Quotes about disregard

A collection of quotes on the topic of disregard, people, other, doing.

Quotes about disregard

“I know what good morals are,
but you're supposed to disregard good morals when you're living in a crazy, bad world. If you're in hell, how can you live like an angel? You're surrounded by devils, trying to be an angel? That's like suicide.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

World, Angels, Hell, Suicide

“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

People

“Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal, though pop culture magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan would suggest that it is. It is intense, often desperate. Te internal landscape is violent upheaval, a wild and ultimately cruel disregard of human individuality, a brazen, high-strung wanting that is absolute and imperishable, not attached to personality, no respecter of boundaries; ending not in sexual climax but in a human tragedy of failed relationships, vengeful bitterness in an aftermath of sexual heat, personality corroded by too much endurance of undesired, habitual intercourse, conflict, a wearing away of vitality in the numbness finally of habit or compulsion or the loneliness of separation.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 2

Personality, Loneliness

“[Some correspondents] rightly claimed that State patronage [for artists and authors] is a better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The issue, however, is not between irresponsible "self-expression" and discipline; it is between truth and lies. Artists don't so much object to aesthetic discipline. Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes—and less directly this applies to all the arts—about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India?”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid. "As I Please" column in The Tribune (13 October 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ http://alexpeak.com/twr/ooc/#2 As I Please (1943–1947)

Truth, Age, Art, Imagination

“This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/tdoaom/ "As I Please" (1943–1947) Context: We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism... To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore "Trotskyism is Fascism". And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated. This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions.

People, Penalty, Motivation

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

History, Country, Spring, Self-confidence

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Student Loans
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Source: Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays

“A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: The Inner Life

Life, Way, Soul, Appearance

“People are talking high of Thiruvalluvar. But in practice they do not respect his teachings. They act against him and disregard him.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 505.
Thirukkural

People

“Above all, in this speech, as in so many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of to-day, for if we approach the work of reform in a spirit of vindictiveness-in a spirit of reckless disregard for the rights of others, or of hatred for men because they are better off than ourselves—we are sure in the end to do not good but damage to all mankind, and especially to those whose especial champions we pro-fess ourselves to be.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men

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

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

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

Men, Law, Way, Feeling

“[On dealing with physical and emotional pain] … a friend taught me before I gave birth…“don't try to take your mind away from the pain. Go right into the centre of the pain”, because when she did that she found the pain dissipated. It's true for me anyway, but it's not always possible, I admit. It has become a valuable exercise to apply to different things in life, of not avoiding or disregarding pain or bad feelings. I just have to remember that nothing in life is ever stagnant and that this grief or ache is going to change because everything in life changes.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in Viva Magazine (Dec 2009, p. 76) http://jennifer-beals.com/media/press/viva.html.

Life, Pain, Feeling, Exercises

“One whose intentions and thoughts are cultivated will disregard wealth and nobility. One whose greatest concern is for the Way and righteousness will take lightly kings and dukes. It is simply that when one examines oneself on the inside, external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, "The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things."”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263 A similar phrase to the saying is found in the 3rd millennium BCE Sumerian text Instructions of Shuruppak by Šuruppak: "You should not serve things; things should serve you." http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr561.htm "Cultivating oneself"

Way, Wealth

“I am satisfied it has strengthened my hand tremendously. Nobody but a fool would disregard the kind of result we witnessed today.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

BBC News 'On this day' http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/31/newsid_2510000/2510755.stm, August 31. Reaction to the 1977 general election in which his government was re-elected overwhelmingly.

Fools

“I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

As quoted in "Tesla Says Edison Was an Empiricist", The New York Times (19 Oct 1931), 25.

Life, Intelligence, Spring, Sport

“I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the oeconomy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

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

First Inaugural Address (30 April 1789), published in The Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 30, pp. 294-5
1780s

Love, People, Truth, Smile

“The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?”

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

Source: 1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Law, Question

“Many qualities are needed by a people which would preserve the power of self- government in fact as well as in name. Among these qualities are forethought, shrewdness, self-restraint, the courage which refuses to abandon one's own rights, and the disinterested and kindly good sense which enables one to do justice to the rights of others. Lack of strength and lack of courage and unfit men for self-government on the one hand; and on the other, brutal arrogance, envy -- in short, any manifestation of the spirit of selfish disregard, whether of one's own duties or of the rights of others, are equally fatal.”

