Quotes about doe (9994 quotes, page 85)

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. IV, ch. V
Jude the Obscure (1895)

Love , Suffering

“Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §10
The Cyberiad (1967)

Death , Way , Travel , Star

“Suppose you have two friends, James and Joanna, who are becoming increasingly fond of each other. At some point you realize that in their hearts they both have made a commitment to spending the rest of their lives together. But James has not yet admitted this to himself, or declared himself to Joanna. What is holding him back is a certain exaggerated trust in his own rationality, preventing him from acknowledging the validity of any impulse in himself he cannot completely understand. You are sure that once he comes to see how misplaced this trust is, he will realize that he has in fact been committed to a life with Joanna for some time and this commitment has been controlling the way he already lives his life and his decisions about how to spend his time and devote his energies. Now does James believe he is going to get married to Joanna? You are not clear what to say. If you ask him to profess such a belief, he will probably say he does not know, one way or the other. But his life-choices indicate the condition of his heart, and in that sense he does already have the belief. Another thing you do not know is how things are actually going to turn out for James. It all depends on which of the two dispositions prevails, his love for Joanna or his pride in his intellect.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: "Kant on the Rational Instability of Atheism" (2006), pp. 63-64

Love , Life , Way , Understanding

“How dearly, at one time, and how cheaply at another, does Genius purchase immortal fame!”

George Gilfillan (1813–1878) Scottish writer

From dissertation Life and Poems of Thomas Gray
Other Quotes

Time

“But let us now dismiss these poetical fictions; because with what is divine they have mingled much of human alloy; and let us now consider what the deity has declared concerning himself and the other gods.
The region surrounding the Earth has its existence in virtue of birth. From whom then does it receive its eternity and imperishability, if not from him who holds all things together within defined limits, for it is impossible that the nature of bodies (material) should be without a limit, inasmuch as they cannot dispense with a Final Cause, nor exist through themselves.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

God , Birth , Nature

“[T]he thought is somewhat repugnant to us that we should slowly sink into barbarism, into the sub-human, into blind and whimpering agony, that the last of Man should be a whine. This may well happen, but even by such a prospect we are not seriously dismayed. If it does occur, it will doubtless seem intolerable to our degraded spirits. But today, we are fully possessed of ourselves. (…) [T]o the spirit that has drunk deeply of the grave beauty of the cosmos, even the ultimate horror is acceptable.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Last Men in London (1932)

Beauty

“He who does not improve his temper together with his understanding, is not much the better for it.”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

Understanding

“1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.
2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.
3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.
4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. (Rothko said this is the essence of academicism.)
6. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.
7. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

June 13, 1943 edition of the New York Times, brief manifesto: Adolph Gottlieb with Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.
1940s

Truth , World , Art , Way

“Just as 'beauty' is not related to sex, neither is it related to love. Even having it does not bestow love on a woman, though the beauty myth claims that it must. It is because 'beauty' is so hostile to love that many beautiful women are so cynical about men. […] The beautiful woman is excluded forever from the rewards and responsibilities of particular human love, for she cannot trust that any man will love her 'for herself alone.' A hellish doubt inheres in the myth that makes impersonal 'beauty' a prerequisite for love: Where does love go when beauty vanishes? And, if a woman cannot be loved 'for herself alone,' for whom is she being loved?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 5 : 'Sex', p. 172

Love , Women , Men , Hostility

“Public policy changes in very large leaps, as in the New Deal of the 1930's, the Great Society of the mid-1960's, and the Reagan revolution of 1981. These spasms of reform are interspersed with periods of rest and stasis, as if the participants are exhausted from their exertion and catching their breath. But in any event, this does not look like Darwinian, gradualistic evolution.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 10, Some Further Reflections, p. 226

Change

“Treaties against naturalization, like all other treaties, are limited by circumstances. As to the superstitious attachment of the Chinese to China, that, like all other superstitions, will dissolve in the light and heat of truth and experience. The Chinaman may be a bigot, but it does not follow that he will continue to be one tomorrow. He is a man, and will be very likely to act like a man. He will not be long in finding out that a country that is good enough to live in is good enough to die in, and that a soil that was good enough to hold his body while alive, will be good enough to hold his bones when he is dead. Those who doubt a large immigration should remember that the past furnishes no criterion as a basis of calculation. We live under new and improved conditions of migration, and these conditions are constantly improving.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Truth , Nature , Light , Past

“And yet I find in the majority judgement a fatal innocence… The judgement quotes the proclamations from the Rig, Yajur and Atharva Vedas - about all human beings being one, about their being the children of the same Mother-Earth, about the yearnings that all of use be friends. But it does not note that less than a mile from its building volumes upon volumes of fatwas are being sold and distributed which exhort Muslims never to trust Kafirs, never to allow them into their confidence; which tell them that their first duty and allegiance is to their religion and not to sundry laws… It is not Gandhiji who needs to be convinced that Ishwar and Allah ar one. It is not Guru Gobind Singh who needs to be convinced that mandir and masjid, Puran and Quran are one. The ones who need to be convinced that they are one - say, the ulema, or the Shahi Iman…”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

have it as an article of faith that they are not one.
Arun Shourie in: India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries. p. 171-3

