Quotes about doe
page 83

“You must be rich and poor with discretion. A nobleman who squanders his property does not display a noble spirit, while if he hoards his wealth to excess it will bring dishonour.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach book Parzival

Ir sult bescheidenlîche
sîn arm unde rîche.
wan swâ der hêrre gar vertuot,
daz ist niht hêrlîcher muot:
sament er ab schaz ze sere,
daz sint och unêre.
Bk. 3, st. 171, line 7; p. 96.
Parzival

Wealth

“The US and Israel have demanded further that Palestinians not only recognize Israel's rights as a state in the international system, but that they also recognize Israel's abstract "right to exist," a concept that has no place in international law or diplomacy, and a right claimed by no one. In effect, the US and Israel are demanding that Palestinians not only recognize Israel in the normal fashion of interstate relations, but also formally accept the legitimacy of their expulsion from their own land. They cannot be expected to accept that, just as Mexico does not grant the US the "right to exist" on half of Mexico's territory, gained by conquest.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Sabahattin Atas, circa September 2003 (see also: Necessary Illusions https://web.archive.org/web/20000307213545/http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-c10-s16.html) http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200309--.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2003

Law, Fashion

“Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

"Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism" http://www.dorislessing.org/unexamined.html, in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips

Dogs, Motivation, Idea

“An energetic crudity, even a riotous absurdity, has more promise in it than a clever and elegant mediocrity, because it shows that the young man is speaking out of his own heart, and struggling to express himself in his own way rather than in the way he finds in other men's books. The early works of original writers are usually very bad; then succeeds a short interval of imitation in which the influence of some favourite author is distinctly traceable; but this does not last long, the native independence of the mind reasserts itself, and although perhaps academic and critical demands are somewhat disregarded, so that the original writer on account of his very originality receives but slight recognition from the authorities, nevertheless if there is any real power in the voice it soon makes itself felt in the world.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Men, Books, World, Way

“Nowhere does one come to know an artist better than in his prints [and] the woodcut is the most graphic of the print processes.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

quote of 1921; de:Louis de Marsalle, in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 39
Kirchner expressed the significance of print-making for German Expressionism in general when he wrote this quote
1920's

“The modernist object does not possess inner life; only internal conflicts.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)

Life

“A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Life

“Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper way to eat potato chips?
Gentle Reader: With a knife and fork. A fruit knife and an oyster fork, to be specific. Good heavens, what is the world coming to? Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

World, Way, Feeling, Sense

“No artisan can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence but the cheapness of an article; a people whose grandeess pay for a work of art considerably under its value and according to their own caprice… For it should not be inferred that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a stage of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed; he never can become rich, and he feels it no trifling matter if he have the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger and of covering his body with the coarsest garment. If money be gained it does not in any measure go into his pocket, but only serves to increase the wealth of the merchant.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Money, Hunger, People, Beauty

“A man of valor is one who is mighty of heart with perfect trust to perform mitzvot at all times and to meditate upon the Torah day and night, even though there is no food or clothing in his house, and his children and the members of his household cry out to him: Provide us with our support and maintenance. And he does not heed them at all, or listen to their cries.”

Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) Polish-Lithuanian rabbi; Mitnagdim leader in opposition to Hasidism

Commentary on Mishlei 23:30, as cited in "Separation from the Worldly (Perishut)" http://etzion.org.il/en/separation-worldly-perishut

Children, Food, Support, Time

“For you a hundred years is a very long time; for us it does not amount to much. I knew men who had seen Napoleon with their own eyes. We have our conception of history and it cannot be the same as yours.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Remarks to Woodrow Wilson (28 March 1919), quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940 (London: Arnold, 1995), p. 49.
Prime Minister

Men, History, Time

“Empirical research does not, as of yet, seem to have legitimately gotten anyone 100 percent of the way to libertarianism; there remain, at the very least, some public goods and, in principle, the need for economic redistribution. Libertarian philosophy fills the gap between what free-market economists can prove about the undesirable consequences of government intervention and the absolute prohibition of all intervention. Consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments for libertarianism may be antithetical in principle, but they are symbiotic in practice.”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 444

Way

“The difficulty with our bisexual construct is that it locates the origin and meaning of preference too much inside the lone individual and not enough in the social surround. The notion of sexual preference, with its linking conception "sex object choice," requires an individual difference psychology of choice and free will that may correspond to the reality of philosophers, but seldom does for ordinary mortals. Our sexual development is driven and regulated by extraordinary forces, intrinsic and extrinisic, which include our genes, hormones, early parental relationships, peer pressures, cultural training for categories and language, and out-and-out social sanctions and physical force. We seldom are free to choose freely, but entertain the enchantment that we can.”

