Quotes about doe
page 58

“When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. … For him evil, even if it aids politics, still remains evil. The modern realists are the moralists of realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), pp. 107-108

Beauty, Strong, Evil

“A novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed “luxuries,” as not contributing directly to the support of life or the maintenance of health. It is of the class "artistic luxuries" because it does not appeal to any of the three material senses — touch, taste, smell; and it is of the class "intellectual artistic luxuries,” because it is not judged by the superior senses — sight and hearing.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

The Novel: What It Is (1893)

Life, Health, Support, Sense

“Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), p. 62

“The gods… the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Paladin of Souls

Source: Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 61

God, Smile, Forgiveness, Heart

“"Treading" does not simply mean treading with the feet. Tread with the body, tread with the spirit, and, of course, tread and cut with the long sword. You must achieve the spirit of not allowing the enemy to attack a second time. This is the spirit of forestalling in every sense. Once at the enemy, you should not aspire just to strike him, but to cling after the attack. You must study this deeply.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Sense, Study, Time

“A resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than government resource allocation. The government can offer, justifying it with one reason or another, "Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces. Through the tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft — the taking of one person's rightful property to give to another.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Personality

“I get the biggest thrill once in awhile when someone does notice me. I just beam from ear to ear. I went to see my picture, The Creature Walks Among Us it's a science- fiction thriller-and took my children, Cathy and Bobby, along. After the show I stood in front of a very large picture of myself in the lobby -and, you know, not one person knew who I was or said a word.”

Leigh Snowden (1929–1982) American actress

How Leigh Snowden Broke into Movies http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1956/06/03/page/328/article/how-leigh-snowden-broke-into-movies#text (June 3, 1956)

Children, Science, Personality

“Our sense of powerlessness—the belief that an ordinary person does not matter—has twisted our lips into a sneer.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

How We Live Now (2005)

Sense, Personality

“Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.”
Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712.
Arthur Schopenhauer paraphrased this quotation in the first book of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. (Music is a hidden metaphysical exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is philosophizing.)

Music, Exercises, Soul

“The study of contemporary species does not establish the existence of evolution; it provides facts which support it, but which do not fully demonstrate its existence. This is understandable, since at present we cannot show the series of successive stages which make up evolution, but only a fleeting picture of evolution.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 3
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Understanding, Support, Study, Success

“The first thing I said was a question: Does this really come from the family? I think that was essential to me sort of processing the honor. And when I found out that, in fact, it had, it took me about 48 hours to sort of strike the balance in how I was going to approach being -- you know, being invited to this unbelievable event without actually having the proximity to Michael Jackson personally. I'd never met him.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Mayer on performeing Human Nature at Michael Jackson's Memorial service
"Episode title unknown". Larry King Live. July 7, 2009. No. unknown, season 24.

Family, Question, Thinking, Personality

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html] 1880s, 1887

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

““How does it feel to have just changed the course of history?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the navigator. “To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I’m going to be dead.””

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (11) “The Sealed Train”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Way, Feeling, History, Thinking

“Brought up in Tammany Hall, he has learned how to reach the hearts of the great mass of voters. He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments and campaign literature have never gained votes. p. 91”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 23, Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader

Literature, Learning, Heart

“At every turn, skeptical observers have attacked the idea that pooling our cognitive surplus could work to create anything worthwhile, or suggested that if it does work, it is a kind of cheating, because sharing at a scale that competes with older institutions is somehow wrong. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft denounced the shared production of software as communism. Robert McHenry, a former editor in chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, likened Wikipedia to a public rest room. Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, compared bloggers to monkeys. These complaints, self-interested though they were, echoed more broadly held beliefs. Shared, unmanaged effort might be fine for picnics and bowling leagues, but serious work is done for money, by people who work in proper organizations, with managers directing their work.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Money, People, Communication, Idea

“Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Q&A at the Kossuth Club, in Budapest, Hungary, May 16, 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20071029232518/http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/10/chomsky_on_911.html. Quotes 2000s, 2004