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

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Men, People, Justice, Courage

“Another characteristic of the A. R. F.'s "Western"-dependent strategy is its complete disregard for the need to transfer the Armenian armed struggle to the historic Armenian homeland, the need to build a mass-based guerrilla force closely aligned with Turkish and Kurdish revolutionaries. Many appeals in A. R. F. literature and propaganda are directed to "international public opinion" and other non-Armenian audiences. Meanwhile, few appeals are directed to the Armenian people themselves…”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 57.

People, Literature, Dependency

“I must try to set aside half an hour in some part of my day, and consecrate it to diary writing. Give it a name and a place, and then perhaps, such is the human mind, I shall come to think it a duty, and disregard other duties for it.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Wednesday 8 April 1925
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Thinking, Parting

“I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.”

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

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Truth, Fear, Justice, Law

“My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Deathbed statement (November 1858), in response to a church minister who asked if he regretted wasting his life on fruitless projects; as quoted in Harold Hill : A People's History http://www.haroldhill.org/section_two/section_two_page_one.htm (2004).

Life, Truth, World, Understanding

“When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.”

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

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Men, Law, Personality

“Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.

“Everywhere is the tabooed, or the disregarded. The monks of science dwell in smuggeries that are walled away from event-jungles. Or some of them do. Nowadays a good many of them are going native.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Ch. 13 http://www.resologist.net/talent13.htm Wild Talents (1932)

“The concept which assumes that everything in the Church is irrevocably set for all times appears to me to be a false one. It would be naive to disregard that the Church has a history; the Church is a human institution and like all things human, was destined to change and evolve; likewise, its development takes place often in the form of struggles.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)
Context: The concept which assumes that everything in the Church is irrevocably set for all times appears to me to be a false one. It would be naive to disregard that the Church has a history; the Church is a human institution and like all things human, was destined to change and evolve; likewise, its development takes place often in the form of struggles. Most of the definitions of dogma are conclusive results of preceding intellectual conflicts lasting for decades and even centuries. The same is true of ecclesiastical law, liturgical forms — especially all objective forms reflecting our spiritual life.

History, Appearance, Change, Time

“You venerate the saints, and you take pleasure in touching their relics. But you disregard their greatest legacy, the example of a blameless life. No devotion is more pleasing to Mary than the imitation of Mary's humility. No devotion is more acceptable and proper to the saints than striving to imitate their virtues.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 144.
Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503)

Life, Pleasure

“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”

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

Religion, Art, Color, Wealth

“Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity.”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Age

“Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

“I have a history of disregarding orders. - Mitch Rapp”

Vince Flynn (1966–2013) American writer of fiction

History

“Genius disregards the boundaries of propriety. Genius is permitted to shout if shouting is productive.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

“The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

Feeling, Suicide

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

World, Idea

“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”

Rabih Alameddine book Koolaids: The Art of War

Source: Koolaids: The Art of War

Life, Reality

“Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Life, People

“These problems never seemed to baffle my grandfather nor cause him any anxiety; difficulties which in most people's eyes would have led to endless complications were disposed of by my grandfather almost without thinking, with the easy assurance of a sleepwalker who strolls along a ledge halfway down a hundred-foot precipice—yes, I am tempted to say with the same disregard for the laws of nature as a ghost passing through locked doors.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

People, Law, Nature, Problem

“Since the establishment of diplomatic ties in May 1997, Taipei has assisted São Tomé and Príncipe in promoting national development, with our bilateral cooperation touching upon the areas of public health, medicine, agriculture, basic infrastructure, energy and education. Accordingly, it disregarded its nearly 20-year friendship with us and approached both sides of the Taiwan Strait to seek the highest bidder. We regret and deplore São Tomé and Príncipe's reckless and unfriendly decision.”