Gilbert Herdt (1949) American anthropologist

"Bisexuality and the Causes of Homosexuality: The Case of the Sambia"

Sex, Reality, Parent, Training

“Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies ( p. 43 http://books.google.com/books?id=mKs-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Dogma+does+not+mean+the+absence+of+thought+but+the+end+of+thought%22&pg=PA43#v=onepage) The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

“Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: Life's Solution (2003), p. XV.

World, Way

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love, Life, War, Happiness

“One should not be deceived by philosophical works that pretend to be mathematical, but are merely dubious and murky metaphysics. Just because a philosopher can recite the words lemma, theorem and corollary doesn't mean that his work has the certainty of mathematics. That certainty does not derive from big words, or even from the method used by geometers, but rather from the utter simplicity of the objects considered by mathematics.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Mathematics

“War does not call for judgment,” I said, “merely survival.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 14 (p. 105)

War

“A tiger is a powerful, graceful animal simply by doing what a tiger does. This practical, real world approach is what we have lost, and what natural movement can restore.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Gregory Ripley (2016). Tao of Sustainability: Cultivate Yourself to Heal the Earth, Three Pines Press.

World, Nature, Animals

“He [ Aristotle ] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time… He alludes,… to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth, he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten…. He says [twelfth chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish; and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 17
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

People, Age, Spring, Thinking

“The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity. While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity. The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. So does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from its existing personalities, although no one of them takes up all of its attention.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 173, quoting from Seth Session 28

Life, Dreams, Way, Suffering

“It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut.”

Larry Niven book World of Ptavvs

Source: World of Ptavvs (1966), p. 40

Law

“The danger hidden within Weber's charismatic celebrity is … having a predisposition to imitate any one individual must always have its negative impact especially when the role model does not feel a duty … to instantiate suitable values to adopt.”

Jack Gleeson (1992) Irish actor

Speech at Oxford Union (2014)

Feeling

“The marketplace does only one thing — it puts a price on everything.The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Commencement speech http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html, Stanford University (2007-06-17) Speeches and lectures

Life

“In the interest of the dictionaries of the future let me lay down the principle that the Demi-Monde, contrary to the common belief and in spite of what is printed, does not represent the ruck of courtesans, but the class of women that have lost caste.”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Établissons donc ici, pour les dictionnaires à venir, que le Demi-Monde ne représente pas, comme on le croit, comme on l'imprime, la cohue des courtisanes, mais la classe des déclassées.
Preface to Le Demi-Monde (1855), in Théatre complet de Al. Dumas fils (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1868-98) vol. 2, p. 9; translation from Albert D. Vandam Undercurrents of the Second Empire (London: William Heinemann, 1897) p. 246.

Women, Future

“No other type of music-making contradicts itself through its recording like improvisation does.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Page 168.
"Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation and Noise Run Against the Idea of Intellectual Property" (October 2008)

Music

“Why does the drum, of all instruments, have the greatest potential for life enhancement? I don't really know but here are some thoughts. First of all, there are no notes, therefore fewer judgments to be made by yourself and by others. There will be less right and wrong—especially if there is no counting. Is it the vibrating membrane? So alive! Is it because of its roundness? What I do know, is that everyone's association with the drum is with Life, with Heart—even more with the Mother.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Way of the Pulse: Drumming with Spirit (1999), p. 79

Life, Heart

“We want Trump to be hugely successful, so we don’t want to handle a bill that’s going to fail in a few years, Trump ran on price-discovery and competition across state lines, getting the price down — the price is going up by 20 percent and the bill we are getting ready to vote on, once again, goes back and does too much emphasis on the coverage aspect”

Dave Brat (1964) American economist and professor at Randolph–Macon College

Rep. Dave Brat: RyanCare a Perverse Economic System http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/11/exclusive-rep-dave-brat-ryancare-a-perverse-economic-system/ (March 17, 2017)

Success

“Not everyone is cut out for the military, but I do believe everyone can and should have the opportunity to participate in a national service endeavor of their choce. Serving in the military can make you a better citizen, employee, and leader. The military provides hands-on experience. It provides leadership training and builds a foundation for a strong work ethic. Corporate America has taken notice and regularly recruits soldiers just as it does Ivy League students.”