Children , Faith , Religion , Law

“The consolidations need to be carried out with due regard to public interest and to the rights and established life of various communities in our country. It does not seem to me necessary that we endeavor to anticipate any final plan or adhere to an artificial and unchangeable project which shall stipulate a fixed number of systems, but rather we ought to approach the problem with such a latitude of action that it can be worked out step by step in accordance with a comprehensive consideration of public interest. Whether the number of ultimate systems shall be more or less seems to me can only be determined by time and actual experience in the development of such consolidations.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Life , Communication , Problem , Time

“Tell me how high / Do you think you'll go / Before you start falling?"
The people here / They don't hear you calling
How does it feel / When you're inside me?"”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Up In The Sky
Definitely Maybe (1994)

People , Feeling , Thinking

“Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate conservative. You are trying to hold back movement in an infinitely changing universe. The verb to be does make idiots of us all.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Dune Genesis (1980)

Universe , Change

“It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 470.

Money , Parting , Wealth

“"Wuthering Heights" was not your normal type song — but that's why it was so brilliant. It was something out the norm. When something like that comes along, they don’t come along that often.
When does the next Kate Bush come along, after Kate Bush? There hasn’t been one.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

The Kate Bush Story (2014)

“The whole world is a dream; even this (the waking state) is a dream … What you dreamt last night does not exist now.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 302]

World , Dreams , Night

“[T]ruth is the ground and condition of freedom. Unless it is true that human beings deserve to have fundamental liberties respected and protected, the tyrant does no wrong in violating them. Relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism about truth provide no secure basis for freedom. We should honor civil liberties because the norms enjoining us to respect and protect them are valid, sound, in a word, true.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/947823304500490242 (1 January 2018)
2018

Truth , Freedom

“Why does the monstrous men of an Alauddin Khalji, a Firuz Shah Tughlaq, a Sikandar Lodi, and an Aurangzeb, to name only the most notorious, pop out so soon from the thickest coat of cosmetics?
The answer is provided by the Muslim historians of medieval India. They painted their heroes in the indelible dyes of Islamic ideology. They did not anticipate the day when Islamic imperialism in India will become only a painful memory of the past. They did not visualise that the record of Islam in India will one day be weighed on the scales of human values.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Sita Ram Goel: The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

Men , Pain , Memory , Past

“It is not the government's purpose to make a profit the way a company does, because a company doesn't have to give a damn about the unemployed poor or provide services that are non-commercial by definition.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: Straight From The Heart (1985), Chapter Five, A Balancing Act, p. 111-112

Way

“The administrator is more like the engineer who constructs a power plant, that is, he is concerned with the realization of conscious human purposes by the conscious use of human beings and materials. It is true that the mere student of administration may be just an observer, but he does not merely observe natural, unconscious, and automatic operations. He observes the formulation of human purposes, consciously and deliberately and operations designed to effect given results. And he sees calculations of results in advance realized later in practice with a high degree of approximation. The degree of approximation between advance calculations and results is not often, if ever, as exact as in the case of a hydro-electric plant, but it is constantly exact enough for practical purposes.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

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

Nature

“It is not inappropriate to describe the function of the teacher as that of acting to compel awareness. This is not to say that such compulsion contrives to bring a subject to act in the way in which the teacher believes the free man ought to act. It aspires only to assure that the subject is acting for himself and not as the mere instrument of unmediated impulses. There is even a compulsory quality about the Socratic method for, by asking questions, by enquiring in the reasons and grounds for doing this or that, it forces a man to conceive of himself in terms of intentions; it thereby forces him to be free.
It does not force him, however, to act in a manner substantively different from this original impulses. … The man who swings at his enemy in blind rage may, after lengthy consideration of creative alternatives, swing at him with cool deliberation. The intentionalist cannot accept the tradition of Kant, Green, and Bosanquet which polarizes conscious duty and preconscious desire and presupposes that reflective awareness will always produce substantive changes in the character of our goals, for to him it is the qualitative change that turns mere impulses into goals that is significant for freedom.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 78-79

Way , Question , Freedom , Teachers

“It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say.
"On Coffee-House Politicians"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

War , People , Truth , Feeling

“There is an infinity of things one does well only through necessity.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“I wish I could do it again, only I wish I could take all of the animals out of the environmental fur farm … I have absolutely no regrets, and I hope the same thing continues to happen at MSU and every other college campus that does animal research.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

Activists Uncaged http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=23918

Hope , Animals

“Good food does lead to sex. As it should.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Food , Sex

“Radio, on the other hand, is now the chief agent of imperialism. It does not purify the spirit of man, does not, like the book, bring him back to the sanctuary of solitude, but throws him to the lions, subtly preparing his mind for the blood and chains of public sacrifice.”

Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer

Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 42

Books , Solitude

“And when you can no longer remember, just meaningless things here and there and you can't. But still try even then, as the twilight sets in, stand and look at the past, walk again along the corridors where your eyes used to wander, attentive ghosts, open the boxes, think of the other side of the wall. Sit at the side of the road and see yourself pass. See the web, see how the passages of the maze all lead again to the same point which does not exactly coincide with the exit.”

Dimitris Lyacos (1966) Greek writer

Source: Poena Damni Z213: Exit, p. 60, Shoestring Press, 2010.

Thinking , Past , Box

“Newborn Love has short wings. He can scarcely
hold them up, and does not spread them out to fly.”

Torquato Tasso Aminta

Act II, scene ii.
Aminta (1573)

Love , Flying

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men , Money , Children , People

“The Web does not just connect machines, it connects people.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee Speech before Knight Foundation, (14 September 2008) http://www.webfoundation.org/donations/knight2008/tbl-speech

People

“On symbolic use of equalities and proportions. Chapter II.
The analytical method accepts as proven the most famous [ as known from Euclid ] symbolic use of equalities and proportions that are found in items such as:
1. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
2. Quantities being equal to the same quantity have equality between themselves. [a = c & b = c => a = b]
3. If equal quantities are added to equal quantities the resulting sums are equal.
4. If equals are subtracted from equal quantities the remains are equal.
5. If equal equal amounts are multiplied by equal amounts the products are equal.
6. If equal amounts are divided by equal amounts, the quotients are equal.
7. If the quantities are in direct proportion so also are they are in inverse and alternate proportion. [a:b::c:d=>b:a::d:c & a:c::b:d]
8. If the quantities in the same proportion are added likewise to amounts in the same proportion, the sums are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a+c):(b+d)::c:d]
9. If the quantities in the same proportion are subtracted likewise from amounts in the same proportion, the differences are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a-c):(b-d)::c:d]
10. If proportional quantities are multiplied by proportional quantities the products are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => ae:bf::cg:dh]
11. If proportional quantities are divided by proportional quantities the quotients are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => a/e:b/f::c/g:d/h]
12. A common multiplier or divisor does not change an equality nor a proportion. [a:b::ka:kb & a:b::(a/k):(b/k)]
13. The product of different parts of the same number is equal to the product of the sum of these parts by the same number. [ka + kb = k(a+b)]
14. The result of successive multiplications or divisions of a magnitude by several others is the same regardless of the sequential order of quantities multiplied times or divided into that magnitude.
But the masterful symbolic use of equalities and proportions which the analyst may apply any time is the following:
15. If we have three or four magnitudes and the product of the extremes is equal to the product means, they are in proportion. [ad=bc => a:b::c:d OR ac=b2 => a:b::b:c]
And conversely
10. If we have three or four magnitudes and the first is to the second as the second or the third is to the last, the product of the extremes is equal to that of means. [a:b::c:d => ad=bc OR a:b::b:c => ac=b2]
We can call a proportion the establishment of an equality [equation] and an equality [equation] the resolution of a proportion.”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

From Frédéric Louis Ritter's French Tr. Introduction à l'art Analytique (1868) utilizing Google translate with reference to English translation in Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1968) Appendix
In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591)

Change , Time , Success , Parting

“Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die.
A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don't take place. Wars, genocides — that happened here once, but no longer. It's something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not "really" Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Why Are We In Kosovo?" inThe New York Times Magazine http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E1DA163DF931A35756C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all (2 May 1999)

War , Parting

“It is usually assumed that, in speaking, in the 1844 Manuscripts, of man’s “being reduced to the level of the animals,” and of man’s alienation from his “species-being” under the conditions of capitalist production, Marx is thinking in terms of an abstract conception of “man” as being alienated from his biological characteristics as a species. So, it is presumed, at this initial stage in the evolution of his thought, Marx believed that man is essentially a creative being whose “natural” propensities are denied by the restrictive character of capitalism. Actually, Marx holds, on the contrary, that the enormous productive power of capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The organization of social relationships within which capitalist production is carried on in fact leads to the failure to realize these historically generated possibilities. The character of alienated labor does not express a tension between “man in nature” (non-alienated) and “man in society” (alienated), but between the potential generated by a specific form of society—capitalism—and the frustrated realization of that potential. What separates man from the animals is not the mere existence of biological differences between mankind and other species, but the cultural achievements of men, which are the outcome of a very long process of social development.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 15-16.

Men , Failure , Nature , Thinking

“Not everyone does evil, but everyone stands accused.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El mal no lo hacen todos, pero acusa a todos.
Voces (1943)

Evil

“I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.”