People, Thinking, Time, Personality

“Soon, the enterprise of the information age will find itself immobilized if it does not have the ability to tap the information resources within and without its boundaries.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Zachman & Sowa (1992, p. 613), cited in: Nik Bessis, Fatos Xhafa (2011) Next Generation Data Technologies for Collective Computational Intelligence. p. 84

Age

“Science does not permit exceptions.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Lessons of Experimental Pathology (1855-1856)

Science

“Unless some Hero-worship, in its new appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very habitable long.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

World

“The concept of 'measurement' becomes so fuzzy on reflection that it is quite surprising to have it appearing in physical theory at the most fundamental level… does not any analysis of measurement require concepts more fundamental than measurement? And should not the fundamental theory be about these more fundamental concepts?”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

"Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists" (1981); published in Quantum Gravity (1981) edited by Christopher Isham, Roger Penrose and Dennis William Sciama, p. 611 - 637

Appearance

“From the internal reality, by which I means the totality of psychological experiences, it [science] actually separates us. Art, for example, deals with many more aspects of this internal reality than does science, which confines itself deliberately and by convention to the study of one very limited class of experiences—the experiences of sense.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 5–6
Do What You Will (1928)

Art, Reality, Sense, Study

“Some people think I'm high on stage; I would never get high before a show, because, when I'm high, I don't wanna stand in front of a bunch of people I don't know. That does not sound comfortable. Like, when you're high, and a joke doesn't work, it's extra scary. It's like,"Whoa, what the hell happened there? I am retreating within myself. Why have all these people gathered? And why am I elevated? Why am I not facing the same way as everyone else? And what is this electric stick in my hand?"”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

People, Way, Hell, Thinking

“There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Émile Durkheim, Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908).

“If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science. That will be the science of Christianity.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s

Science

“Although he sees this process as politically driven, Pollock does acknowledge there were no conquering Sanskrit legions that caused Sanskritization, unlike the coercive Romanization which followed Roman military legions. Nor was there a central church-like religious institution and hence no evangelism that could have Sanskritized through religious conversion. He admits that the notion of the Sanskrit cosmopolis does not fit the Western notion of an empire.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

“We have a saying in the union: "If a fellow looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the possibility is that he is a duck." That is the way with a Communist. If the guy does everything that the party does, the prospects are very good that he is a party member or fellow traveler.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Regarding Communists; hearing before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (1953)

Way, Travel, Guy

“I do not claim that intelligence, however defined, has no genetic basis—I regard it as trivially true, uninteresting, and unimportant that it does. The expression of any trait represents a complex interaction of heredity and environment. [… A] specific claim purporting to demonstrate a mean genetic deficiency in the intelligence of American blacks rests upon no new facts whatever and can cite no valid data in its support. It is just as likely that blacks have a genetic advantage over whites. And, either way, it doesn't matter a damn. An individual can't be judged by his group mean.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"Racist Arguments and IQ", pp. 246–47
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

Way, Intelligence, Support

“I like working on sponge because it's a simple, light material and always ready to use. The colour and texture meet my aesthetic requirements and it has a lolof volume and physically, is very present in the space. The ink or paint is immediately absorbed into the foam surface, making any corrections almost impossible. It is a material which lends itself to quick, fast application and is particularly good for spontaneous sketching with paint squeezed directly from the tube. The fact that these works will not last (sponge is not a very durable material) does not deter me; it suits the character of the work very well and to an extent reflects my ideas about art.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

At the time of writing exhibition catalogue, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, 1998.

