Quotes about doing
page 10

“Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

“I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Source: Palestine

Books, Reading

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe… they do some.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“do not worry about these things. find peace in where and what you are ~saphira to eragon page 429”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Peace

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.<!-- ¶22

God, Feeling, Sense

“Why do boys say someone acts like a girl as if it were an insult?”

Tamora Pierce In the Hand of the Goddess

Source: In the Hand of the Goddess

Girl, Boy

“Do everything by hand, even when using the computer.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

“You have to give everyone ugly motives for everything they do, because ugly motives are all you understand.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Motivation, Understanding

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

People, Spring, Communication

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Family, Relationship, Goodbye, World

“Boredom makes you do crazy things.”

Jenny Holzer (1950) American conceptual artist

“Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

People

“I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Love, Making love, Feeling, Time

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

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

“I know not the way God leads me, but well do I know my Guide.”

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

God, Way

“Ishabal: "If you may correct your vision as you like, why do you wear spectacles?"
Tris: "Because I like them. Because I have better things to do with my magic than fixing my vision when ordinary glass will do.”

Tamora Pierce book The Will of the Empress

Source: The Will of the Empress

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements, and operate the device entirely in my mind.”

Nikola Tesla book My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla

My Inventions (1919)
Source: My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Context: The moment one constructs a device to carry into practice a crude idea, he finds himself unavoidably engrossed with the details of the apparatus. As he goes on improving and reconstructing, his force of concentration diminishes and he loses sight of the great underlying principle.… I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance.

Imagination, Idea, Change

“When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.”

Greg Mortenson (1957) American mountaineer and humanitarian

Source: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Children, People, Learning, Time

“My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Good Morning, Life, Future

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, Lie

“Do I look dead to you?!”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Eragon

Dead

“What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world, what you do for others lives on forever.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

World

“Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!”

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

As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 186; and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Here I stand; I can do no other.
Source: Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses

God, Help

“Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; des monstres l’ont mangé. "Causerie" [Conversation] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal/1857/Causerie Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857) Source: Les Fleurs du Mal

Heart

“At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Courage, Dead

“It doesn't matter if a million people tell you what you can't do, or if ten million tell you no. If you get one yes from God that's all you need.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

God, People

“Learn Everything that is Good from Others, but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Way, Learning

“The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur

Love, Life, Hurt

“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Deep, Happy, Cute

“When we surrender when we do not fight with life when it calls upon us we are lifted and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Source: The Invitation

Life, Fight

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Elliott Erwitt (1928) American photographer

Art, Way

“Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Death, Pain, Fear, Time

“Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate", said Davey triumphantly. "She's dead. It killed her. Doesn't that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet.”

Nancy Mitford book Love in a Cold Climate

Source: Love in a Cold Climate

Understanding, Dead

“I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

“As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Religion, Dreams, Thinking

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”

Galileo Galilei book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3 http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/dialogue3.html: "For when the sun draws up some vapors here, or warms a plant there, it draws these and warms this as if it had nothing else to do. Even in ripening a bunch of grapes, or perhaps just a single grape, it applies itself so effectively that it could not do more even if the goal of all its affairs were just the ripening of this one grape." Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)

Beauty, Peaceful, Universe, Sun

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”

Chinua Achebe book Arrow of God

Arrow of God (1988)

World, Dance

“Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Back To Work, Happiness

“Not too fast," called Raoul. "Let's not scare anyone."
"His majesty said with all deliberate speed!" chirped the courier. He flinched under Lerant's glare.
"That's how we're doing it," Raoul told him. "Deliberately.”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

Speed

“That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

People, Way, Thinking

“Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

People

“All I want, is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you - just because I am.”

Diana Gabaldon book A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Source: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Love

“The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Source: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

Hate, Envy

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Understanding

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

This is a paraphrase of statement in a thank you note from Carroll to a childhood friend, the actress Ellen Terry, published in Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time (1997), p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=2PkzZ9KaRlwC&lpg=PA126&vq=%22do%20for%20others%22&pg=PA126#v=snippet&q=%22do%20for%20others%22&f=fals by Nina Auerbach: "... and so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?" Disputed

Life, Secret

“If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Hate, Cars, Parent, Tree

“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly--until you can learn to do it well.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Learning

“May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

God, Star

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Thinking

“You do not have to struggle to reach God, but you do have to struggle to tear away the self-created veil that hides him from you”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi

God, Tear

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá'u'lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: You Can Change the World (2003), p. 86.