David Lee (1949) politician and diplomat from Taiwan

David Lee (2016) cited in " Sao Tome and Principe cuts Taipei ties http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/12/22/2003661692" on Taipei Times, 22 December 2016

Friendship, Health, Education, Decision

“What has art to do with those things [Revolution, socialism]? Art will never come except from some little disregarded corner where some isolated man is studying the mysteries of nature, fully assured that the answer which he ﬁnds and which is good for him is good also for humanity, whatever may be the number of succeeding generations.”

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

as quoted by Romain Rolland in his book Millet, c. 1900; transl. Miss Clementina Black; published by Duckworth & Co, Londo / E. P. Dutton & Co, New York, 1919, p. 8
undated quotes

Art, Nature, Study

“Political groups solve their problems by entering into negotiations, attending conferences, and working out their differences with bona fide compromises which all parties are expected to perform. This has never worked with the Communists because they use deceit, disregard of laws, violation of treaties, intimidation, subversion and open insurrection as basic tools of conquest. This makes it a criminal conspiracy.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Law, Problem

“Because free countries have affirmed many years ago that a compulsory church rate is immoral and oppressive, for the sake of the burden laid upon individual consciences; and in affirming this truth they have unconsciously affirmed the wider truth, that every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive. The human conscience knows no distinction between church rates and other compulsory rates and taxes. The sin lies in the disregarding of each other's convictions, and is not affected by the subject matter of the tax.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life

Truth, Personality, Country

“She (Hillary Clinton) lacks judgment, she lacks temperament and I'm the one that used unfit many, many months ago. And now they've turned it around, use it on me, unfit? I'm unfit? That's — that's a first. But she lacks the temperament and the moral character to lead this country, its very simple. She really does. She's a dangerous person who doesn't tell the truth which has been proven very loudly. I've never seen a — I don't think we've ever had greater proof of that, of anybody. And she has disregarded the lives of Americans — you see what's happening — with what she has done with her server? And you know why she did that. So, I just look at this, and I said that if she gets elected, she will cause the destruction of this country from within. Remember that. … She is disdainful of the rules set for everyone else and she hasn't changed a bit. This is — that was the good thing. I couldn't say the bad things. It was too much. Nobody would even — nobody would even believe it. You've got to see this book. Nobody would believe because it's so terrible, so terrible. And she comes across like this woman — nice, easy — but she's not. And — and she's — listen — she's not a leader, not a leader. And she is a liar.”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Truth, Books, Thinking, Change

“The clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could be explained by the Noachian deluge.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 27
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Question, Learning

“[T]he constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.... It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.... So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is the very essence of judicial duty.... Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions... It would be giving the legislature a practical and real omnipotence... The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

5. U.S. (1 Cranch) 137
Marbury v. Madison (1803)

Law

“But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

People, Truth, Way, Thinking

“Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.”

Larry Page (1973) American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur

Larry Page's Google Zeitgeist 2012 talk https://singularityhub.com/2012/05/27/larry-page-with-a-healthy-disregard-for-the-impossible-people-can-do-almost-anything/

“Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U. S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 6.

Justice, Support

“I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Live" with Thomas Sowell https://www.aei.org/publication/live-thomas-sowell/, The American Enterprise, September 2004. 2000s

People, Courage

“How far down the evolutionary scale shall we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters? To answer these questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for other beings is based. As I said … the only legitimate boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have interests, in a strict, nonmetaphorical sense, a being must be capable of suffering or experiencing pleasure. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

Pleasure, Question, Sense, Fish

“Today, we are seeing hundreds of years of scientific discovery being challenged by people who simply disregard facts that don’t happen to agree with their agendas. Some call it "pseudo-science," others call it "faith-based science," but when you notice where this negligence tends to take place, you might as well call it "political science."”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/en/news/mayor_michael_bloombergs_address_to_graduates_of_johns_hopkins_university_school_of_medicine
Faith Based Science

People, Faith, Science

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

Men, People, Way, Fashion

“As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

News summaries (August 9, 1964).
Other writings

“What had already been done for music by the end of the eighteenth century has at last been begun for the pictorial arts. Mathematics and physics furnished the means in the form of rules to be followed and to be broken. In the beginning it is wholesome to be concerned with the functions and to disregard the finished form. Studies in algebra, in geometry, in mechanics characterize teaching directed towards the essential and the functional, in contrast to apparent. One learns to look behind the façade, to grasp the root of things. One learns to recognize the undercurrents, the antecedents of the visible. One learns to dig down, to uncover, to find the cause, to analyze.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