Art, Idea, Light, Painting

“The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Feeling, Forgiveness, Nature, Memory

“Tyranny does not impose itself only in the. Therefore, when a woman like me decides to break their dictated norms, she must suffer prison and separation from her children, as an intimidating lesson for other women.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Women, Children, Suffering

“The new attitude of the critic toward the artist has been rationalized for me by a leading European art historian who is also an influential critic of current art. It is based on a theory of division of labor in making art history. The historian, he contends, knows art history and, in fact, creates it; the artist knows only how to do things. Left to himself, the artist is almost certain to do the wrong thing — to deviate from the line of art history and thus to plunge into oblivion. The critic's role is to steer him in the proper direction and advise changes in his technique and subject matter that will coordinate his efforts with the forces of development. Better still, critics should formulate historically valid projects for artists to carry out. That not all critics have the same expectations of the future of art does not, I realize, weaken the cogency of my colleague's argument. The surviving artist would be one who has been lucky enough to pick the winning critic. My own view that art should be left to artists seemed to my mentor both out-of-date and irresponsible.”

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

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 249, "Thoughts in Off-Season"

Art, History, Effort, Change

“A jockey does not have to have been a racehorse.”

Arrigo Sacchi (1946) Italian footballer

Quoted in "Inverting the Pyramid" by Jonathan Wilson (2008).

“After a considerable walk through the forest, where I became acquainted with several of the little lakes I am so fond of, I came to Hestehaven and Lake Carl. Here is one of the most beautiful regions I have ever seen. The countryside is somewhat isolated and slopes steeply down to the lake, but with the beech forests growing on either side, it is not barren. A growth of rushes forms the background and the lake itself the foreground; a fairly large part of the lake is clear, but a still larger part is overgrown with the large green leaves of the waterlily, under which the fish seemingly try to hide but now and then peek out and flounder about on the surface in order to bathe in sunshine. The land rises on the opposite side, a great beech forest, and in the morning light the lighted areas make a marvelous contrast to the shadowed areas. The church bells call to prayer, but not in a temple made by human hands. If the birds do not need to be reminded to praise God, then ought men not be moved to prayer outside of the church, in the true house of God, where heaven's arch forms the ceiling of the church, where the roar of the storm and the light breezes take the place of the organ's bass and treble, where the singing of the birds make up the congregational hymns of praise, where echo does not repeat the pastor's voice as in the arch of the stone church, but where everything resolves itself in an endless antiphony — Hillerød, July 25, 1835”

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

1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men, God, Beauty, Bird

“We are at the classic-romantic barrier now, where on one side we see a cycle as it appears immediately—and this is an important way of seeing it—and where on the other side we can begin to see it as a mechanic does in terms of underlying form—and this is an important way of seeing things too. These tools for example—this wrench—has a certain romantic beauty to it, but its purpose is always purely classical. It's designed to change the underlying form of the machine.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8

Beauty, Way, Appearance, Change

“Tell me the truth, girl: how does the man next door ship out trailer-loads of material from a building ten times too small to hold the stuff?”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

"He cuts prices."
"In Our Block" (1965); later in Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)

Truth, Girl, Time

“If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it's great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn't exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

New York Times, 2001 http://www.animalrights.net/quotes.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/233771_robert23.html. 2001

Pleasure, Dogs, Girl, Kiss

“The mammalian record thus confirms our statement that any animal which is not too strongly conditioned by some special sort of experience is capable of responding to any adequate stimulus. This is what we find in the more uninhibited segments of our human species, and this is what we find among young children who are not too rigorously restrained in their early sex play. Exclusive preferences and patterns of behavior, heterosexual or homosexual, come only with experience, or as a result of social pressures which tend to force an individual into an exclusive pattern of one or the other sort. Psychologists and psychiatrists, reflecting the mores of the culture in which they have been raised, have spent a good deal of time trying explain the origins of homosexual activity; but considering the physiology of sexual response and the mammalian backgrounds of human behavior, it is not so difficult to explain why a human animal does a particular thing sexually. It is more difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual activity.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Children, Sex, Behavior, Time

“I have just concluded my series of paintings, I look at them constantly. I who made them often find them horrible. I understand them only at rare moments, when I have forgotten all about them, on days when I feel kindly disposed and indulgent to their poor maker. Sometimes I am horribly afraid to turn round canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!… Thus it does not astonish me that the critics in London relegate me to the lowest rank. Alas! I fear that they are only too justified! - However, at times I come across works of mine which are soundly done and really in my style, and at such moments I find great solace. But no more of that. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters?”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, 20 Nov. 1883; as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, ed. David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1880's

Life, Fear, Art, Feeling

“Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch. 8

Life, History, Problem

“I have seen these liberal psychologists and sociologists talk about there is no need for the man in the family. The woman can take care of it. A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can’t provide stability, I’m not saying that… It does take a father, though.”