Izaak Walton book The Compleat Angler

Part I, ch. 5.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

Love

“Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Who Is Ai Weiwei?, 2009

Freedom , Fight

“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Who'll mourn her as one of Lot's family members?
Doesn't she seem the smallest of losses to us?
But deep in my heart I will always remember
One who gave her life up for one single glance.
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
A loss, but who still mourns the breath
of one woman, or laments one wife?
Though my heart never can forget,
how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Translated by A.S.Kline
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife

Death , Suffering , Heart

“History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned—could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 19

Men , History , Question , Change

“1597. For whom does the blind Man's Wife paint her self?”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1736) : Why does the blind man's wife paint herself?
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Painting

“When we come before the school board, most often we do not face those interested in the education of our children, but those interested in the maintenance of power. These contests are war. Any other paradigm is an illusion. It is not a mere contest, like athletes plunging down the hill on skis for the fastest time. It is not a dance in which the most graceful will be rewarded with a medal. This is war. Once we understand that the struggle is war, we can wage war and win.
The key to winning any war is to control the war. This does not mean I seek to control my opponent.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995), Ch. 12 The Unbeatable Power Argument : Delivering the Knockout p. 196

War , Children , Education , School

“All possessions are by nature unrighteous when a man possesses them for personal advantage as being entirely his own, and does not bring them into the common stock for those in need.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 337

Nature , Personality

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "None of you should wish for death. If he does good, he may increase in it, and if he does evil, he may turn in repentance."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 585
Sunni Hadith

Death , Peace , Evil

“The governor has taken some last ditch measures to try and present himself as bipartisan. But his denial will not be winning any fans here! He is going to be up to the business of lying, of course. After all, it's what the GOP does best, you see. The Democratic Party will bring America forward into a new age, free from the dark taints of racism, corruption, bigotry, and fear! Build the next generation up, grow them up, raise them well, so that the whole world shall know America's power, feeble as it is. Fortunately, by building up the spirt of America, we shall know true strength once again!”

Terry McAuliffe (1957) American businessman and politician

quoted on The Sunday Times, July 27, 2008.

Age , World , Fear , Lying

“Disciple: The truth be praised! Dear Lord, tell me, does anything (of this self) still remain in the happy, detached person?
Truth: Without a doubt it happens that, when the good and loyal servant is led into the joy of his Lord, he becomes drunk from the limitless overabundance of God's house. What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self and consequently has got rid of his self completely and lost himself entirely in God, becoming one spirit in all ways with him, just as a small drop of water does which has been dropped into a large amount of wine. Just as the drop of water loses itself, drawing the taste and colour of the wine to and into itself, so it happens that those who are in full possession of blessedness lose all human desires in an inexpressible manner, and they ebb away from themselves and are immersed completely in the divine will. Otherwise, if something of the individual were to remain of which he or she were not completely emptied, scripture could not be true in stating that God shall When the good and loyal servant is led into the joy of his Lord, he becomes drunk from the limitless overabundance of God's house. What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self become all things in all things. Certainly one's being remains, but in a different form, in a different resplendence, and in a different power. This is all the result of total detachment from self.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God , Truth , Way , Water

“How does one say something new and not retell?”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“New Word,” p. 69
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

“When God gives you AIDS — and God does give you AIDS — make lemon-AIDS!”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Jesus Is Magic (2005)

God

“There is no human being on earth who does not have the capacity to offer the message of peace to the world at large. But what is needed now is the soulful willingness.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#18991, Part 190
Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants Part 1-270 (1983)

World , Peace , Soul

“Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 27, p. 488

Death , Way , Birth , Happiness

“Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years—and still are? Not even close.”

Robert A. Hall (1946) American politician

I'm Tired (February 19, 2009)

War

“Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society. Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, “Never again.” But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

" The Case for Reparations https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" (June, 2014) The Atlantic

People , Business , Wealth

“The truth about the world about us.' 'Truth' is a word used in many different ways - 'You’re not telling the truth.' 'The truth about conditions in Russia.' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I want to use it here in the sense of what lies behind and outward show. I. et me hasten to explain by giving an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we see; that is the ‘outward show'. In the past the outward show was regarded as the truth. But then a scientist came along to question it and then to announce that the truth was quite different from the appearance: the truth was that the earth revolved and the sun remained still -the outward show was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like this is that they often seem so useless. It makes no difference to the average man whether the sun moves or the earth moves. He still has to rise at dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not mean that it is valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursue truth. They do not expect that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to make much difference to everyday life, but they think it is a valuable activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we say that truth - the thing they are looking for—is a value.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life , Truth , Lie , World