1921 - 1930
Source: 'Bauhaus prospectus 1929'; as quoted in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444

Art, Music, Mathematics, Study

“It is not to be inferred that it would be anything less than courting national disaster to leave our country barren of defense. Human nature is a very constant quality. While there is justification for hoping and believing that we are moving toward perfection, it would be idle and absurd to assume that we have already reached it. We can not disregard history. There have been and will be domestic disorders. There have been and will be tendencies of one nation to encroach on another. I believe in the maintenance of an Army and Navy, not for aggression but for defense. Security and order are our most valuable possessions. They are cheap at any price. But I am opposed to every kind of military aggrandizement and to all forms of competitive armament. The ideal would be for nations to become parties to mutual covenants limiting their military establishments, and making it obvious that they are not maintained to menace each other. This ideal should be made practical as fast as possible.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Hope, History, Nature, Perfection

“The unconscious can become destructive if it is disregarded and thwarted.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

“It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 597 (1946).
Judicial opinions

History, Freedom, Light

“I think my experience as an adoptee who was given beautiful, loving parents, makes me sympathetic to the plight of the voiceless and those who are disregarded or tossed away or thought to not have value in a society. I feel like no one is expendable because it’s convenient. So many animals out there without homes have so much love to give, and I want to do all I can to get them in forever homes so they can give that love. … Fostering a little life is so humbling and sacred. It reminds you we’re all here to help each other and that you’re not the central character in the story of life. You’re a supporting role and your hands are meant to help get someone or something where they should be. Helping and loving an animal is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Every time you save them, you save yourself a little bit, too.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Scandal's Bellamy Young has a soft spot for rescue pets", interview with USA Today (13 May 2017) https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/05/13/scandals-bellamy-young-has-soft-spot-rescue-pets/101588612/.

Love, Life, Beauty, Feeling

“This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost.”

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

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

Love, Life, War, Justice

“If we sit with Negroes at our tables, if we attend social functions with them as our social equals, if we disregard segregation in all other relations, is it then possible that we maintain it fixedly in the marriage of the South's Saxon sons and daughters? The answer must be "No." By the absolute denial of social equality to the Negro, the barriers between the races are firm and strong. But if the middle wall of the social partition should be broken down, then the mingling of the tides of life would surely begin. It would be a slow process, but the result would be the same. And though the process be gradual, it would be none the less irresistible and inevitable. The lower strata of the white population would probably feel the first effects, and within the foreseeable future the middle and upper classes would be invaded. Then, the Southern White race, the Southern Caucasian, would be irretrievably doomed.”

Theodore G. Bilbo (1877–1947) American politician

Source: Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization (1946), Chapter 4: Southern Segregation and the Color Line.

Life, Marriage, Feeling, Strong

“If we continue down this path, I assure you it will not take long for our country to crumble. Illegal immigrants utterly disregard our Rule of Law and way of life here in America. They already break our laws by coming illegally so what will stop them from continuing to do so?”

Steve King (1949) US Representative for Iowa

Steve King: Remembering Iowa’s Sarah Root, 21-Year-Old Killed By Illegal Alien http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/24/exclusive-steve-king-remembering-iowas-sarah-root-21-year-old-killed-illegal-alien/ (May 24, 2016)

Life, Law, Way, Country

“Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, March 14, 2014, "Democrats are making income inequality worse" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-democrats-policies-make-income-inequality-worse/2014/03/14/97d5074e-aada-11e3-adbc-888c8010c799_story.html at washingtonpost.com 2010s

“Perhaps it is true that every human being is a potential monster, but if we disregard potentialities, then humankind can be divided into two main categories: human beings and human beasts.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“Society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted because it disregards the full horizon of truth - the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles that enable us to live and flourish in unity, order and harmony.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2008)

God, Truth, Way, Nature

“Why am I political? Because society's consistent and constant disregard and lack of respect for minorities, even the title minority, is too much to bear silently. Their insistence at our invisibility, whether subtle as noninclusion, or as loud and violent as hate crimes, is contagious, and can make me hide from myself.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, SPEAKING UP