Tom DeLay (1947) American Republican politician

http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/press2004a/pr2_10_2004delay.html On the role of women in the home. ~ From a radio interview http://thewaronfaith.com/mog-tomdelay.htm. His wife, Christine DeLay quickly asked to "edit this out," then turned to Tom and said: "This is not a good thing for you to be saying". 2000s

Family

“To take what might seem an "objective", macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities—as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 314

World, Way, Behavior, Nature

“Love does not imply pacifism.”

Derrick Jensen book Endgame

Vol. 1, pg. XI
Endgame (2006)

Love

“Just a moment, children — what does "pledge" mean?”

James Clavell book The Children's Story

"Teacher" (played by Jame's Clavell's daughter Michaela Clavell, credited as Michaela Ross).
The Children's Story (1982)

Children

“Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (Nation Books, 2004): On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2004

“It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age. Science builds its structure of hypothetical "elements" and laws of their behavior, touching on reality at crucial points.... But the historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1941)

Age, Law, Behavior, Reality

“This consideration must alter the form of our proposed inquiry; for the question being thus at least partly decided, since it is ascertained that we have rays of heat which give no light, it can only become a subject of inquiry whether some of these heat-making rays may not have a power of rendering objects visible, superadded to their now already established power of heating bodies. This being the case, it is evident that the onus probandi [burden of proof] ought to lie with those who are willing to establish such an hypothesis, for it does not appear that Nature is in the habit of using one and the same mechanism with any two of our senses. Witness the vibration of air that makes sound, the effluvia that occasion smells, the particles that produce taste, the resistance or repulsive powers that affect the touch—all these are evidently suited to their respective organs of sense.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared.

Lie, Question, Nature, Sense

“If beings are grasped as will to power, the “should” which is supposed to hang suspended over them, against which they might be measured, becomes superfluous. If life itself is will to power, it is itself the ground, principium, of valuation. Then a “should” does not determine being. Being determines a “should.” “When we talk of values we are speaking under the inspiration or optics of life: life itself compels us to set up values; life itself values through us whenever we posit values.””

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

VIII, 89

p. 32
Nietzsche (1961)

Life

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“The Ten Commandments weren't historical. They're mythical, because they never existed and neither did Moses, neither does God; none of that is evidently real. Even rabbinical scholars now admit a consensus among archaeologists that the Exodus never happened, because the Hebrews were never enslaved in Egypt the way the Bible describes. Moses's childhood river arc was taken from the Saga of Sargon, and the parting of the Red Sea was adapted from the legend of an Egyptian pharaoh from an earlier millennium [Snefru and Djadjamankh]. Belief in the Ten Commandments never changed anything for the better either; most of the believers professing to promote them can't even recite them, and never knew what they meant.”

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

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God, Way, Change, Parting

“Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1743
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Bee

“What does it mean to be “successful”? How do you achieve your dreams?
Does it mean creating an impressive list of achievements? Does it mean gaining significant wealth, status, position, and power? Maybe it means pleasing your parents, family, and friends?
I wrote this book to address these questions and to create a road map to help you achieve your aspirations. Following this road map involves taking a series of steps and answering a set of questions, all of which require you to look inward as well as outward. It also involves developing a set of new skills and habits, some of which may be challenging and uncomfortable for you.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Books, Family, Dreams, Question

“The nuclear power industry, for example, lacks a strong union, has random public victims with delayed effects, has no safety board that is independent of licensing and regulatory functions, and does not see an immediate effect on its profits if safety flags (though a far more severe incentive exists to avoid a catastrophic accident which could shut down the industry)”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 127