Ann E. Dunwoody (1953) U.S. Army, first four-star general in U.S. military history

Source: A Higher Standard (2015), p. 200

Strong, Training

“The dictionary definition of communication […] includes the communication of goods and supplies. […] But transport of goods is not communication in the sense we are adopting here, and does not raise the same subtle and difficult questions. What "goods" do we exchange when we send messages to one another?”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

"… symbols do not carry meaning as trucks carry coal. Their function is to select from alternatives within a given context." (paraphrased by Ernst Gombrich in his Inaugural Lecture at University College London in February 1957, and quoted in memory of Colin Cherry. http://www.gombrich.co.uk/showdoc.php?id=27 Reddy, Michael J. (1979). "The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language," in: Andrew Ortony ed., Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press. (See: Metalanguage) The 'transmission' view of communication, as criticized in favor of the 'ritual' view by James Carey (1985) in: Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin-Hyman). Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 9

Communication, Question, Sense

“This does not mean that scientists can't be religious. We can encompass irrational beliefs without regret and without obligation—I can, actually, look at my kids in a different way than I would an experimental subject under my microscope. I also do not pretend that I view my children rationally and objectively, untainted by emotion or history, and I'm not ashamed of that at all. So, a scientist should have no problem demanding one standard of logic and evidence in the lab, and dropping that demand when they go to church on Sunday.”

PZ Myers (1957) American scientist and associate professor of biology

An essay talking about religious scientists: * http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/what_should_a_scientist_think.php
What should a scientist think about religion?
Pharyngula
2006-06-29

Children, Way, History, Problem

“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Unvanquished : A U.S. - U.N. Saga (1999), p. 198.
1990s

Law, Time, Training, Country

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

This quote was used, and attributed to Jean-Francois Revel, by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her August 20, 1984 speech to the Republican national convention in Dallas, Texas. As cited in Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (rev.), ed. William Safire, W. W. Norton & Co. (2004), p. 1029 ISBN 0393059316, 9780393059311
1980s

Feeling

“She does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 204

“I have spent the greater part of my life in immediate contemplation of the most grotesque and horrible of the English innovations for the debasement of Ireland. I mean their education system. The English once proposed in their Dublin Parliament a measure for the castration of all Irish priests who refused to quit Ireland. The proposal was so filthy than although it duly passed the House and was transmitted to England with the warm recommendation at the Viceroy. it was not eventually adopted. But the English have actually carried out an even filthier thing. They have planned and established an education system which more wickedly does violence to the elemental human rights of Irish children than would an edict for the general castration of Irish males. The system has aimed at the substitution for men and women of mere Things. It has not been an entire success. There are still a great many thousand men and women in Ireland. But a great many thousand of what, by way of courtesy, we call men and women, are simply Things. Men and women. however depraved, have kindly human allegiances. But these Things have no allegiance. Like other Things. they are For sale. When one uses the term education system as the name of the system of schools. colleges, universities, and whatnot which the English have established in Ireland, one uses it as a convenient label, just as one uses the term government as a convenient label for the system of administration by police which obtains in Ireland instead of a government. There is no education system in Ireland. The English have established the simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_MacNeill Professor Eoin MacNeill] has compared the English education system in Ireland to the systems of slave education which existed in the ancient pagan republics side by side with the systems intended for the education of freemen. To the children of the free were taught all noble and goodly things which would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was hidden.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

The Murder Machine

Life, Women, Men, Children

“A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.”

Hillel the Elder (-112–9 BC) Mishnah rabbi

2:5
Pirkei Avot

Fear, Business, Learning, Personality

“There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today are based on destruction.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

“Only God knows that. He is the only one who knows. He is only one who will know. And he is the only one who does know.”

Manny Pacquiao (1978) Filipino boxer, basketball player, singer and politician, dancer.

Prior to The Battle of East and West: Ricky Hatton vs. Manny Pacquiao As quoted in "Pacquiao-Hatton Worthy of Grand Setting" http://sports.yahoo.com/box/news?slug=ro-pachat033109 Yahoo! Sports (2009-03-31)

God

“The danger which menaces you will come from the agricultural districts, for the next time there is any outbreak, the destitute hands of the agricultural districts will be added to the destitute hands of the manufacturing districts. Does the right hon. Gentleman, who must know the state of the country, doubt whether this be the fact? …The right hon. Baronet cannot conceal from himself what is that condition: capital is melting away, pauperism is increasing, trade and manufactures are not reviving. What worse description can be given of our condition?—and what can be expected if such a state of things continue but the disruption and dissolution of the State?”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/feb/17/distress-of-the-country-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (17 February 1843) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

Time, Country

“In vain I speak of urgent tasks;
In vain I scowl and pout;
A frown is no extinguisher —
It does not put him out!”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"My Familiar".

