Quotes about down
page 40

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Morality and literature,” p. 164
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Marriage, Beauty, Girl, Literature

“Generals and Majors ah ah
They're never too far
away from men who made the grade
out in a world of their own
They'll never come down
until the battle's lost or made”

Colin Moulding (1955) English bassist, songwriter and vocalist

"Generals And Majors"
Black Sea (1980)

Men, World

“We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

People, Family, Loneliness

“Many modifications in private and public life took place. Privacy ceasing to exist, all new houses were glass-built, curtains abolished, walls pulled down. Police went, the entire legal structure vanished overnight — a man does not litigate against himself. A parody of Parliament remained, to deal with foreign affairs, but party politics, elections, leaders in newspapers (even newspapers themselves) were scrapped.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Life, Housing

“In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 117

Courage, Parting

“I lay it down that there is Matter, and also there are Material Species, but unless a Final Cause for them be previously assumed, we shall be, without perceiving it, introducing the doctrine of Epicurus: since if nothing be anterior to two efficient causes, a spontaneous flux and chance must have united the two together.”

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

Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)

Chance

“He didn't care whether slavery was voted up or down, he cared only for the sacred right of the people to make that decision. Why the right of the people should have been sacred, if the results of the exercise of that right were indifferent, Douglas never undertook to say.”

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

2000s, The Speech That Changed the World (2009)

People, Exercises, Decision, Indifference

“Today there are no trees at the South Pole. 70% of the earth today is underwater. Do you know that only 3% of this earth is habitable for mankind! A lot of it is under desert, ice caps, tundra, mountain ranges nobody can live on. Three percent is habitable. What we're seeing today is not what Adam and Eve saw. The Bible says that He formed it to be inhabited. That's why He did it! Probably the pre-Flood world was (I would be just picking a number) and say probably 80% land, and only 20% water. The oceans weren't there! The water was in the crust of the earth or in the canopy overhead. But there were trees from pole to pole before the Flood came. This layer of water above the earth would act as a barrier that would block out UV light and X-rays and other harmful things that come from the sun. You see, the sun produces a lot of stuff besides light. It produces X-rays and gamma rays and beta rays; and all them "ray-boys" come down here! And they're pretty hard on your carcass.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

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

World, Mountain, Boy, Tree

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!’ And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Men, God, World, Communication

“Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“If I really believed in Friedman's economic theory, then I'd be quite satisfied to spend the rest of my life with a garden hose shoved down my throat, being filled with custard by representatives of the people of China.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (13 October, 1988).

Life, People

“The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command”—the desire to bully, override, bear down—the capacity to do so by virtue of office—the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 85)

School, Confidence, Boy, Time

“Even as the light that shifts and plays upon a lake, when Cynthia looks forth from heaven or the bright wheel of Phoebus in mid course passes by, so doth he shed a gleam upon the waters; he heeds not the shadow of the Nymph or her hair or the sound of her as she rises to embrace him. Greedily casting her arms about him, as he calls, alack! too late for help and utters the name of his mighty friend, she draws him down; for her strength is aided by his falling weight.”
Stagna vaga sic luce micant ubi Cynthia caelo prospicit aut medii transit rota candida Phoebi, tale iubar diffundit aquis: nil umbra comaeque turbavitque sonus surgentis ad oscula nymphae. illa avidas iniecta manus heu sera cientem auxilia et magni referentem nomen amici detrahit, adiutae prono nam pondere vires.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 558–564

Light, Water, Help, Drawing

“Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1875) p. 60

Time

“Two slugs slithered on a yellow wood, and sorry that i could not trample both, being one trampler. long i stood and looked them down as feirce as I could to where they sat in the undergrowth…”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Bucky Katt's Big Book of fun, page 114
Bucky Katt

“They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds! This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the "discoverability" is the only error here.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

People, Truth, Error

“The Bill of Rights was, unfortunately misnamed. It was not a list of things Americans were allowed too do, under the Constitution. It was and remains a list of things government is absolutely forbidden to do — like set up a state religion, or steal your house — under any circumstances.
The Bill of Rights was the make-or-break condition that allowed the Constitution to be ratified. No Bill of Rights, no Constitution. And since all political authority in America "trickles down" from the Constitution, no Constitution no government. And, since the Bill of Rights was passed as a unit, a single breach, in any one of the ten articles, breaches them all and with them, the entire Constitution. Every last bit of the authority that derives from it becomes null and void.
Let's review:
No Second Amendment, no Bill of Rights.
No Bill of Rights, no Constitution.
No Constitution, no government.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Deal," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2013/tle747-20131201-02.html 1 December 2013.