“Despair leads to many forms of thought,” said the magus, “and many kinds of action. Despair drives some to greater sanity, towards an analysis of the world as it is and what it might be. Others it drives to deep and dangerous insanity, towards an imposition of their own desires upon reality. I sympathize with your despair, Johannes Klosterheim, because it has no solace, in the end. Your despair is the worst there is to know. And yet men often look upon the likes of you and envy you, as you doubtless envy Duke Arioch, as Duke Arioch doubtless envies his master Lucifer, whom he would betray, and perhaps as Lucifer envied God. And what does God envy, I wonder? Perhaps he envies the simple mortal who is content with his lot and envies nobody.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 15 (p. 153)

Men , God , World , Reality

“While frenetic activity, in the end suiting journos; running at the behest of little press secretaries does not pay off”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to Kevin Rudd's first eight months, 7.30 Report, August 6, 2008. 7.30 Report Interview http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2326431.htm

“Hell may last as long as sinful humanity lasts, but that does not mean that any individual will remain in it all that time. The time of purging can only continue until purification is reached. And a God driven to employ an endless Hell would be a God turned fiend himself, defeated in his original purpose.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.282

God , Hell , Time

“I saw a review of our new album, and it said, "Every single component of the White Stripes is a gigantic lie." What does that mean? Have I sat down and said I was born in Mississippi? No. Did I say I grew up on a plantation and learned how to play guitar from a blind man? I never said anything like that. It's funny that people think me and Meg sit up late at night, in front of a gas lamp, and come up with these intricate lies to trick people.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
On 'gimmicks

People , Lie , Thinking , Learning

“If the resistances in one direction are impossible to overcome, then the artist’s invention and powers of expression turn to a goal the way to which is not obstructed, and it is very unusual for him even to be aware of the fact that his achievement is a substitute for the real thing. Even in the most liberal democracy the artist does not move with perfect freedom and unrestraint; even there he is restricted by innumerable considerations foreign to his art. The different measure of freedom may be of the greatest importance for him personally but in principle there is no difference between the dictates of a despot and the conventions of even the most liberal social order. If force in itself were contrary to the spirit of art, perfect works of art could arise only in a state of complete anarchy. But in reality the presuppositions on which the aesthetic quality of a work depends lie beyond the alternative presented by political freedom and compulsion.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter II. Ancient Oriental Urban cultures

Lie , Art , Way , Democracy

“A good death does honor to a whole life.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Un bel morir tutta la vita honora.
Canzone 207 (c. 1348), st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Life , Death

“I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: Centavos

Way , Feeling , Light , Time

“Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

“Shall we not perhaps be told, on the other hand, that if the sinner suffers an eternal punishment, it is because he does not cease to sin? — for the damned sin without ceasing. This however is no solution to the problem, which derives all its absurdity from the fact that punishment has been conceived as vindictiveness or vengeance, not as correction, and has been conceived after the fashion of barbarous peoples. And in the same way hell has been conceived as a sort of police institution, necessary in order to put fear into the world. And the worst of it is that it no longer intimidates, and therefore will have to be shut up.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

People , World , Fear , Way

“Everything in our modern substitutes for religion—whether Baconian or Rousseauistic—will be found to converge upon the idea of service. The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of national groups or of individuals.
One's answer to this question will depend on one's view of the Rousseauistic theory of brotherhood. … To assert that man in a state of nature, or some similar state thus projected, is good, is to discredit the traditional controls in the actual world. Humility, conversion, decorum—all go by the board in favor of free temperamental overflow. Does man thus emancipated exude spontaneously an affection for his fellows that will be an effective counterpoise to the sheer expansion of his egoistic impulses? …
Unfortunately, the facts have persistently refused to conform to humanitarian theory. There has been an ever-growing body of evidence from the eighteenth century to the Great War that in the natural man, as he exists in the real world and not in some romantic dreamland, the will to power is, on the whole, more than a match for the will to service. To be sure, many remain unconvinced by this evidence. Stubborn facts, it has been rightly remarked, are as nothing compared with a stubborn theory. Altruistic theory is likely to prove peculiarly stubborn, because, probably more than any other theory ever conceived, it is flattering: it holds out the hope of the highest spiritual benefits—for example, peace and fraternal union—without any corresponding spiritual effort.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 7-8

War , World , Peace , Religion

“"Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" With me was the knowledge that that fellow Ikkyu twice contemplated suicide. I have "that fellow", because the priest Ikkyu is known even to children as a most amusing person, and because anecdotes about his limitlessly eccentric behavior have come down to us in ample numbers. It is said of him that children climbed his knee to stroke his beard, that wild birds took feed from his hand. It would seem from all this that he was the ultimate in mindlessness, that he was an approachable and gentle sort of priest. As a matter of fact he was the most severe and profound of Zen priests. Said to have been the son of an emperor, he entered a temple at the age of six, and early showed his genius as a poetic prodigy. At the same time he was troubled with the deepest of doubts about religion and life. "If there is a god, let him help me. If there is none, let me throw myself to the bottom of the lake and become food for fishes." Leaving behind these words he sought to throw himself into a lake, but was held back. … He gave his collected poetry the title "Collection of the Roiling Clouds", and himself used the expression "Roiling Clouds" as a pen name. In his collection and its successor are poems quite without parallel in the Chinese and especially the Zen poetry of the Japanese middle ages, erotic poems and poems about the secrets of the bedchamber that leave one in utter astonishment. He sought, by eating fish and drinking spirits and having commerce with women, to go beyond the rules and proscriptions of the Zen of his day, and to seek liberation from them, and thus, turning against established religious forms, he sought in the pursuit of Zen the revival and affirmation of the essence of life, of human existence, in a day civil war and moral collapse.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Life , Women , God , War

