.
On the contrary, obtaining precise information regarding the smallest elements into which an art or a trade can be subdivided, and examining them separately, is the method adopted hi all branches of scientific research.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Primer of scientific management, 1912, p. 7

Art, Study, Time, Personality

“When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Life, Reading, Parting, Tea

“This is a struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party, which in too many cases has become so corporate and identified with corporate interests that you can't tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Interview with Judy Woodruff, Inside Politics, CNN (17 February 2003) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/17/ip.00.html.

Soul

“There is a world of difference, psychologically speaking, between the passive observation that Things Don't Work Out Very Well, and the active, penetrating insight that. Complex Systems Exhibit Unexpected Behavior.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 33 cited in: Stanley A. Clayes, David Gelvin Spencer, Martin S. Stanford (1979) Contexts for composition. p. 94

World, Behavior

“Yes, we are on our way back — not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Speech at the Citadel (23 October 1935)
1930s

Way, Chance

“But Orpheus has always haunted me, and I am not so sure I've exorcised his spell on me. For all I know, I may yet be tempted to try a sixth or a seventh 'Orpheus' in years to come. Besides the scale of each figure makes it necessary to conceive it differently.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 155

“Every picture shop is filled with pictures of the Emperor; every photographer's with photos--all sizes and in all kinds of positions, in and out of uniform, in different uniforms, looking condescending, looking dignified, on horseback in uniform, on horseback in plain clothes, on donkeyback, head and shoulders without legs, legs without head and shoulders, helmet in hand, helmet on head, helmet on tail, flying in mid air etc. etc. All the statuary too turns on the Emperor. There are busts chiselled in all sizes and the number of different varieties to be seen in halls, houses, shop windows etc. is something quite unbearable. The toy shops are filled with toy Emperors; when he was young the boy Emperor; then the man Emperor; in fact Berlin is saturated with the blessed Emperor as man, woman, boy, girl, soldier, tinker, tailor. The end of it all will be that the people will go stark staring mad and the Emperor himself will go off with a bang the verdict being: "Death from explosion owing to his receiving more hero-worship than the human frame can bear!"”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

In a letter to his sister, describing his observations from a trip to Germany of the cult-like status given the Kaiser.

Death, People, Photo, Girl

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Source: Psychology: An elementary textbook, 1908, p. 44

Law, Support, Nature, Parting

“Germans have a rather healthy respect for the arts and artists, [could] not be more different from the British perspective.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Art

“We have created a false dichotomy between behaviors attributable to companion animals and those of other species that blinds us to the inherent worth and needs of all animals.
The problem is that we have constructed a society in which we are rarely forced to think about where what we consume comes from, and this extends to the animals reared for our consumption. While we pamper one set of animals, another set of animals becomes our food. The main difference is that we come to know one set of these animals, while the other set is raised and killed for us, delivered in plastic wrap and Styrofoam, and served up as dinner. If nothing else, this belies the deep moral confusion that we have about animals as a culture.”

Bob Torres American podcaster

Source: Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (2007), p. 2

Food, Behavior, Problem, Thinking

“The radical left thinks that the lines in Genesis about dominating the animals and plants has given rise to the environmental degradation that we are facing today. I disagree with that. I think that is the wrong interpretation of the text. It tells us to 'tend' the garden, which means to make the proper decisions that will be good for the things that are living there that aren't people, and also that will be good for the people too. This is a different take on the text than the ultimately cynical take that is often discussed today.”