Strong

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way, Problem, Grass, Learning

“Pascal suggests that people avoid looking inwards and keep running in the vain hope of escaping a face-to-face encounter with their predicament, which is to face up to their utter insignificance whenever they recall the infinity of the universe. And he censures them and castigates them for doing so. It is, he says, that morbid inclination to hassle around rather than stay put which ought to be blamed for all unhappiness. One could, however, object that Pascal, even if only implicitly, does not present us with the choice between a happy and an unhappy life, but between two kinds of unhappiness: whether we choose to run or stay put, we are doomed to be unhappy. The only (putative and misleading!) advantage of being on the move (as long as we keep moving) is that we postpone for a while the moment of that truth. This is, many would agree, a genuine advantage of running out of rather than staying in our rooms—and most certainly it is a temptation difficult to resist. And they will choose to surrender to that temptation, allow themselves to be allured and seduced—if only because as long as they remain seduced they will manage to stave off the danger of discovering the compulsion and addiction that prompts them to run, screened by what is called “freedom of choice” or “self-assertion.””

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

But, inevitably, they will end up longing for the virtues they once possessed but have now abandoned for the sake of getting rid of the agony which practicing them, and taking responsibility for that practice, might have caused.
Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 37.

Life, Happiness, People, Truth

“For Linnaeus, Homo sapiens was both special and not special. […] Special and not special have come to mean nonbiological and biological, or nurture and nature. These later polarizations are nonsensical. Humans are animals and everything we do lies within our biological potential. […] [T]he statement that humans are animals does not imply that our specific patterns of behavior and social arrangements are in any way directly determined by our genes. Potentiality and determination are different concepts.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determinism", p. 251
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

Way, Behavior, Nature, Animals

“Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself. Thus the Communists say, equal labour entitles man to equal enjoyment. […] No, equal labour does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have laboured and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then – ‘it serves you right.’ If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a, ‘well-earned right’ of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by laying hands on it would become your right.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 170, 171
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

God, People, Nature

“The two of them resembled the honeysuckle which clings to the hazel branch: when it has wound itself round and attached itself to the hazel, the two can survive together: but if anyone should then attempt to separate them, the hazel quickly dies, as does the honeysuckle. "Sweet love, so it is with us: without me you cannot survive, nor I without you."”

Marie de France Chevrefoil

D'euls deus fu il tut autresi
Cume del chevrefoil esteit
Ki a la codre se perneit:
Quant il s'i est laciez e pris
Ensemble poënt bien durer;
Mes ki puis les volt deservrer,
Li codres muert hastivement
E li chevrefoil ensement.
"Bele amie, si est de nus:
Ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!"
"Chevrefoil", line 74; p. 110.
Lais

Love

“We perceive nature through the senses, which give us images of forms of colour, sounds etc. A form which exists only in relation to another form on its own, it does not exist.”

Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) French painter

11 Nov 1888.
Private Journal - A collage of notes and images, sketches kept 1888-1895 & 1907 to 1940

Nature, Sense

“With Trump neofascism has entered the White House—its aim is a different way of managing the capitalist economy. It is both a break with neoliberalism and at the same time its successor on the right—a sign of the deep crisis of our times. Not only does the administration stand for climate denialism and has declared environmentalist enemies of the people, it is also threatening to undermine liberal democracy, and is attacking the racially oppressed, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, environmentalists, and workers. The resistance movement to this thus needs to be a defense of humanity itself in all of its aspects.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice, 2017

Women, People, Way, Democracy

“He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.”

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

K 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

Hate

“The task counts more than the one who does it.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 2

“I don't believe it can end. Now that I've seen what war is, what civil war is, I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Ending words
The house on the hill (1949)

War, Dead

“I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Response after being asked "Do you regard yourself as a religious person?", in an interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/18/february-18-2011-ernest-gaines/8169/, February 18, 2011

God, Thinking, Personality

“Let's stop somebody from doing something!
Everybody does too much.”