“The goal of is to improve encapsulation. It does so by viewing a program in terms of the client/server model.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach (1989), p. 72

“Everything is eternal
Nothingness does not exist
No thing has ever become nothing
And nothing has never become something
What is has always been and will always be”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

After the Ending
Lyrics, The Empyrean (2009)

“The Hebrew Bible, as a document, displays an astonishing lack of textual self-consciousness. It alleges to know what God thinks, but it does not know itself. It is not aware that it is called the Hebrew Bible. … Jews and Christians have venerated an unself-conscious artifact, one whose embarrassing gaps in self-knowledge have always had to be filled in by later interpreters.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), p. 28

God, Knowledge, Thinking

“Serious drinkers are like serious eaters or serious noneaters. They are like serious drug-addicts. Their addiction holds a spell over them which acts as some powerful secret at the center of everything they do. The serious eater listens to others talking of diets, Weight Watchers, exercises; she hears them excitedly comparing pounds lost, pounds gained. She hears them encouraging each other, joking, consoling. She is not one of them. She knows the diets better than they do; she knows Weight Watchers is useless for her; she knows her life is on some Almighty Scale that she has to step on alone. She is in some covenant with food — a covenant which she probably does not understand, but which nevertheless exerts some magical, compelling power over her. She hates it; she loves it; she keeps her covenant silent.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 11

Love, Life, Hate, Secret

“Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

As quoted in Art and the Message of the Church (1961) by Walter Ludwig Nathan, p. 120.

Men, God, Hell, Light

“I get so much mail from young girls who say, 'I look up to you, you're not as skinny as everyone else, I think you're beautiful' … So when they say that my body is 'ugly' and 'disgusting,' what does that make those girls feel like?”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

"Cover Story: Tyra Banks Speaks Out About Her Weight" http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20009611,00.html (January 24, 2007) People Magazine, Time Inc.

Beauty, Feeling, Girl, Thinking

“The congress of Vienna does not walk, but it dances.”

Charles-Joseph, 7th Prince of Ligne (1735–1814) Prince of Ligne

Le congrès ne marche pas, il danse.
Reported in the Edinburgh Review, July 1890, p. 244, which praised it as part of "[o]ne of the Prince de Ligne's speeches that will last forever".

Dance

“I have succeeded in structuring my intimate life according to my own standards and I make no secret of my love experiences anymore than does a man. Above all, however, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life inasmuch as creativity, activity, struggle always occupied the foreground.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love, Life, Pain, Secret

“It is true that biologists have, many of them, given up what they call "Darwinism"; they have surrendered Spencer's notion of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters, and they even use the word "evolution" timidly and with many reservations. But this does not mean that they have any doubts that mankind is a species of animal, sprung in some mysterious and as yet unexplained manner from extinct wild creatures of the forests and plains.”

James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) American historian

Source: The Human Comedy : As Devised and Directed by Mankind Itself (1937), Ch. 2

Animals

“I am prepared to believe that a dry martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul.”

Alec Waugh (1898–1981) British novelist

In Praise of Wine (1959).

Soul, Thinking

“One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club (Centenary Dinner), 12 March 2005 http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_4326.shtml.

Problem, Effort

“Just because you can arrange animals in order, that doesn't prove anything. Even if you find them buried in a certain order, that doesn't prove anything. If I get buried on top of a hamster, does that prove he's my grandpa? No! Order of burial means nothing!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Lies in the textbooks

Animals

“By Realness, I mean that which does not merge away into something else, and that which is not partly something else: that which is not a reaction to, or an imitation of, something else. By a real hero, we mean one who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do not merge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do merge, by Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is nothing with which to merge.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 1, part 9 at resologist.net

Motivation, Universe

“The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.”

Gertrude Stein book Paris France

Source: Paris France (1940), p. 8

Business, Nature

“I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere.”

J. Milton Hayes (1884–1940) British actor and writer

Quoted in Waugh, Alex (1967) My Brother and Other Profiles

God, Imagination

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Wisdom, Men, Truth, Angels

“Power looks startlingly similar wherever you go. Power does not want you to forget that you are small and alone.”

Sarah Zettel (1966) American writer

Source: Bitter Angels (2009), Chapter 11 (p. 144)

Forgetting

“You did not experience dictatorship, Mrs Roth! If everyone agrees - it does not mean, that everyone is right!”