“Israel should really reflect on what's going on in Egypt. It does not want to be the Hosni Mubarak of the peace process.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Meet The Press, January 30, 2011. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41317645/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/

Peace

“The fact that the super-markets and super shops have developed and serve wider areas of tens of thousands of people does not mean that we do not need smaller ones.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 10, The neighborhood, p. 134

People

“Sometimes I have feared that, in some wild paroxysm of rage, the white race, forgetful of the claims of humanity and the precepts of the Christian religion, will proceed to slaughter the negro in wholesale, as some of that race have attempted to slaughter Chinamen, and as it has been done in detail in some districts of the Southern States. The grounds of this fear, however, have in some measure decreased, since the negro has largely disappeared from the arena of Southern politics, and has betaken himself to industrial pursuits and the acquisition of wealth and education, though even here, if over-prosperous, he is likely to excite a dangerous antagonism; for the white people do not easily tolerate the presence among them of a race more prosperous than themselves. The negro as a poor ignorant creature does not contradict the race pride of the white race. He is more a source of amusement to that race than an object of resentment. Malignant resistance is augmented as he approaches the plane occupied by the white race, and yet I think that that resistance will gradually yield to the pressure of wealth, education, and high character.”

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

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

People , Education , Fear , Religion

“America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it’s tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn’t solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it’s still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

Fallaci interview (1973)

Problem , Freedom , Country

“The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government. Bear in mind, such a government does not survive long. I declare that the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India.”

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) Indian author and politician

As quoted in [Under the Shadow of Gallows, Gulab Singh, Rup Chand, 1963, 12 February 2012, 40, Naujawan Bharat Sabha] Said by Lala Lajpat Rai at a public meeting in Lahore on the evening of 20 October, 1928 after protesters (including Lala Lajpat Rai) heading towards the Lahore railway station to greet the Simon Commission with protests were lathi-charged earlier on the same day.

“I’m the son of God. I mislead you slightly. I’m the son of the man who creates gods. Again, I mislead you slightly. I’m a son of the man who created and founded Dianetics and Scientology, which creates gods. I’m a son of L. Ron Hubbard. This book is my dying declaration. My last will and testament. My father will order my death. My father does not use the word ‘murder.’ He prefers to use the word ‘suicide.”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

The Telling of Me, by Me (1981)

Death , God , Books , Suicide

“Some people might say, I have a right to die, when they are arguing the case for suicide. And while this is true, it is also true that the people on your planet need every bit of help and encouragement they can get from each person alive. In a certain sense, the energy of each individual does keep the world going, and to commit suicide is to refuse a basic, cooperative venture.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Way Toward Health (1997), p. 265

People , World , Sense , Suicide

“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (27 July 1935)
Borrowing from Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670 (published posthumously): ""Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point""
Cartoon captions

Heart

“I did not love her, I did not even know her. And for all that, I was touched and conquered. I wanted to save her, to sacrifice myself for her, to commit a thousand follies! Strange thing! How does it happen that the presence of a woman overwhelms us so? Is it the power of her grace which enfolds us? Is it the seduction of her beauty and youth, which intoxicates one like wine?
Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?”

Guy De Maupassant book The Wreck

The Wreck

Love , Youth , Beauty , Wine

“First of all we forget that one of the most common forms of divorce in the Bible and in all of history has been divorce by death, by execution. We are not used to thinking of divorce in such terms, but consider this. In the Old Testament, if a man were guilty of adultery, or a woman, they were executed. And we saw last week as we studied the New Testament teaching that adultery is in terms of New Testament law still a crime that calls for death. Now it does not exist, and therefore special provisions were made for those social orders wherein no such offense incurred the death penalty. As a matter of fact this is how the penitential system developed.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Death , Law , Penalty , History

“Great physics does not automatically imply complicated mathematics!”

Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931) Dutch physicist

[Martinus Veltman, Facts and mysteries in elementary particle physics, World Scientific, 2003, 981238149X, 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=CNCHDIobj0IC&pg=PA15]

Mathematics

“Quite honestly, we get one new civil case every business day of the year. We spend so much of our time reading the law and interpreting the law, that that does not leave much time for consideration of whether the law is prudent or might be written in a better way. I spend all of my time, with the assistance of my law clerks, trying to read the law and interpret it and apply it to the facts presented in any particular case. So I cannot say that I have spent much time at all considering the propriety of the laws that I have had occasion to interpret.”