Religion, Housing

“I believe that there are varying points of contact. You have to be able to see the whole thing first. All great paintings are sculptures – there's so much of the factualness about it that a great painting forces you into a visual, physical movement of yourself. That's what determines the way you experience a painting kinetically. You move closer, you sight down it, you till your head, you step back, you feel as though you are in it. That being in it is just as important as looking from a distance.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way, Feeling, Painting

“Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 200.

Question

“If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier…”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Young British Soldier, Stanza 12.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Lie, Support, Waiting, Fight

“I never did feel like a star. I was always uptight about something and uncomfortable and not very good. I felt weighed down by it, the pressure. It's terrible I should have enjoyed it but I didn't; I was thinking about what we should do all the time, I wasn't able to run with it.”

Kevin Rowland (1953) English singer-songwriter

Interview - March 2010

Feeling, Star, Thinking, Time

“The hope of the nation and of Christendom, and of the lands called heathen, alike is to be found in the indoctrination of little children in the knowledge of God's truth; for the missionaries will tell you that the adult heathen population of to-day are to die heathen; the minister will tell you that the adult, virtually heathen population of Christian lands to-day are to die in that condition, unless God showers down altogether unprecedented grace — with only such occasional exceptions as confirm this general and terrible law. If this be so, the hope of Christianity is in childhood. Towards childhood must be directed the work of the sappers and miners of the church. Here is the weak point of the enemy's fortress. Here let the breach be made, and his topmost turret shall be laid low.”

Cyrus David Foss (1834–1910) American bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 570.

God, Children, Truth, Law

“The League of Nations fell, not because its principles were wrong, but because they were not practised. A new world organization must be created. Its nucleus was in the United Nations, and its foundation stone the close cooperation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the United States, and the U. S. S. R. … They wanted an organization embracing small as well as great nations, but on the three, on account of their strength, the greatest responsibility for preserving the peace of the world must fall. A world organization to preserve peace must have power at its disposal. So long as there was a danger of wolves the sheep-dog must have strong teeth. It was time that the nations of Europe should settle down as good citizens in a world of States. In the British Commonwealth of Nations it was shown how freedom was compatible with unity. If peace was to be preserved there must be some cession of sovereignty, but membership of a large organization did not conflict with the reasonable claims of nations to live their own lives.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Caxton Hall, London (12 December 1944), quoted in The Times (13 December 1944), p. 2.
War Cabinet

World, Peace, Dogs, Freedom

“Head like a hole,
Black as your soul.
I'd rather die than give you control.
Head like a hole,
Black as your soul.
I'd rather die than give you control.Bow down before the one you serve;
You're going to get what you deserve.”

Trent Reznor (1965) American musician

Head Like a Hole.
Song lyrics

Soul

“I have long known of Mr. Shaw, read his plays and prefaces, and loved him. I admire heroic effort. Accomplishment I love. What I am about to say is no invention, and I am putting it down for whatever it may be worth to the historian of literature and for the student of influences of men on men, and because it is true and must therefore be made known. As a boy, charging pell-mell through literature, reading everything I could lay hands on in the Public Library of Fresno, I found many men to whom I felt deeply grateful — especially Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, and H. L. Mencken — but the first man to whom I felt definitely related was George Bernard Shaw. This is a presumptuous or fatuous thing to mention, perhaps, but even so it must be mentioned.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Hello Out There (1941)

Love, Men, Guy, Boy

“Allow me to congratulate you, and, through you, the people of Oregon, that peace and prosperity surround us. The prospects for Oregon were never more promising, save the shadows from the fires of secession which are blazing around our childhood homes. Though we have had a winter of unprecedented severity and devastating floods, no traitorous hand has been raised to tear down our national flag and subvert our beloved institutions.”