Günter Nooke (1959) German politician

Sie haben Diktatur nicht erlebt, Frau Roth! Wenn sich alle einig sind, bedeutet das noch nicht, dass alle Recht haben!
In response to Claudia Roth, plenary session of German Parliament (Bundestag), June 17, 2004, on Controversial Memorial Concept remembering the victims of the 20th century's two totalitarian regimes

“For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That's what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Thinking, Singing

“Now, everything Marx did was intentionally anti-Christian. If the Bible is for it, he's against it. See, the Bible makes private property a real serious issue. Ownership of private property is critical. You can't have freedom without property rights. What good does it do to say that you have all kinds of freedom if there's no place to exercise your freedom? […] You could not possibly lose your property permanently in the Biblical system. Since every man has his own vine and his own fig tree, drink waters out of your own cistern, waters out of your own well. Private property is essential. […] Karl Marx developed the idea of a graduated income tax. The more you make, the more they take. That's Karl Marx's idea. He's said, "You need to abolish rights of inheritance." The Bible says a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. Karl Marx was against that. Confiscate property rights. Evolution is a foundation of Communist philosophy behind the money powers. Karl Marx said, "We need a central bank." This was a Communist idea. The banking system we're using today in America, the Federal Reserve, is a direct result of Karl Marx's thinking. There is nothing Federal about it. It's private bankers that run our currency. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil". All evil.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Love, Money, Children, Exercises

“The party which is humorously called the Douglas Democracy no more recognizes the rights declared by the Declaration of Independence to be inalienable than does the party of the administration. Its leader repudiates the theory that the Constitution establishes slavery, but he does not perceive in it, or in the circumstances of its adoption, or in the expressed sentiments and actions of its framers, any reason to suppose that it favors liberty more than slavery. He leaves all human rights at the mercy of a majority, and insists that the Constitution does the same.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Democracy

“Beware of getting involved with people who seem to be able to feel good but have no close friends. They may be witty and fun to be around, but their humor is all put-downs and hostility. If you marry such a person, you will soon be the recipient of that hostile humor and may regret it for the rest of your marriage…. Someone who does not have good friends does not know how to love.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 30

Love, Hostility, Marriage, People

“To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"The Blind Who Would Lead", essay in The Roving Mind (1983); as quoted in Canadian Atheists Newsletter (1994)
General sources

God, People, Books, School

“A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 39

War, History, Patience

“When God’s power shines through us, it manifests as truth, auspiciousness and beauty. When God manifests through the intellect, truth shines forth. When God manifests through actions, it does so as goodness and auspiciousness. And when God manifests through the heart, beauty is the result. When truth, auspiciousness and beauty blend in our life, true strength awakens.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Cultivating Strength & Vitality (2009)

Life, God, Truth, Beauty

“The meaning of relativity has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, World

“When loops are present, the network is no longer singly connected and local propagation schemes will invariably run into trouble.. If we ignore the existence of loops and permit the nodes to continue communicating with each other as if the network were singly connected, messages may circulate indefinitely around the loops and process may not converges to a stable equilibrium… Such oscillations do not normally occur in probabilistic networks… which tend to bring all messages to some stable equilibrium as time goes on. However, this asymptotic equilibrium is not coherent, in the sense that it does not represent the posterior probabilities of all nodes of the network.”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Source: Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference, 1988, p. 195

Communication, Sense, Time

“Roger: To some degree everyone is involved ya know what I mean. Chris doesn’t really do that much, he’s the lead singer he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. He’s that guy. I kind of deal with all the audio stuff and Buddy [Schaub, trombonist] deals with all the video stuff and [Peter] JR [Wasilewiski, saxophonist] deals with all the online stuff and Vinnie deals with everything else and we have a great publicist named Rey [Roldan] he totally does what we need him to do. It’s a different world but a lot of bands are doing it and you know it’s a way to stay on a smooth track not to have any kind of weird outside voices.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

World, Way, Guy

“Planning is undoubtedly necessary to ensure progress. If Nations and Peoples are finding it difficult to fulfil their own Plans, then who is going to be so presumptuous as to plan for the whole world? In these times of Cold Wars and Bamboo and Iron Curtains do we suppose one Nation will sit idly by and let another take the initiative in this respect? Even suppose the impossible does occur do you think the other Nations will accept the Plan of another with whom they are outwardly in peaceful contact?”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World

War, People, World, Peace

“…freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation… in the face of tyranny, cruelty, oppression, extremism, sometimes there is only one choice. When the world looks to America, America looks to you, and you never let her down… I have never lost faith in America's essential goodness and greatness… I have 35 years of experience, fighting for real change… the American people and our American military cannot want freedom and stability for the Iraqis more than they want it for themselves… we should have stayed focused on wiping out the Taliban and finding, killing, capturing bin Laden and his chief lieutenants… I also made a full commitment to martial American power, resources and values in the global fight against these terrorists. That begins with ensuring that America does have the world's strongest and smartest military force. We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working… We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war… We've got to be prepared to maintain the best fighting force in the world. I propose increasing the size of our Army by 80,000 soldiers, balancing the legacy systems with newer programs to help us keep our technological edge… I'm fighting for a Cold War medal for everyone who served our country during the Cold War, because you were on the front lines of battling communism. Well, now we're on the front lines of battling terrorism, extremism, and we have to win. Our commitment to freedom, to tolerance, to economic opportunity has inspired people around the world… American values are not just about America, but they speak to the human dignity, the God-given spark that resides in each and every person across the world… We are a good and great nation.”