Hate

“How can I take seriously such mimeographed absurdities as "Lateness due to absence," "High under-achiever," and "Polio consent slips"?
—SylDear Syl,
I'll match yours any day with "Please disregard the following."”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

—Bea
Part IV, ch. 23 (Sylvia Barrett and Bea Schachter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

“The Colonies are no longer in their infancy. They are growing rapidly to a vigorous manhood. Now is the time—the last time—that you can bind them closer to you. If now you disregard their aspirations and wishes, if when they make you an offer not specially in their interests but in the interests of the Empire of which we are all a portion—if when they make you this offer you reject it or treat it with scorn you may do an injury which will be irreparable, and, whatever you yourselves may feel in after life, be sure that your descendants will scorn and denounce the cowardly and selfish policy which you will have pursued.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in The Times (8 October 1903), p. 8.
1900s

Life, Feeling, Time, Selfishness

“A command is distinguished from other significations of desire, not by the style in which the desire is signified, but by the power or purpose of the party to inflict an evil or pain in case the desire is disregarded.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 6

Pain, Evil

“Reality is complex. The most we can hope for in life is partial solutions. And even such partial solutions as that are temporary, and may require irritating compromises. That is why I defined my actions in terms of an operational process, not in terms of an end goal. There is no end. Nothing ever ends. We do what we can when we can. Factors beyond our control—” He made a gesture at the horizon and the sky, a gesture that seemed to encompass the material world, humanity, the stars, the fates, the actions and opinions of other people, all of external reality. “—factors beyond our control…we disregard.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 3, “Within Sight of the Land of Freedom” Section 1 (p. 43; ellipsis in the original)

Life, Fate, People, World

“Contemporary liberals think of rights as universal human attributes that can be respected anywhere, but here they show a characteristic disregard of history. Current understandings of human rights developed along with the modern nation-state. It was the nation-state that emancipated individuals from the communal ties of medieval times and created freedom as it has come to be known in the modern world. This was not done without enormous conflict and severe costs. Large-scale violence was an integral feature of the process. If the US became a modern nation only after a civil war, France did so only after the Napoleonic wars and Germany after two world wars and the Cold War. In Africa and the Balkans the struggle for nationhood has run in parallel with ethnic cleansing, while the welding of China into a nation that is underway today involves the suppression of Muslim minorities and something not far from genocide in Tibet.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Armed Missionaries: Missionary Liberalism, Liberal Imperialism (pp. 238-9)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

War, World, History, Communication

“The true investor scarcely ever has to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free di disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons mistakes of judgement.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 40

Books, Time, Personality

“How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men. We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit. But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough. The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. The Organization's sinews have been weakened, as member states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the United Nations (1963)

Men, Optimism

“What to leave out is the first thing the artist has to decide; a painter who “held the mirror up to nature” would spend his life on the leaves of one landscape. The work of art’s fluctuating and idiosyncratic threshold of attention—the great things disregarded, the small things seized and dwelt on—is as much of a signature as anything in it.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Profession of Poetry”, p. 162
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Life, Art, Nature

“Editions and Revisions. The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome's Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized, obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses inserted in 1 John 5:7 (first by a Frankfurt publisher, 1574), the third and fourth books of Ezra and the third book of the Maccabees added to the Apocrypha, and various other changes effected, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad. Elector August of Saxony tried to control the text in the interest of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, and ordered the preparation of a standard edition (1581). But it was disregarded outside of Saxony.
Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719) in connection with Francke's Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.
With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther's version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772-1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (1800-1862), but did not obtain public authority.
At last a conservative official revision of the Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former editions in public use.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Fate, Books, Learning, Change

“[Television] may teach self-interest rather than philanthropy, violence rather than gentleness, a disregard for human dignity rather than a respect for it. It may not always teach the truth but teach it does, and it is more than time that responsible people both within and outside the broadcasting professions said boldly what is so obvious in commonsense terms — we cannot understand what is happening in international, cultural, economic, political and social affairs without coming to grips with the way in which television influences virtually all our behavioural and thought processes.”