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

Concepts

People, Thinking, Decision, Animals

“It’s very difficult to make them understand the importance of a Guruji. In India, it’s kind of more than gods and goddesses. We revere our Gurujis more than our parents, more than our family members, more than gods and goddesses. But they’ll never understand. Never understand who a Guru is. There are so many differences. But when I am teaching at Rotterdam in Netherlands (He heads the World Music Department at the Rotterdam Music Conservatory), I tell each and every student-“keep your shoe out, you have to sit down. If you want to learn Indian music, you have to treat me- not like your teacher, not like your Guru, you treat me as a friend and we share our willing.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On Guru-Shishya Parampara (tradition of Teacher and Student) and Modern world.
Melodies of Brindavan: Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia

God, World, Family, Music

“Ken Noland has put things in the center [of the painting] and I'll use a symmetric pattern, but we use symmetry in a different way. It's non-relational. In the newer American painting [in contrast to European geometric art] we strive to get the thing in the middle, and symmetrical, but just to get a kind of force, just to get the thing on the canvas. The balance factor isn't important.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 118

Art, Way, Painting

“There was this one crime I read about that was so heinous, I didn't have any words for it. This guy had killed a girl, her mother, and her grandmother. I mean, I am so pissed off reading this, steam's coming out of my ears. This guy was put on trial and was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. Then, about a week before the execution, a group of people stood up on his behalf, ON HIS BEHALF, to say, "We can't kill him. He's too crazy to know we're killing him!"…So what are we arguing about? If he doesn't know the difference and it makes me sleep better at night…”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Death, People, Guy, Girl

“When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character — that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Personality

“All comedians are a bit attention-seeking and I'm no different. Anyone with the audacity to want to be listened to for an hour and a half must be.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Beverley Lyons and Lee-Ann Fullerton (February 28, 2004) "The Razz: Jimmy's Brent on being funny", The Daily Record.

“Before the age of adulteration it was held that behind each work there stood some conception of its perfect execution. It was this that gave zest to labor and served to measure the degree of success. To the extent that the concept obtained, there was a teleology in work, since the laborer toiled not merely to win sustenance but to see this ideal embodied in his creation. Pride in craftsmanship is well explained by saying that to labor is to pray, for conscientious effort to realize an ideal is a kind of fidelity. The craftsman of old time did not hurry, because the perfect takes no account of time and shoddy work is a reproach to character. But character itself is an expression of self-control, which does not come of taking the easiest way. Where character forbids self-indulgence, transcendence still hovers around. When utilitarianism becomes enthroned and the worker is taught that work is use and not worship, interest in quality begins to decline. … There is a difference between expressing one’s self in form and producing quantity for a market with an eye to speculation. Péguy wished to know what had become of the honor of work. It has succumbed to the same forces as have all other expressions of honor.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 73-74.

Age, Way, Effort, Time

“My proposal is this: once this technology [genetically engineered intelligence] becomes available, why not offer it free of charge to parents on low incomes with below-average IQs? Provided there is sufficient take-up, it could help to address the problem of flat-lining inter-generational social mobility and serve as a counterweight to the tendency for the meritocratic elite to become a hereditary elite. It might make all the difference when it comes to the long-term sustainability of advanced meritocratic societies.”

Toby Young (1963) British journalist

The Quadrant (2015)

Intelligence, Problem, Parent, Help

“You believe that we have violated the principle of freedom in your case. Yes, this is so if one understands freedom in the bourgeois sense of the term. But we have a different conception of freedom. Our understanding of freedom is not identical to the one in the capitalist world—as the right to do anything without taking into account the interests of society. Only the imperialists and millionaires need this kind of freedom.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

1960s

World, Understanding, Sense, Freedom

“Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (1972) "Sprachspiel, intention und Bedeutung. Zu Motiven bei Sellars und Wittgenstein". In R.W. Wiggerhaus (Ed.) Sprachanalyse and Soziologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). p. 334
This is called the paradoxical achievement of intersubjectivity