People, Feeling, History, Nature

“All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless…For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 270

Help

“Now it is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 15

“Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.”

Michael Phelps (1985) American swimmer

Upon winning his eighth straight Gold medal and having set his eighth straight Olympic record, as well as his seventh world record, in his eight events in the 2008 Olympic Games, 17 August 2008. (Source: [Phelps wins historic eighth gold medal, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/08/17/phelps.history.eight.golds/])

“You do good work for a long-enough time, I believed, and you'd get noticed.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Time

“In particular, at this point also urge governing authorities and parents to rule well and to send their children to school. Point out how they are obliged to do so and what a damnable sin they commit if they do not, for thereby, as the worst enemies of God and humanity, they overthrow and lay waste both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. Explain very clearly what kind of horrible damage they do when they do not help to train children as pastors, preachers, civil servants, etc., and tell them that God will punish them dreadfully for this. For in our day and age it is necessary to preach about these things. The extent to which parents and governing authorities are now sinning in these matters defies description. The devil, too, intends to do something horrible in all this.”

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

Foreword to the small catechismus, as quoted in the Preface, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (2000) by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, p. 19

God, Children, Age, World

“God the Almighty has made our rulers mad; they actually think they can do—and order their subjects to do—whatever they please. And the subjects make the mistake of believing that they, in turn, are bound to obey their rulers in everything.”

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

Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 83

God, Thinking, Madness

“I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you do not know how you lost something, how can you protect it?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment, 2012

Sense, Freedom

“Just because the left has ignored and disparaged truth for years is no excuse for the right to do so as well. And unfortunately, truth-free politics seems to be growing exponentially on the right.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives? (December 5, 2016)

Truth

“Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"Unmarked boxes" /Ode#1937
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)

Sad

“…racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate in man. It is the product of ideologies. But even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed, it would not render social cooperation futile and would not invalidate Ricardo's theory of association. Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.”

Ludwig von Mises book Human Action

Part 2, VIII.84
Human Action (1949)

Love, Men, People, Peace

“I am conscious of my shortcomings, but I have always tried as an honest worker to a do a job to the best of my ability and judgment.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

In:P.83
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

“I cannot say whether I will still be doing geometry ten years from now. It also seems to me that the mine has maybe already become too deep and unless one finds new veins it might have to be abandoned. Physics and chemistry now offer a much more glowing richness and much easier exploitation. Also, the general taste has turned entirely in this direction, and it is not impossible that the place of Geometry in the Academies will someday become what the role of the Chairs of Arabic at the universities is now.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist

Letter to d'Alembert (1781) cited in R. Laubenbacher, D. Pengelly: Mathematical Expeditions: Chronicles by the Explorers (1999) Springer, pp. 233–234.

Universe

“When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you to trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing — then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

41e–42a
Plato, Apology

Justice, Thinking

“Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Women, Men, World

“When a photon comes down, it interacts with electrons throughout the glass, not just on the surface. The photon and electrons do some kind of dance, the net result of which is the same as if the photon hit only on the surface.”

Richard Feynman book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Source: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 17

Dance

“Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.”

Thales (-624–-547 BC) ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician

As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 36
Cf. Golden Rule

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

People, World, Fear, Feeling

“Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.
Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Jedes Zeitalter wird, wenn es historischen Rang hat, von Aristokratien gestaltet.
Aristokratie = die Besten herrschen.
Niemals regieren Völker sich selbst. Diesen Wahnsinn hat der Liberalismus erfunden. Hinter seiner Volkssouveränität verstecken sich nur die gerissensten Schelme, die nicht erkannt sein wollen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

People, Age

“Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Truth

“Human beings are the sort of creature who has to know what to do when they don't know what to do. That's very paradoxical, and what we do is we prepare to do everything. We're on guard, and we prepare to do everything. It's very very stressful, but also something that's very engaging. It's something that heightens consciousness.”

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

Other

“I'm tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race, they simply don't want to change!”

August Dvorak (1894–1975) American scientist

Discovery Magazine, 1997 http://discovermagazine.com/1997/apr/thecurseofqwerty1099/

Change

“A sample limited to one profession would have yielded results of doubtful generality. To develop findings independent of the peculiar circumstances of the engineer, we needed to study a comparable group. Accountants were chosen because their jobs, like those of engineers,· are rich in technique. This richness makes it likely that the accountant, like the engineer, would have much to tell us. However, the groups are vastly different in the nature of their training, their present degree of professionalization, the kind of work they do, and, presumably, the kind of people attracted into them. Last, by covering accountants and engineers, we examined the job attitudes of two of the most important staff groups in modern industry”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People, Nature, Study, Training

“They do not know how to do right,” declares the Lord,
“who store up in their fortresses
what they have plundered and looted.”