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

Remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kansas City, Missouri, August 20, 2007 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/21/clinton-iraq-tactics-wo_n_61272.html Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

God, War, People, World

“As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest. That's been reported very widely. Despite that, I don't want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can't. And I understand why the president can't have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.”

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

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Law, Way, Understanding

“The relation between physical sanitary laws and the national welfare is now hardly disputed. At this moment the cholera is stealthily feeling its terrible way along the edges of Europe to this country, and there is not an intelligent man who does not know that it is a divine vengeance upon uncleanliness. Let it seize the unclean city of New York, and it will riot in horror and devastation. Panic will empty the palaces, trade will stop in the warehouses. Those who can will flee, while the poor and wretched, poisoned in tenement-houses, will be huddled in heaps of agony and death. Does any man say that cholera is God's remedy for overpopulation? On the contrary, it is only the ghastly proof that God's laws of human health are disregarded. It is not a proclamation that the world is over-peopled; it is merely a warning for the world to provide decently for its population. God does not create men in his image to rot in tenement-houses, and he will make squalor and filth and misery plague-spots threatening the fairest prosperity, until that prosperity acknowledges in vast sanitary reforms that cleanliness is next to godliness. And if the dread pestilence now approaching our shores would frighten us into universal purgation of our foul cities, it would be seen at this moment hovering in the wintry air, not an angry demon, but a stem angel with a sword of fire to open the path of knowledge and humanity and civilization.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Death, Men, God, People

“Since I have talked with many self-styled * atheists, I have come to believe that the true species does not exist, and that atheism, so-called, is either an emotional deviation in the same category as neurotic illness and with a similar causation, or else the denial of the existence of a mythical figure who certainly does not exist.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

“Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter (23 January 1861), published in Lord Acton and his Circle (1906) by Abbot Gasquet, Letter 74

Secret, Justice

“The earth had more oxygen in the past than it does now. Now you kids are going to be told in textbooks that the earth had no oxygen at the beginning, when life was evolving, called a "reducing atmosphere." That is baloney! […] It could not have evolved with oxygen, or without oxygen! But, if you double the air pressure and increase oxygen, not only does your hemoglobin take on oxygen, like it's supposed to, your plasma will get oxygen saturated, which means you could run hundreds of miles, without getting tired! Adam and Eve didn't need a car. They could run to grandma's.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Life, Cars, Past, Grandma

“(About Joe Jackson) First of all, he's sitting there with the pimp hat, and the tattooed drag queen eyebrows. Like maybe this whole time, he just has a separate drag character that he does at night………named La Toya!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Balls of Steel (2009)

Time, Tattoo, Night

“[Jensen] does not believe that [heritability] estimates alone can decide the issue of genetic versus environmental hypotheses. However, he argues that the probability of a genetic hypothesis will be much enhanced if, in addition to evidencing high [heritability], we find we can falsify literally every plausible environmental hypothesis one by one. He challenges social scientists who believe in an environmental explanation of the IQ gap between the races to bring their hypotheses forward. Given his competence and the present state of the social sciences, the result is something of a massacre…. Far too many of Jensen's critics have not taken up the challenge to refute him in any serious way, rather they have elected for various forms of escape, the most popular of which has been to seize on an argument put forward by the distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard C. Lewontin.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), pp. 40, 54. Quoted from Nevin Sesardic, Making Sense of Heritability (2005), p. 136.

Way, Science

“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Cooper vs. Terrorism https://www.sightm1911.com/lib/ccw/Cooper_vs_Terrorism.htm Variant: One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure — and in some cases I have — that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

Heart

“The secret and sacred word that binds him to the farm is 'belong'. Out in the veld by himself he can breathe the word aloud: I belong on the farm. What he really believes but does not utter, what he keeps to himself for fear that the spell will end, is a different form of the word: I belong to the farm. He tells no one because the word is misunderstood so easily, turned so easily to its inverse: The farm belongs to me. The farm will never belong to him, he will never be more than a visitor: he accepts that.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Boyhood (1998)

Secret, Fear

“It was immigration that taught us, it does not matter where you came from, or who your parents were. What counts is who you are.”