Time

“It was said by a very learned Judge, Lord Macclesfield, towards the beginning of this century that the most effectual way of removing land marks would be by innovating on the rules of evidence; and so I say. I have been in this profession more than forty years, and have practised both in Courts of law and equity; and if it had fallen to my lot to form a system of jurisprudence, whether or not I should have thought it advisable to establish two different Courts with different jurisdictions, and governed by different rules, it is not necessary to say. But, influenced as I am by certain prejudices that have become inveterate with those who comply with the systems they found established, I find that in these Courts proceeding by different rules a certain combined system of jurisprudence has been framed most beneficial to the people of this country, and which I hope I may be indulged in supposing has never yet been equalled in any other country on earth. Our Courts of law only consider legal rights: our Courts of equity have other rules, by which they sometimes supersede those legal rules, and in so doing they act most beneficially for the subject. We all know that, if the Courts of law were to take into their consideration all the jurisdiction belonging to Courts of equity, many bad consequences would ensue. To mention only the single instance of legacies being left to women who may have married inadvertently: if a Court of law could entertain an action for a legacy, the husband would recover it, and the wife might be left destitute: but if it be necessary in such a case to go into equity, that Court will not suffer the husband alone to reap the fruits of the legacy given to the wife; for one of its rules is that he who asks equity must do equity, and in such a case they will compel the husband to make a provision for the wife before they will suffer him to get the money. I exemplify the propriety of keeping the jurisdictions and rules of the different Courts distinct by one out of a multitude of cases that might be adduced.... One of the rules of a Court of equity is that they cannot decree against the oath of the party himself on the evidence of one witness alone without other circumstances: but when the point is doubtful, they send it to be tried at law, directing that the answer of the party shall be read on the trial; so they may order that a party shall not set up a legal term on the trial, or that the plaintiff himself shall be examined; and when the issue comes from a Court of equity with any of these directions the Courts of law comply with the terms on which it is so directed to be tried. By these means the ends of justice are attained, without making any of the stubborn rules of law stoop to what is supposed to be the substantial justice of each particular case; and it is wiser so to act than to leave it to the Judges of the law to relax from those certain and established rules by which they are sworn to decide.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Bauerman v. Eadenius (1798), 7 T. R. 667.

Women, Money, People, Justice

“Let’s move on to the next major lie in my opening statement, the idea of Putin’s popularity in Russia. I could not begin to count the number of times I’ve been forced to address this myth, the persistence of which I again attribute to our lack of language to describe modern dictatorships. Terms like “polls” and “popularity” as applied to politicians in the free world have very different meanings in authoritarian regimes. I’m fond of asking in response to questions about Putin’s “popularity” if a restaurant is popular if it’s the only one in town and every other restaurant was burned to the ground.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

Lie, World, Idea, Question

“It’s quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I…We used to laugh at Malcolm’s dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programs in Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

People, Way, Nature, Problem

“I'd rather see what makes me different as something almost congenital. And I have these inklings that what you commit or endure in this world, relates to some kind of justice or balance. Maybe if you get a bad deal in this world, it is because of something you did, or were, in a previous life. Which is why I don't feel sorry for the poor.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, by Simon Reynolds (1988)
Politics, society and humanity

Life, World, Justice, Feeling

“The king then kept his Christmas at his castle at Guildford; the dresses are said to be ad faciendum ludos domini regis, and consisted of eighty tunics of buckram of various colours; forty-two visors of different similitudes, namely, fourteen of faces of women, fourteen of faces of men, and fourteen heads of angels made with silver; twenty-eight crests; fourteen mantles embroidered with heads of dragons; fourteen white tunics wrought with the heads and wings of peacocks; fourteen with the heads of swans with wings; fourteen tunics painted with the eyes of peacocks; fourteen tunics of English linen painted; and fourteen other tunics embroidered with stars of gold.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 159
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Christmas

Women, Men, Angels, Star

“Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of painting or sculpture or music which can be described or analysed. Visual artists and composers can disregard critics on the ground that the medium of verbal criticism bears so indirect a relation to the medium in which they make something. Poets are in a different situation. With the development of so-called scientific methods of criticism they are made ever conscious that criticism of poetry is in the same medium of work as the art which they practise. “Close analysis” is useful to critics and readers. But for the poet there is the danger of disintegration of poetry into paraphrase, examination of technique, influences, all analysed in the language of criticism.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Tradition-Bound Literature and Traditionless Painting"
The Struggle of the Modern (1963)