Amos (prophet) Hebrew prophet

3:10 NIV
Book of Amos

“If a person abandons his prayer such that he neither desires its rewards nor fears its chastisement, for such a person I do not care if he dies a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.”

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

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 202
Shi'ite Hadith

Fear, Personality

“The left believes in a hierarchy of victimhood, if you are L. G. B. T. Q., then we suggest that you are very top of the victimhood hierarchy. You have been most. Those are people whose opinions do not matter at all. Because those are the people who are the beneficiaries of the system. They don’t get to talk about the system because they were the ones who built the system.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

About .

People

“I don't really go along with this sense that you sometimes pick up - that is, classical music is superior to everything else. I think classical music is a very great music form, but I can also think of other great music forms. And certainly within each field, you have absolute geniuses operating. Over the years, I've tried to bring together different people from different fields, and I do try to put Bach and Beethoven next to other types of musicians.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Denver Post, 18/02/2005
On Classical Music

People, Music, Thinking, Sense

“The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy
But I worry about you
I know it makes no difference
To what you’re going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg
And I worry about you…
-- Distant Early Warning (1984)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

World, Distant

“It is natural that people do not want to be involved with us too much. There is no problem down to the smallest egotistical longing which the Gestapo cannot solve. Regarded in this way we are, if a joke is permitted, looked upon as a cross between a general maid and the dustbin of the Reich.”

Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) German Nazi official during World War II

To his officers on German Police Day (February, 1941), as quoted in Gestapo : Instrument of Tyranny (1956) by Edward Crankshaw, p. 103

People, Way, Nature, Problem

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

in Spain
As quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.

People, Animals, Personality, Wealth

“Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner's own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

Men, People, Sense

“Nor did they succeed in hanging me on the gallows, for you rescued me with your blood from the infamous conspiracy case. That day, right here on this racecourse, I had pledged to you that I would pay this debt with my own blood. Do you remember? I am ready today to fulfill that promise!”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)

“Helena, do you ever have times when your heart's suddenly struck with the feeling, "Now, now something must happen —"”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Feeling, Time, Heart

“If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.”

Albert Bandura Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency

[Albert Bandura, 1982, Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency, American Psychologist, 37, 2, 122-147, 10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122, 0003-066X] (p. 127)

People

“You dull your own perceptions
with false imaginings and do not grasp
what would be clear but for your preconceptions.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto I, lines 88–90 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Imagination, Falseness

“Do not demand love. Begin to love. You will be loved. It is the law and no statute can alter it. If we do not follow the law, and let the law die with the teacher, we shall become accomplices to the murderer. But if follow the law with our hearts, [Bapu] will live with us and through us.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

Rajagopalachari (12 February 1949), quoted in [Rajmohan Gandhi, Rajaji: A Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=JjPHeRd7_UYC&pg=PA475, 1997, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-026967-3, 286]
Spoken by C.R when Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) was assassinated.

Love, Law, Teachers, Heart

“When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Appearance

“The problem is the fake products today are of better quality and better price than the real names … They are exactly the same factories, exactly the same raw materials but they do not use the names.”

Jack Ma (1964) Chinese businessman

Responding to the accusation that Alibaba sells fake merchandise. "Jack Ma Says Fakes 'Better Quality and Better Price Than the Real Names'” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/06/15/jack-ma-says-fakes-better-quality-and-better-price-than-the-real-names/, CHINA REAL TIME REPORT, The Wall Street Journal (June 15, 2016)

Problem

“I know it's easy to imagine but its easier to just "do"
If you can't "do" what you imagine
then what is imagination to you?”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Enter Galactic
Music

Imagination

“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Literature, Support, Nature, Forgetting

“Recently somebody asked me if I’m still in touch with my feminine side. They ask me why did I do the Lux ad and things like that. I think there is a feminine side to me, as people like to assume.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Rajeev Masand

People, Thinking

“It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”… The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.”

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

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 74-75

Way, Nature, Tree, Christ

“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

Benjamin W. Lee (1935–1977) Korean American physicist

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Way, Feeling, Game, Parting