Thomas Hardiman (1965) American judge

Judicial and Executive Nominations (November 14, 2006)

Law , Way , Business , Time

“In the third period, which lasted from the middle of the eighteenth century until late in the nineteenth century, attention was turned to critical investigations of the true nature of the number π itself, considered independently of mere analytical representations. The number was first studied in respect of its rationality or irrationality, and it was shown to be really irrational. When the discovery was made of the fundamental distinction between algebraic and transcendental numbers, i. e. between those numbers which can be, and those numbers which cannot be, roots of an algebraical equation with rational coefficients, the question arose to which of these categories the number π belongs. It was finally established by a method which involved the use of some of the most modern of analytical investigation that the number π was transcendental. When this result was combined with the results of a critical investigation of the possibilities of a Euclidean determination, the inferences could be made that the number π, being transcendental, does not admit of a construction either by a Euclidean determination, or even by a determination in which the use of other algebraic curves besides the straight line and the circle are permitted. The answer to the original question thus obtained is of a conclusive negative character; but it is one in which a clear account is given of the fundamental reasons upon which that negative answer rests.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), p. 12

Question , Nature , Study

“There is little point in demanding minor concessions and relaxations of the abstract, timeless general equilibrium. The light it can throw on human affairs is throw by its most austere and formal version. We are not concerned to ask: How could it possibly work? The useful question is: What does its logical structure imply?”

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

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 150-1

Question , Light

“And of course that is the problem with all truly powerful ideas. And what we have been talking of is certainly that. What it produces is illuminated by it. But applied where it does not pertain, it produces distortions as terrifying as the idea was powerful.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 1 (p. 87)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

Idea , Problem

“It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained…. I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 466 : On the expansion of the field of mathematics, and on the importance of a well-chosen notation

Truth , Faith , Way , Exercises

“The Whites were in full control … remnants were shifted about again and again… All of which led Sioux chief Spotted Tail, grown old and wise, to ask the weary question: "Why does not the Great Father put his red children on wheels, so he can move them as he will?"”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Children , Question

“The dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The End of Liberalism?" http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-end-of-liberalism/, Los Angeles Times, 18 September 2006.
2000s

People , Problem , Future

“I have been surprised at the unanimity with which the notion of the unacceptability of a Doomsday Machine is greeted. I used to be wary of discussing the concept for fear that some colonel would get out a General Operating Requirement or Development Planning Objective for the device, but it seems that I need not have worried. Except by some scientists and engineers who have overemphasized the single objective of maximizing the effectiveness of deterrence, the device is universally rejected. It just does not look professional to senior military officers, and it looks even worse to senior civilians. The fact that more than a few scientists and engineers do seem attracted to the idea is disquieting, but as long as the development project is expensive, even these dedicated experts are unlikely to get one under way.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Fear , Way , Idea , Universe

“I have consistently opposed a flag-burning amendment, and voted against its passage. Flag desecration is hateful and worthy of condemnation, and I would support any statory means possible to curtail desecration of the flag. But I believe that the importance of the Bill of Rights -- our nations founding document -- requires us to establish a very high threshold for agreeing to change it. does the amendment address some extreme threat to our country, or redress some outrageous wrong? In this case, abhorrent though flag desecration may be, it simply does not meet that test.”

Joe Lieberman (1942) politician from the United States

Associated Press policy Q&A, "Flag Amendment," Jan 25, 2004.

Hate , Support , Change , Country

“Playing the lottery is gambling, and I'm not a gambler. I assessed my life, knew I wanted to become a successful writer, and believed that I had a winner for a story. All I imagined was getting a huge publishing deal and attending the premier of my movie. In fact, every time my wife and I went to the movies, I'd tell her that, one day, we'll be in a theater in Hollywood watching MEG. Does that mean that I wasn't scared? Of course not. The process is similar to crawling out on a limb of a very high tree. You know you're out there and that it's a huge drop if you fall. Out along the weakest branches grows the fruit. If you really intend on making it all the way out to the fruit, you can't hold onto the trunk, you have to let go. At the same time, you have to be smart enough not to look down (negatives), which, of course, everyone you know is screaming at you to do. If you don't want to fall, then keep looking at the fruit. This all may sound hooky, but it works and it's how I've chosen to live my life, ever since I was 13 years old.”