A. P. Herbert (1890–1971) British politician

"Let's Stop Somebody from Doing Something", Ballads for Broadbrows (1930).

“The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Gandhi's Collected Works, Vol 74 (1938)
1930s

People, Home, Cry, Country

“Did they live happily ever after? They did not. No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say. They had their good days, as you do, and they had their bad days, and you know about those. They had their victories, as you do, and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too. There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves, knowing they had not done their best, and there were times when they knew they had stood where their God had meant them to stand. All I'm trying to say is that they lived as well as they could.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

God, Time, Victory

“All admit that indulgences have some value; for it would be blasphemy to say that the Church does anything in vain.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica (1265–1274), Unplaced by chapter

“There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well. By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent. I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilisation. That does have a real resonance with me.”

John Rhys-Davies (1944) Welsh actor

As quoted in "Welsh star in race row", by WalesOnline (18 January 2004) http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-star-in-race-row-2453957

Children, People, Age, Thinking

“What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Large Catechism 1.1-3, F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, tr.<cite>Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church</cite>(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 565. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html

God, Faith, Confidence, Heart

“(…) All you can do is to grasp the central point, that reality is not an event and does not happen and whatever happens, whatever comes and goes, is not reality. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: I am That, P.190.

Reality

“There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

Time, Reading

“'Abdullah ibn 'Amr reported: "The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'A person who maintains ties of kinship is not someone who only does so with those who maintain ties with him. A person who maintains ties of kinship is someone who restores them when they have been cut off.'"”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 322
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Personality

“An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfections and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring but “has wanted once again to read through, if possible in a more inward way, the original text handed down from the fathers” Preface P. 165”

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

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Truth, Way, Decision, Reading

“We must remain constantly vigilant. We dare not underestimate our enemy. Al Qaeda is committed to the destruction of America, and they are in it for the long haul. They are much smarter than many give them credit for being, and they are definitely much more patient than the pace of our fast-food society conditions us to be. Their commitment does not depend on bin Laden or any other single leader.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 292

Food, Dependency

“Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645 1960s

People, Education, Cars, Failure

“There is absolutely nothing legally actionable about [Allman’s] statement. It is clearly rhetorical hyperbole, which is 100% protected by the First Amendment. I think there would be no legal repercussions should someone write this about Queen Elizabeth or the President or anyone else. Of course, that does not mean that some abject moron of a lawyer wouldn’t take the case — and lord knows that Florida [where Hogg lives] has a bumper crop of them. But any lawsuit would be foolish and wouldn’t last long.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Thinking

“Faith does not first ask what the bread is made of, but eats it. It does not analyze the components of the living stream, but with joy draws water from the " wells of salvation."”

John Ross Macduff (1818–1895) Scottish religious writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 230.

Faith, Water, Joy, Drawing

“Hussein stated it is not only important what people say or think about him now but what they think in the future, 500 or 1000 years from now. The most important thing, however, is what God thinks. If God believes something, He will convince the people to agree. If God does not agree, it does not matter what the people think.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm. Attributed

God, People, Thinking, Future

“A prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers. From the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies, and if he is well armed he will have good friends, and affairs will always remain quiet within when they are quiet without, unless they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 19; Variant: Against foreign powers, a prince can defend himself with good weapons and good friends; if he has good weapons, he will never lack for good friends. (as translated by RM Adams)

Fear, Despair

“When calculations become complex and Infinity is obscured, then will be remembered anew the simplest principle: from heart to heart — such is the law of fraternity, community, fellowship.
Toiler, when the energy is transmuted into an ocean of light,
does thy consciousness quiver or expand?
Toiler, is thy heart fearful or exultant
when before thee looms Infinity?”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 275
New Era Community (1926)

Fear, Law, Communication, Light

“Truth has noble effects. Truth is the seed of the new birth. God does not regenerate us by miracles or revelations, but by the word of truth (James 1:18). As truth is the breeder of grace, so it is the feeder of it (1Ti 4:6). Truth sanctifies: "Sanctify them through Thy truth"”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

John 17:17
Heaven Taken By Storm

God, Truth, Birth

“Let's stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm. In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse…. We have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy. So we're now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Hope, Parting

“The problem with this life is that it’s impossible to find something that does good on one side without causing harm on the other and vice versa”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Life, Problem

“How many Macintosh division employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?" The answer is one. The Macintosh division employee holds up the light bulb and expects the universe to revolve around it.”