A. C. Gibbs (1825–1886) American politician

A. C. Gibbs (September 1862) " Governor A. C. Gibbs Inaugural Address, 1862 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777833", Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State, Source: Journals. Local Laws Oregon., 1862, Appendix, Special Message, Page 58.

People, Peace, Home, Tear

“At first I did not feel much inclined to agree [ Willem Maris had asked Mauve to paint together in open air, around the village Oosterbeek, c. 1863 ], but I did not like to refuse the little fellow flatly, so we went off together. My companion did not suffer from loquacity; and, coming to a field with cows in it, I sat down to go on with a drawing which I had begun that morning. The little chap strolled around a bit and then settled down to work himself. We sat there for hours under the pollards, until I grew curious to see what the little fellow was at. He sat sketching with a bit of chalk; but, oh! I stood astounded. I seized him by the hand and stammered in my turn, 'My boy, what an artist you are! You stagger me! It's magnificent!”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

Quote of Anton Mauve, c. 1863-65; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908 1860's

Feeling, Boy, Suffering, Drawing

“Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest.
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle,
No flowers no wedding dress.That night we went down to the river.
And into the river we'd dive.
Oh down to the river we did ride.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The River"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Smile, Flowers, Birthday, Wedding

“In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 79.

Law

“I've been blessed with playing the drums and having a young mind and staying healthy. I’m a vegetarian, I take good care of myself. I'll be the last Skynyrd standing. All those guys smoke themselves to death. They all drank themselves to death, drugs. … I still have stainless steel from the knee down in my right leg; I have bone against bone against stainless steel against nerve ending. Every step I take is painful, but when I play drums I push everything away, I get into the zone and I do what I’m supposed to do. … I play Lynyrd Skynyrd music because that's who I am. Everything else has been taken from me, my reputation, my world, my money has all been stolen from me by people that I thought loved me. However they can't take away my ability to play drums.”

Artimus Pyle (1948) American musician

"Rock Survivor: Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle keeps the music alive his way" http://tbrnews.com/lifestyle/rock-survivor-lynyrd-skynyrd-drummer-artimus-pyle-keeps-the-music/article_1c30bfee-1501-11e3-8bdb-001a4bcf887a.html, interview with The Beach Reporter (4 September 2013).

Love, Death, Money, Pain

“So he prayed to the Almighty for aid, and left Ghazni on the 10th of Sha'ban 414 H., with 30,000 horse besides volunteers, and took the road to Multan which place he reached in the middle of Ramazan. The road from thence to India was through a barren desert, where there were neither inhabitants or food. So he collected provisions for the passage, and loading 30,000 camels with water and corn, he started for Anhilwara. After he had crossed the desert, he perceived on one side a fort full of people, in which there were wells. people came down to conciliate him, but he invested the place, and God gave him victory over it, for the hearts of the inhabitants failed them through fear. So he brought the place under the sway of Islam, killed the inhabitants, and broke in pieces their images. His men carried away water with them from thence and marched for Anhalwara, where they arrived at the begging of Zi-l Ka'da.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Ali ibn al-Athir: Kamilu’t-Tawarikh, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 469
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Men, God, People, Fear

“The invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills. The fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists. The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts. The lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look benignly down upon them saying, "Little children, love one another."”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 41 : Learning To Forget

Love, Life, Happiness, Children

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Love, Pain, Hate, People

“No, no, lot of things are going on folks, lot of things. I think she's actually getting pumped up, if you want to know the truth, she's getting pumped up, you understand? In fact we're going to be talking about that in a few minutes. She's getting pumped up for Wednesday night. Let's see. You know, I don't know, maybe, we're like athletes, right? Hey, look, I beat seventeen senators, governors, I beat all these people, we're like athletes. Hillary beat Bernie, although it looks like Bernie got a little bit of a bad deal based on Wikileaks, right? If you look at Wikileaks. But we're like athletes, right? So athletes, they're making them more and more, but athletes, they make them take a drug test, right? I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate, I do. I think we should, why don't we do that? We should take a drug test, prior, because I don't know what's going on with her. But at the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, "Uh, take me down."”