Steve Alten (1959) American writer

Interview with Steve Alten http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d14867f2 (March 11th, 2004)

Life , Way , Imagination , Tree

“What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

Intelligence

“We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

From the Chronicle for Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, "A Complex God" September 28, 2001 The Chronicle Review Page: B6

God , People , Question , Reading

“The distinction between micro- and macro inventions matters because they appeared to be governed by different laws. Microinventions generally result from an intentional search for improvements, and are understandable -if not predictable- by economic forces. They are guided, at least to some extent, by the laws of supply and demand and by the intensity of search and the resources committed to them, and thus by signals emitted by the price mechanism. Furthermore, in so far as micro inventions are the by-products of experience through learning by doing or learning by using they are correlated with output or investment. Macroinventions are more difficult to understand, and seem to be governed by individual genius and luck as much as by economic forces. Often they are based on some fortunate event, in which an inventor stumbles on one thing while looking for another, arrives at the right conclusion for the wrong reason, or brings to bear a seemingly unrelated body of knowledge that just happen to hold the clue to the right solution. The timing of these inventions is consequently often hard to explain. Much of the economic literature dealing with the generation of technological progress through market mechanisms and incentive devices thus explain only part of the story. This does not mean that we have to give up the attempt to try to understand macroinventions. We must, however, look for explanations largely outside the trusted and familiar market mechanisms relied upon by economists.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 295; as cited by Pol, Eduardo, and Peter Carroll.

Law , Search , Literature , Understanding

“If So-and-so challenges me, I shall lay before you a careful account of what I have said and done; if that does not satisfy him, I shall reciprocate his dislike of me.”
Siquidem locutus aliter fuerit, dabo operam ut rationem factorum meorum dictorumque reddam; si perseveraverit, in vicem eum odero.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, ch. 28

“How does it secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, to those generations yet unborn, to kill them, aborting them in the womb?”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Virginia high school appearance, February 28, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_02_28virginia.htm.
2000

“If there was some central theme beneath the (more Irish than Greek) stew of intuitions about the nature of human existence – and of fiction – it is perhaps in the alternative title, whose rejection I still sometimes regret: The Godgame. I did intend Conchis to exhibit a series of masks representing human notions of God, from the supernatural to the jargon-ridden scientific, that is, a series of human illusions about something that does not exist in fact, absolute knowledge and absolute power. The destruction of such illusions seems to me still an eminently humanist aim; and I wish there were some super-Conchis who could put the Arabs and the Israelis, or the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, through the same heuristic mill as Nicholas.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

God , Nature , Knowledge

“We must go on praying, for sometimes prayer seems so to alter mental attitudes and reinforce mental energies as to strengthen the patient’s resistance to disease and even overcome it, and in any case to sustain him in the bearing of it. But we must not lose faith when God does not answer prayer in the way we think we should if we had his power.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.224

God , Disease , Faith , Way

“Knowledge in and of itself is devoid of good and evil. Knowledge, however, does not necessarily make human beings wiser. In fact, knowledge without wisdom can be outright dangerous.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Wisdom , Knowledge , Evil

“The free world, at least dimly aware of these facts, has naturally embarked on a large program of warning and defense systems. That program will be accelerated and extended. But let no one think that the expenditure of vast sums for weapons and systems of defense can guarantee absolute safety for the cities and citizens of any nation. The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit of any such easy solution. Even against the most powerful defense, an aggressor in possession of the effective minimum number of atomic bombs for a surprise attack could probably place a sufficient number of his bombs on the chosen targets to cause hideous damage.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)

World , Nature , Thinking

“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. Or monetary policy is pulling on a string when the economy is strong. That works. But when the economy is weak and you are cutting interest rates, it can be like pushing on a string. It does not work as well.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Keynsianism Again: Interview with Lawrence Klein", Challenge (May-June 2001)

Drink , Strong , Water , Horse

“Every orthodox church is founded on mistake and falsehood. Every good orthodox minister asserts what he does not know, and denies what he does know.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

“Four more byes down the leg side, although Prior was pretty blameless there. However, it does take his byes conceded past the 1,000,000 mark in only his seventh Test, which is quite some achievement. Give that some [name of sponsor deleted] energy, you gobby git.”

Rob Smyth (1977) English/Irish rugby league player

Cricket England versus India; Third Test, day one; Over-by-over: afternoon session http://sport.guardian.co.uk/englandindia2007/story/0,,2145331,00.html

Past

“If you censor yourself, if you cannot articulate your needs, if you cannot articulate your priorities, then whatever you do, putting a little cross in a ballot box, etc, does not represent your view. It is an act of desperation.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

UN expert on democracy highlights importance of free expression, information http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46355&Cr=information&Cr1=#.Um9rdr_3DjA.
2013

Box

“There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre.”
Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit, Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

IV, vii, 1.
Elegies

Death

“Reagan plays with fire. He doesn't care about international peace. He plays as if he was in the theater. Reagan wants to dominate the world. He wants to find justification to make war. If he does this, if it goes on like this, a cataclysm will take place. Reagan should come and see that I am not a terrorist in a trench with a grenade in my pocket.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

The Pittsburgh Press (3 August 1986) "Gadhafi, the man the world loves to hate" by Marie Colvin (UPI)

War , World , Peace

Quotes about doe page 85

Quotes about doe
page 85