Barbara Jordan (1936–1996) American politician

Speaking as chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Quoted by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives “Tribute to the Late Hon. Barbara Jordan,” Congressional Record (24 January 1996), as cited in Let me tell you what I've learned https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0292787901: Texas Wisewomen Speak, PJ Pierce, University of Texas Press (2010), p. 17

Parent

“Only to the extent that a man has emancipated himself…from all that is generic, does he count as a free spirit within a human community. No man is all genus, none is all individuality.”

Rudolf Steiner book Philosophy of Freedom

Philosophy of Freedom. Chapter 14

Communication

“Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

Way, Passion

“Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself like that? Why didn't anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a war? Why? Why? Why?”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On his childhood. p. 40
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

War, Sleep, Night

“Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.”

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

Letter to Thomas Cooper (1810)
1810s

Religion, Law

“People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Career advice from Elon Musk's latest TED interview, in one sentence http://www.businessinsider.com/brilliant-career-advice-from-elon-musk-2017-5 at 2017 TED conference (May 9, 2017)

People, Thinking

“I think there's an anxiety in life when we automatically tend to look to the next thing or we're complaining about the past; like somebody recently said to me, 'Well, is your show going to get picked up? Aren't you concerned about that?' I said, 'I don't care. I don't want to worry about that because worrying is not going to make it happen or not happen.' I want to trust that if it does, then that's what's supposed to happen and if it doesn't get picked up, then that's okay, too. It's just a more peaceful way to live.”

Sherilyn Fenn (1965) American actress

Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "Fenntastic", by Jill Daniel. Orange Coast (USA). January 1999.

Life, Peace, Way, Thinking

“Carmelita Spats, who oughtta be told "Gorgeous" does not start with an M.”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

“The collapse of the Ice Ages hypothesis does not, of course, settle the debate about whether there are racial differences in genes for intelligence. If universities had their way, the necessary research will never be done. They fund the most mundane research projects, but never seem to have funds to test for genetic differences between races. I tell US academics I can only assume that they believe that racial IQ differences have a genetic component, and fear what they might find. They never admit that the politics of race affects their research priorities. It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century (2012), p. 36, Box 4

Age, Fear, Way, Intelligence

“Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Defining liberalism at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention, as quoted in "History of the Liberal Party of Canada" (PDF at the Liberal Party website) http://web.archive.org/web/20070418135603/http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/070417_lpc_history_en.pdf

Problem, Time, Past, Future

“Many activists who have heard the term "intersectionality" being debated on the left have found it difficult to define it--and for a very understandable reason: Different people explain it differently and therefore are often talking at cross-purposes. For this reason--along with the fact that it is a seven-syllable word--intersectionality can appear to be an abstraction with only a vague relationship to material reality. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss the concept out of hand. There are two quite distinct interpretations of intersectionality: one developed by Black feminists and the other by those from the "post-structural" wing of postmodernism. … Black feminist tradition advances the project of building a unified movement to fight all forms of oppression, which is central to the socialist project--while post-structuralism does not.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

People, Understanding, Reality, Appearance

“Fewer are the ways of helping people than of harming them; it is the nature of things, not a consequence of the statistical method. Our world does not stand halfway between heaven and hell; it seems much closer to hell.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

One Human Minute (1986)

People, World, Way, Hell

“Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Philothea http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9982 (1836), p. 51 (in EPUB version) 1830s

“They must not fear, nor regard as sin, or take to heart any evil impulses to sin or to blasphemy, or doubts about the Sacrament, or any other such ugly temptations; for to experience these temptations defiles the soul no more than the bark of a dog or the bite of a flea. They trouble the soul but do not harm it provided a man puts them aside and ignores them. It does no good to struggle against them, or to try and master them by force, for the more a person struggles against them, the more persistent they become.”

Walter Hilton (1340–1396) English Augustinian mystic.

Book I, ch. 38 (p. 43)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)

Fear, Dogs, Soul, Evil

“My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble the strong living bodies that most pictures show. And in the latter end of a life so spent in study, you at least can imagine that painting is with me a very serious study. That I have but little patience with the false modesty which is the greatest enemy to all figure painting. I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure. If there is impropriety, then just where does such impropriety begin? Is it wrong to look at a picture of a naked figure or at a statue? English ladies of the last generation thought so and avoided the statue galleries, but do so no longer. Or is it a question of sex? Should men make only the statues of men to be looked at by men, while the statues of women should be made by women to be looked at by women only? Should the he-painters draw the horses and bulls, and the she-painters like Rosa Bonheur the mares and cows? Must the poor old male body in the dissecting room be mutilated before Miss Prudery can dabble in his guts?Such indignities anger me. Can not anyone see into what contemptible inconsistencies such follies all lead? And how dangerous they are? My conscience is clear, and my suffering is past.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter of resignation to Edward Hornor Coates, Chairman of the Committee on Instruction, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886-02-15).