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

She could barely reach her car. So I think we should take a drug test, I'm, er, anyway I'm willing to do it. At a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, about his rival Hillary Clinton's performance during the presidential debates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mE7YkeasOA (15 October 2016) 2010s, 2016, October

People, Truth, Cars, Understanding

“She walked and walked, daring to be happy, risking the wrath of the Gods. She raised her large smiling face to the sun and when she was not struck down, dared to hope for herself again.”

Susan Ruth Johnson (1959)

Page 145.
Hungry Ghosts (1996)

God, Happiness, Smile, Hope

“Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.”

René Daumal (1908–1944) French poet and writer

Vol. 2, Essais et Notes
The Lie of the Truth (1938)

Truth, Hope, Error

“I went outside, tripping over slabs of sunshine the size of towns. The sun was like a crowd of people, it was a party, it was music. The sun was blaring through the walls of the houses and beating down the steps. The Sun was drumming time into the stone. The sun was rhythming the day.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping (2004), p. 197

People, Music, Time, Sun

“"You've killed me. Why'd you want to kill me," he said, and died. The expression of hurt surprise and wounded reproach and sheer inability to understand stayed on his face like a forgotten suitcase left at the station, and gradually hardened there. Prew stood looking down at him, still shocked by the reproving question.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

Understanding, Question, Hurt

“She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green.
Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven.
She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous.
Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

One of Those Nights
Song lyrics, Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)

Life, Way, Hell, Light

“On the other hand, the State is an anti-social organization, originating in conquest and concerned only with the confiscation of property. The State began with the practice of nomadic tribes swooping down on some agricultural community, confiscating the movable wealth and, after slaying the less productive inhabitants, carrying off to slavery a number of others. Slavery is the first institution of the State.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 147

Communication, Wealth

“… I have been very fond of Jason ever since the time when I was putting human charity on trial and as he came home from the chase he met me at the mouth of the Anaurus. The river was in spate, for all the mountains and their high spurs were under snow and cataracts were roaring down their sides. I was disguised as an old woman and he took pity on me, lifted me up, and carried me across the flood on his shoulders. For that, I will never cease to honour him.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 66–74; spoken by Hera.

Home, Mountain, Time

“This was in Milwaukee when I was eleven years old. I went to see my sister give a dramatic reading. She'd been taking drama lessons. I walked into the hall, and there was a little stage at the other end, and maybe 150 people, parents mostly, or children like myself. The lights went down slowly, very slowly. Then it was dark. Spotlights hit the stage, and there was my sister, standing there in the. At that moment I thought, that must be the most beautiful thing in the world, to be able to arrange things so that people have to listen to you. "So, that's why I became an actor. Well, anyway, my analyst says it's better than running naked in Central Park…”

Gene Wilder (1933–2016) American actor

Interview with Roger Ebert (July 11, 1971) INTERVIEW WITH GENE WILDER http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-with-gene-wilder

Children, People, World, Beauty

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn't be tainted.”

Ross Macdonald book The Drowning Pool

The Drowning Pool (1952)

Mountain

“There was very little that prevented the vandalism of 1793 from suddenly producing a second revolution as marvelous as the first was horrible. The whole human race was approaching its release; the civilized, barbarian, and savage order would have disappeared forever if the Convention, which trampled down all prejudices, had not bowed down before the only one that had to be destroyed, the institution of marriage.”

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) French utopian socialist and philosopher

Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 304-5
New Amorous World

Marriage

“I think Mr. Reagan has done very well under very difficult circumstances. He's had terrific problems physically and he's managed them very well. But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn't done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoke marijuana once? And this man (Judge Ginsburg) found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women (he knew) before he got in.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Liz Smith, United Press (November 23, 1987) "A Whale of an Interview With Bette Davis", San Francisco Chronicle, p. F1.