Art, Music, Painting

“There is a difference between not understanding and being willfully obtuse.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Source: The Hidden Goddess (2011), Chapter 18, “The Talleyrand Maneuver” (p. 275)

Understanding

“I don’t like the system of Moot-Courts these days, in law schools. My grand-daughter participates in these Moot-Courts, but I don’t like the idea of saying, in A vs. B it was said etc. It makes no difference to what was said. According to Halsbury’s, it was said in Queen vs. Latham that it makes no difference what was said in a given case because by and large all of it depends on the facts of the case, except for constitutional matters.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Conversation with the living legend of law - Fali Sam Nariman

School, Law, Idea, Dependency

“I went vegan for the animals. I love them all and I don't want to eat my friends. I know it sounds cheesy but it's true. I started promoting it on my social media and I wasn't expecting people from all different areas of the world reaching out to me, saying how much I inspire them … My whole family is vegan and it's really fun to get creative in the kitchen while staying healthy, and just have fun with it. Veganism can be really healthy, but it can also be really unhealthy if you don't do it right. And it's not like I don't have cheat days with vegan junk food or vegan sweets, but it's important to stay on the program. … It was surprising how easy it is to be vegan. I was vegetarian my whole life prior so the transition was relatively easy for me to cut out dairy. When I cut out the dairy I noticed I had more energy. I also lost some fat and gained muscle!”

Tia Blanco (1997)

"3 Ways to Go Vegan with Tia Blanco" http://www.worldsurfleague.com/posts/237346/3-ways-to-go-vegan-with-tia-blanco, interview with World Surf League (February 2, 2017).

Love, Life, People, World

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

and may Allah bless you and grant you success in these examinations – but even in the Akhirah we ask Allah to bless you, to open your doors. To prepare for the Akhirah, it's not an easy task, but with the hope in the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala things will be made easy, and at the same time, with the constant preparation, without giving up hope – never ever giving up, never saying no, never just throwing the towel – by the will of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we will achieve, and we will achieve great heights. "Exams in Life - Never Give Up - Mufti Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4w4pak66V0, YouTube (2013) Lectures

Life, Death, Happiness, People

“I probably took more than anybody could survive. … I was bangin' seven-gram rocks and finishing them because that's how I roll. I have one speed, I have one gear, GO!. … I'm different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. … Dying's for fools, dying's for amateurs.”

Charlie Sheen (1965) American film and television actor

On Good Morning America February 28, 2011

Fools, Heart, Speed

“I believe many of our country's differences stem from the lack of genuine appreciation of the cultures and religious traditions and beliefs of our various communities.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Excerpt from speech at Life Skills workshop, Valelevu Grounds, 22 May 2005

Communication, Country

“It is from the traditional family that we absorb those universal ideals and principles which are the teaching of Jesus, the bedrock of our religious faith. We are taught the difference between right and wrong, and about the law, just punishment and discipline. We are taught to obey our parents, as Jesus did, and about the sanctity of truth and life itself. We are warned against lying, cheating and stealing. We learn that we must respect the person and property of others, care for each other, live and work together in cooperation, show loyalty, patience, kindness and share what we have. The family teaches us about the importance of knowledge, education, hard work and effort. It teaches us about enjoying ourselves, having fun, keeping fit and healthy.”

Kamisese Mara (1920–2004) President of Fiji

Opening address, Pacific Vision festival, Auckland, New Zealand (26 July 1999) http://www.minpac.govt.nz/resources/reference/pvdocs/opening/mara.php.

Life, Truth, Education, Family

“User needs determine what functions should be provided, and different functions require different structures.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (1971) "Structure and function in retrieval languages," Journal of Documentation, 27(2), p. 74; As cited in: Alan Gilchrist, Judi Vernau (2012) Facets of Knowledge Organization: Proceedings of the ISKO UK. p. 293.