Guy Kawasaki (1954) American businessman and author

Speech at Stanford University 2 March 2011 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2669

Light, Universe

“We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Women, Silence

“But as soon as I opened a dance school they went who does she think she is? She has become a guru! In their mind they could not accept that anyone could build a place not because they want to be a guru but because they want to give the best to a young bunch of girls. Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra was in charge of Odissi. Kalanidhi Narayan for Abhinaya. Kumudini Lakhia for Kathak. Kalyani Kuttiyamma for Mohiniattam. The Paul Taylor Dance Company did a workshop there. I was not the guru. I was the slave. I was working with my hands -- planting trees, digging the earth, typing, collecting the money. I gave up my dance.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On Her Nityagrama dance school in Bangalore, quoted in "I have been a hippie all my life".

Money, School, Girl, Thinking

“The dialogue is laughably cheesy throughout, but perhaps that's part of Basic Instinct's appeal. In fact, there are times when the film comes close to achieving a status where it's so bad it becomes entertaining. … If you're looking for an intelligent thriller with real characters, Basic Instinct will seem like a fraud. If, on the other hand, you don't care whether the story makes sense and all you're in search of are cheap thrills and naked bodies, the movie delivers. Then again, so does a lot of Cinemax's late night programming.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=199 of Basic Instinct (1992). Two star reviews

Search, Intelligence, Fraud, Sense

“Euclid defines the angle as an inclination of lines…he meant halflines, because otherwise he would not be able to distinguish adjacent angles from each other… Euclid does not know zero angles, nor straight and bigger than straight angles…Euclid takes the liberty of adding angles beyond two and even four right angles; the result cannot be angles according to the original definitions…Nevertheless one feels that Euclid’s angle concept is consistent.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Mathematics as an Educational Task (1973), p. 476-477

Feeling

“Does rocks float on lava?”

Gavin Free (1988) English filmmaker

Rooster Teeth Podcast #256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4WrYoNduq0. youtube.com. February 4, 2014. Retrieved June 10, 2014.

“As is used in connection with systems engineering, a model is a qualitative or quantitative representation of a process or endeavor that shows the effects of those factors which are significant for the purposes being considered. Modeling is the process of making a model. Although the model may not represent the actual phenomenon in all respects, it does describe the essential inputs, outputs, and internal characteristics, as well as provide an indication of environmental conditions similar to those of actual equipment.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), p. 108; As cited in: Alberto Ortiz (1992, p. 13)

“The duty of the artist is not to be calculating in any sense, so that he may be free himself of human emotions while carried by the universal forces of life. Only then does one not think about making art, or about styles, or directions. Something comes about, something happens.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Life, Art, Thinking, Sense

“What does it mean when people say I cannot walk by myself, I cannot travel by myself? I have a mouth to talk, I have a brain to think, I can walk, and I have a cane to find my way around. Then why can I not travel by myself? I was like a bird in a cage, not allowed to come out without an escort. But now my life has been transformed.”

Tiffany Brar (1988) Indian Social Activist

As quoted in They Say the Blind Should Not Lead the Blind. She Proves Them Wrong. https://www.thebetterindia.com/40485/tiffany-brar-working-for-blind/ (December 22, 2015) by Ranjini Sivaswamy, The Better India.

Life, People, Way, Travel

“A life given to determining the best form for the letters of the alphabet — does it seem extraordinary to you? But no day passes that our eyes do not fall upon something that was influenced, and made better, by this extraordinary, eccentric Scot, and if that is not a life well spent, I should be interested in a better definition.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Edward Johnston (1960).

Life