Mary Whitehouse (1910–2001) British activist

Television: Controlling the Explosive Influence http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/28th-december-1974/14/television, The Spectator archive (28 December, 1974).

People, Truth, Way, Understanding

“Expressed egotism is, of course, no reason necessarily to disregard someone’s work, but it is a warning signal. If someone can evaluate his work so poorly, is the work itself likely to be better? In many of his areas of intellectual interest, Popper’s work is wanting.
Hayek did more to advance Popper professionally early in his career than anyone else, and Popper remembered his personal debt to Hayek. Over the years, he wrote him a number of appreciative letters.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Personality

“I have been given the authority over you, and I am not the best of you. If I do well, help me; and if I do wrong, set me right. Sincere regard for truth is loyalty and disregard for truth is treachery. The weak amongst you shall be strong with me until I have secured his rights, if God will; and the strong amongst you shall be weak with me until I have wrested from him the rights of others, if God will. Obey me so long as I obey God and His Messenger. But if I disobey God and his Messenger, ye owe me no obedience. Arise for your prayer, God have mercy upon you!”

Abu Bakr (573–634) First Muslim Caliph and a companion of Muhammad

After assuming the office of Caliph, Abu Bakr's first address was as follows, quoted in Tareekh Ibn Kathir, Vol. 6, p. 305-306, As quoted in Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (1983) by Martin Lings, p. 344

Strong, Help, God, Loyalty

“What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:
"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

Age, Law

“If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"'Disgrace,' Ctd.," http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/06/sweeping-and-wr.html The Daily Dish (19 June 2008)

People, Fools, Intelligence, Fraud

“They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight; and that she hardly cares for any thing, except to meditate on him— that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight for ever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Written in 1723; from The Works of President Edwards, vol. I, ed. Sereno B. Dwight, 1830.
The young woman described here was Sarah Pierrepont, who became Edwards' wife in 1727.

Love, God, Pain, Pleasure

“I could go on, but the point is clear: religions make explicit claims about reality—about what exists and happens in the universe. These claims involve the existence of gods, the number of such gods (polytheism or monotheism), their character and behavior (usually loving and beneficent, but, in the case of Hindu and ancient Greek gods, sometimes mischievous or malevolent), how they interact with the world, whether or not there are souls or life after death, and, above all, how the deities wish us to behave—their moral code.
These are empirical claims, and although some may be hard to test, they must, like all claims about reality, be defended with a combination of evidence and reason. If we find no credible evidence, no good reasons to believe, then those claims should be disregarded, just as most of us ignore claims about ESP, astrology, and alien abduction. After all, beliefs important enough to affect you for eternity surely deserve the closest scrutiny.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 23

Love, Life, Death, God

“I do not contest that this top-down instrumental use for pure politics was being made to some degree; but to reduce the entire process of cultural evolution to a matter of politics betrays a profound misunderstanding. This view disregards the intrinsic appeal of the Sanskrit tradition, including for non-elites, and the various roles it played in the cultures it touched. In particular, to dismiss the entire symbolic discourse of Sanskrit as 'mystifying' is to apply a reductive Marxism that cannot account for sacredness in the lives of people.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

People

“The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can't be intimidated… Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why — they've been around for 4,000 years, they have contempt for the barbarians, they just don't give a damn. OK, you scream, we'll go ahead and take over a big piece of Saudi or Iranian oil. And that's the threat, you can't intimidate them — it's driving people in Washington berserk. But, you know, of all the major powers, they've been the least aggressive militarily.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2006, Discussion with Robert Trivers, 2006

People, History, Understanding

“It has been reported from Sulaiman b. Buraid through his father that when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war, do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge; and do not mutilate (the dead) bodies; do not kill the children. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. Then invite them to migrate from their lands to the land of Muhajirs and inform them that, if they do so, they shall have all the privileges and obligations of the Muhajirs. If they refuse to migrate, tell them that they will have the status of Bedouin Muslims and will be subjected to the Commands of Allah like other Muslims, but they will not get any share from the spoils of war or Fai' except when they actually fight with the Muslims (against the disbelievers). If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them. When you lay siege to a fort and the besieged appeal to you for protection in the name of Allah and His Prophet, do not accord to them the guarantee of Allah and His Prophet, but accord to them your own guarantee and the guarantee of your companions for it is a lesser sin that the security given by you or your companions be disregarded than that the security granted in the name of Allah and His Prophet be violated When you besiege a fort and the besieged want you to let them out in accordance with Allah's Command, do not let them come out in accordance with His Command, but do so at your (own) command, for you do not know whether or not you will be able to carry out Allah's behest with regard to them.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Muslim, Book 019, Number 4294
Sunni Hadith