“If there was never any difference between the value of commodities someone desired to sell and buy on the market, then no-one would ever desire to accumulate wealth. But an essential feature of capitalism is the existence of a group of agents with precisely that intention.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 9, The Sum Of The Parts, p. 193

Wealth

“The history of the Democratic Party can be concisely captured by referring to its steadfast allegiance to the four Ss. Slavery, Secession, Segregation, and Socialism. During the Obama presidency we have seen how hard old habits die, even for a black man whose race was the long-time victim of Democratic Party's bone-deep authoritarianism. Under this Democratic president we have seen a war waged on several fronts against America's young. Indeed, the Democrats' historic taste for and belief in slavery have resurfaced with a vengeance and indiscriminately under the Obama administration, whether white, black, yellow, red, male, or female America's young are dying and being forced to work for Obama and his lieutenants as they seek to maintain their party's hold on political power. How so? Well, America has never had a president and administration so eager to kill unborn Americans. Even with post-1973 science having proved irrefutably that the unborn are human beings, and even though American law always has defined them as U. S. citizens, Obama and his colleagues have strengthened at every point they could the absurd notion that unborn humans are the chattel property of the woman who bears them, and so can be disposed of, that is, murdered, at her whim. And, in what must be considered a masterpiece of Orwellian language, Obama and his team, and most Democrats since 1973, describe this federal government-issued license to kill as a woman's 'right', a means by which she manifests her equality with men. They then damn any one who questions the logic, sanity, or justice of this argument as an 'extremist'. Only in an America in which a political entity as devoted to the four 'Ss' as the Democratic Party could opposition to the cold-blooded murder of fellow citizens unable defend themselves be identified by the country’s best-educated as 'extremism'. If this is indeed a right, it is a right gives each woman the right to be a slave-owner and a Nazi. Such a 'right' really is no different than the rights sanctioned by the Dred Scott decision and the Nuremberg laws, each of which legally defined certain categories of people out of the human race in order to enslave or kill them. Since 1973, the application of this 'right' has produced precisely the same results as Dred Scott and the Nuremberg laws, though in numbers so immense, 55 million and climbing, that they make those acts seem rather tame and minimally destructive of humans.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (21 November 2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention. 2010s

Men, War, People, Education

“When you run across dedicated Socialists, remember that the only difference between a Socialist and a Communist is in the method of takeover. The desire to seize monolithic control of society is the same in both. Sometimes people forget that USSR stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some people count Socialism "good" and Communism "bad."”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

In reality the two are twins.
The Naked Communist (1958)

People, Communication, Reality, Forgetting

“I seem to have come to much of the same conclusion as you have reached, though approaching it from the direction of economics and the social sciences rather than from biology - that there is a body of what have been calling "general empirical theory," or "general system theory" in your excellent terminology, which is of wide applicability in many different disciplines. I am sure there are many people all over the world who have come to essentially the same position that we have, but we are widely scattered and do not know each other, so difficult is it to cross the boundaries of the disciplines.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1953) in letter to Bertalanffy, cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 14
1950s

People, World, Science

“It's different now, it's different now. Now I can speak the truth. I can tell you that the one thing I really, really couldn't bear when I was an MP were my constituents. [laughter] Let's face it: the people have contempt for the politicans; it is as nothing to the contempt we have for you. [laughter] All over this country, there are politicians on their way to the Labour Party conference, coming away from the LibDem one, getting ready to go to the Conservative one, thinking "God, at last he's said it. He's said what we all feel, that happiness is the constituency in the rear-view mirror."”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

The News Quiz series 72, episode 1 (BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2010).