Life, Women, Men, Beauty

“The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Restriction on Freedom is Unavoidable in Industrial Society", item 119
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Health

“You see, some people have a talent for programming. At ten to thirteen years old, typically, they're fascinated, and if they use a program, they want to know: “How does it do this?” But when they ask the teacher, if it's proprietary, the teacher has to say: “I'm sorry, it's a secret, we can't find out.” Which means education is forbidden. A proprietary program is the enemy of the spirit of education. It's knowledge withheld, so it should not be tolerated in a school, even though there may be plenty of people in the school who don't care about programming, don't want to learn this. Still, because it's the enemy of the spirit of education, it shouldn't be there in the school.
But if the program is free, the teacher can explain what he knows, and then give out copies of the source code, saying: “Read it and you'll understand everything.” And those who are really fascinated, they will read it! And this gives them an opportunity to start to learn how to be good programmers.
To learn to be a good programmer, you'll need to recognize that certain ways of writing code, even if they make sense to you and they are correct, they're not good because other people will have trouble understanding them. Good code is clear code that others will have an easy time working on when they need to make further changes.
How do you learn to write good clear code? You do it by reading lots of code, and writing lots of code. Well, only free software offers the chance to read the code of large programs that we really use. And then you have to write lots of code, which means you have to write changes in large programs.
How do you learn to write good code for the large programs? You have to start small, which does not mean small program, oh no! The challenges of the code for large programs don't even begin to appear in small programs. So the way you start small at writing code for large programs is by writing small changes in large programs. And only free software gives you the chance to do that.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

A Free Digital Society - What Makes Digital Inclusion Good or Bad? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.html#education; Lecture at Sciences Po in Paris (19 October 2011)] 2010s

People, Secret, Education, School

“In the first place, the meaning of the Constitution never varies. It means today exactly what it meant on the day of its adoption. To hold otherwise would destroy the judicial character of the Supreme Court, and make the continuance of our "unalienable" rights completely uncertain. This has been forcibly stated in South Carolina vs. United States, 199 U. S., at 448: "The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. * * * Those things which are within its grants of power, when made, are still within them, and those things not within remain still excluded. * * * Any other rule of construction, would abrogate the judicial character of this Court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day."”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From Is Capital Income? (1921) by George H. Earle, Jr.

Passion

“For those of us in this battle, we clearly understand one thing — that when left up to "local" decision-making, it's still the ALA policy/philosophy of "no filters" that often triumphs. Local folks are not having their concerns taken seriously. I hear this repeatedly from individuals who contact us asking what they can do because they're up against an ALA wall. Does 'W' understand this? His wife is a librarian.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Bush On Porn In Libraries" http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/apple/archive/2000/03/msg00003.html by Brian Krebs, Newsbytes PM (February 28, 2000)

Understanding, Decision

“Everything in nature completes its action through its own force and species alone… as, for example, fire by its own force dries and consumes and does many things. Therefore vision must perform the act of seeing by its own force. But the act of seeing is the perception of a visible object at a distance, and therefore vision perceives what is visible by its own force multiplied to the object. Moreover, the species of the things of world are not fitted by nature to effect the complete act of vision at once, because of its nobleness. Hence these must be aided by the species of the eye, which travels in the locality of the visual pyramid, and changes the medium and ennobles it, and renders it analogous to vision, and so prepares the passage of the species itself of the visible object… Concerning the multiplication of this species, moreover, we are to understand that it lies in the same place as the species of the thing seen, between the sight and the thing seen, and takes place along the pyramid whose vertex is in the eye and base in the thing seen. And as the species of an object in the same medium travels in a straight path and is refracted in different ways when it meets a medium of another transparency, and is reflected when it meets the obstacles of a dense body; so is it also true of the species of vision that it travels altogether along the path of the species itself of the visible object.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

Bacon, like Grosseteste, asserts that both the active extramitted species of vision from the eye, and the intramitted species of light from object seen, were necessary for sight.
v. i. vii. 4, ed. Briggs as quoted in A.C. Crombie, Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)
Opus Majus, c. 1267

World, Way, Travel, Understanding

“John Barnes is incredibly variable. Pete's Rule (Never buy a Barnes with sodomy in it) is a good one but unfortunately the publisher does not put that kind of stuff on the cover.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[a393v8$pen$1@panix1.panix.com, 2002]
2000s

Quotes about doe page 83

Quotes about doe
page 83