War, Children, Fear, Peace

“Do we not all know that the cause of our casualties is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, cooperating with the discontents of the people of those states? Do we not know that the disregard of the Constitution, and of the security that it affords to the rights of States and of individuals, has been the cause of the calamity which our country is called to undergo? And now, war! war, in its direst shape — war, such as it makes the blood run cold to read of in the history of other nations and of other times — war, on a scale of a million of men in arms — war, horrid as that of barbaric ages, rages in several of the States of the Union, as its more immediate field, and casts the lurid shadow of its death and lamentation athwart the whole expanse, and into every nook and corner of our vast domain.

Nor is that all; for in those of the States which are exempt from the actual ravages of war, in which the roar of the cannon, and the rattle of the musketry, and the groans of the dying, are heard but as a faint echo of terror from other lands, even here in the loyal States, the mailed hand of military usurpation strikes down the liberties of the people, and its foot tramples on a desecrated Constitution.”

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) American politician, 14th President of the United States (in office from 1853 to 1857)

Address to the Citizens of Concord, New Hampshire (4 July 1863).

Death, Men, War, People

“I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose. I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

"Veto of the Texas Seed Bill" (16 February 1887)

People, Feeling, Support, Thinking

“Do not imagine that this problem is solely an Iraqi problem because the terrorist front represents a threat to all free countries and free people of the world… Thousands of lives were tragically lost on Sept. 11 when these impostors of Islam reared their ugly head. Thousands more continue to die in Iraq today at the hands of the same terrorists who show complete disregard for human life.”

Nouri al-Maliki (1950) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speaking before the U.S. Congress http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060726/D8J3VI507.html (26 July 2006).

Life, People, World, Imagination

“An overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this cause, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and, whatever sailors may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A "thin-skinned" man could hardly live on shipboard. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 236-237

Life, Men, Feeling, Sense

“A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Speech at Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, Utah, September 24, 2002. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/02_09_24utah.htm. 2002

Life, Soul, Evil, Heart

“People rag on western medicine a lot for its disregard of indirect causalities and holism, for its antisceptic deconstructivism, for its blindness to things like the union of mind and body, and for its proclivity for post-facto treatment…But these criticisms notwithstanding, modern medicine is the accumulation of years and years of human effort to taxonomically observe, understand and explain an enormous set of conditions within a massively complex, underspecified system. To me, this is impressive. Also, they use cool phrases like "the radiolucent lungs" and "ligamentous laxity."”

Nat Friedman (1977) American computer programmer

2002-09-27, 2006-08-22, September 27, 2002 blog entry http://www.nat.org/2002/september/#27-September-2002,

People, Understanding, Effort

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Women, School, Family, Religion

“With regard now, first, to the argument drawn with such apparent force purely from the method of natural science, it will be plain to a more scrutinising reflexion, that shifting from the legitimate disregard of a supersensible Principle — a disregard in which the empirical method is entirely within its right — to the denial or the doubt of it because there is and can be no scientific evidence for it, is in fact an abuse of the scientific method, an unwarrantable extension of it to decisions lying by its own terms beyond its reach.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.95

Lying, Nature, Decision, Science

“The UFO research and investigation business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps of corrupt ideology run free, agenda dictates, delusion is rampant and ignorance prevails. The infestation of wrongful motivation and the beggarly depths of belief reign supreme amidst a universal disregard for truth and factual actuality… where good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side...”

Kenny Young (1950) American songwriter

E-mail from Young to fellow Ufologists Sean Feeney and Paul Koch on December 26, 2001. [citation needed]

Men, Money, Truth, Dogs