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“There's a lyric in the middle of the song that says, "I want to decide between survival and bliss." Basically I'm talking about the difference between really being alive and really embracing the reason why I'm here on this earth versus my just being asleep and sleep walking and accepting the status quo and accepting somewhat of a suffering mentality to being here. It really is my responsibility to distinguish the difference between the two and choose which one I want. It's so easy for me to want to not take responsibility for my life and relinquish it and look outside of myself for the answers that I know very well are within me. It's so scary to be silent and it's so scary to go within, until I do it. And once I'm doing it, I just wonder why I wasn't doing this all the time. So that decision to be fully alive is one that is preceded by some pretty intense decisions and some choices and responsibility-taking that at times can be very intimidating, again, before I do it.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

On her song "Precious Illusions", in "Alanis Morissette talks about songs from 'Under Rug Swept'", in MSO (23 Jun 2002) http://web.archive.org/web/20020623040236/http://msopr.com/mso/morissette-cutbycut.html

Life, Decision, Sleep, Suffering

“Our understanding of the Macedonians' emergence into history is confounded by two events: the establishment of the Macedonians as an identifiable ethnic group, and the foundation of their ruling house. The "highlanders" or "Makedones" of the mountainous regions of western Macedonia are derived from northwest Greek stock; they were akin both to those who at an earlier time may have migrated south to become the historical "Dorians", and to other Pindus tribes who were the ancestors of the Epirotes or Molossians. That is, we may suggest that northwest Greece provided a pool of Indo-European speakers of Proto-Greek from which were drawn the tribes who later were known by different names as they established their regional identities in separate parts of the country… First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general conclusion (though not the details of his arguments) that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

"Makedonika", Regina Books, Claremont CA

Age, History, Mountain, Understanding

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There was a widespread myth of the 1970s, a myth along Tom Kuhn’s (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions lines. The Keynesianism, which worked so well in Camelot and brought forth a long epoch of price-level stability with good Q growth and nearly full employment, gave way to a new and quite different macro view after 1966. A new paradigm, monistic monetarism, so the tale narrates, gave a better fit. And therefore King Keynes lost self esteem and public esteem. The King is dead. Long live King Milton!
Contemplate the true facts. Examine 10 prominent best forecasting models 1950 to 1980: Wharton, Townsend–Greenspan, Michigan Model, St. Louis Reserve Bank, Citibank Economic Department under Walter Wriston’s choice of Lief Olson, et cetera. … M did matter as for almost everyone. But never did M alone matter systemically, as post-1950 Friedman monetarism professed.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

Way, Dead

“She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Petra
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

God, Dreams, Way, Feeling

“A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious; such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance. A cross could equally stand for crossing something out. It could also be a sign of obstruction. An overturned cross, an X so to speak, could be the symbol of mystery, something for the other side. Then I could paint a cross in such a way that a connection is made between two bars, and in doing so convert it into a symbol of the unlimited. So, many different crosses and X symbols occur in my works.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

quote from 1988
1981 - 1990
Source: Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003, Achim Sommer, Kunsthalle Emden, Altana 2004, p. 27

Way, Quotes, Painting

“Thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language--shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language—in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 252.

Family, Law, Communication, Nature

“I signaled to my host to try to have the philosophers expound on some aspect of their knowledge. As a good friend he immediately rose to the occasion. I won't go into the conversation that accompanied his request, and the difference between the comic and the serious was too slight to translate.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Knowledge

“I really remember John Lennon's Imagine. I guess I'm twelve; that's one of my first albums. That really set fire to me. It was like he was whispering in your ear — his ideas of what's possible. Different ways of seeing the world.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Rolling Stone interview (2005)

World, Way, Imagination, Idea

“The evolution of life is analogous to the evolution of language. For example, there are several languages based on the Roman alphabet of only 26 letters. Yet by arranging these in different orders, we’ve added several hundred thousand words to English since the 5th century, and many of them were completely new. The principle is the same in genetics. There are millions of named and classified species of life, all of them based on a variable arrangement of only four chemical components. For another example, we know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Romanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice.”

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

"8th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-7d06HJSs, Youtube (March 22, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Life, Communication, Understanding