Women, God, Youth, Problem

“Come here my love
And I will lift my spirits high for you
I'd like to fly away and spend a day or two
Just contemplating the fields and leaves and talking about nothing
Just layin' down in shades of effervescent, effervescent odors
And shades of time and tide.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Come Here My Love
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Love, Time, Flying

“I perceived that, in order to make the best use of steam, it was necessary—first, that the cylinder should be maintained always as hot as the steam which entered it; and, secondly, that when the steam was condensed, the water of which it was composed, and the injection itself, should be cooled down to 100°, or lower, where that was possible. The means of accomplishing these points did not immediately present themselves; but early in 1765 it occurred to me, that if a communication were opened between a cylinder containing steam, and another vessel which was exhausted of air and other fluids, the steam, as an elastic fluid, would immediately rush into the empty vessel, and continue so to do until it had established an equilibrium; and if that vessel were kept very cool by an injection, or otherwise, more steam would continue to enter until the whole was condensed.”

James Watt (1736–1819) British engineer

"Notes on Professor Robison's Dissertation on Steam-engines" (1769)

Communication, Water

“Kuhn cannot take seriously that “there is some one full, objective, true account of nature.” Does this mean that he does not take truth seriously? Not at all. […]
Kuhn did reject a simple “correspondence theory” which says true statements correspond to facts about the world. […]
In the wave of skepticism that swept American scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, many influential intellectuals took Kuhn as an ally in their denials of truth as a virtue. I mean the thinkers of the sort that cannot write down or utter the word true except by literally or figuratively putting quotation marks around it—to indicate how they shudder at the very thought of so harmful a notion. Many reflective scientists, who admire much of what Kuhn says about the sciences, believe he encouraged deniers.
It is true that Structure gave enormous impetus to sociological studies of science. Some of that work, with its emphasis on the idea that facts are “socially constructed” and apparent participation in the denial of “truth,” is exactly what conservative scientists protest against. Kuhn made plain that he himself detested that development of his work…”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Truth, World, Idea, Nature

“We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They [Arabs] should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States. What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors?”

Robert Kilroy-Silk (1942) British politician

Sunday Express, 4 January 2004 ( full text of the column http://www.caabu.org/campaigns/kilroy-article.html) This column resulted in Kilroy-Silk's dismissal from the BBC.

Women, God, People, Way

“Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

“Then legionaries wrote down several maxims I collected either from the Gospels or from other writings. They embelished our walls. Here are some of them: "God carries us on His victorious chariot." "Whoever wins…. I shall be his God." "He who does not have a sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one." "Fight bravely for faith." "Avoid carnal pleasures, for they kill the soul." "Be vigilant." "Do not destroy the hero that is in you." "Brothers in fortune… as in misfortune." "Whoever knows how to die, will never be a slave."”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

"I await the resurrection of my Fatherland and the destruction of the hordes of traitors," etc.
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

God, Pleasure, Faith, Soul

“A Spring returns, and they more youthful made;
But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid.”

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) Anglo-American poet

Contemplations.

Youth, Spring

“I believe that we need to bring a significant number of our troops home. That’s the only that we send a clear message to the government of Iraq that we’re serious about this and that they need to start taking responsibility for their own country…. I am one who does not believe that we can bring all the troops home tomorrow. The situation is too precarious. But I believe we need to start this year, in the very near future, drawing down the troops.”

Amy Klobuchar (1960) United States Senator from Minnesota

Quoted in [interview with Eric Black, Iraq and the Senate Race: Amy Klobuchar, Star Tribune, March 14 2006, http://www.startribune.com/blogs/bigquestion/?page_id=30, 2007-02-25]
2006

Home, Future, Drawing, Country

“There is always the right of the strong to take the weak and the rich to take the poor and the powerful to take those who have no power. UrLeyn may have written down our laws and changed a few of them, but the laws that still bind us to the animals cut the deepest. Men compete for power, they strut and parade and they impress their fellows with their possessions and they take the women they can. None of that has changed. They may use weapons other than their hands and teeth, they may use other men and they may express their dominance in money, not other symbols of power and glamour, but…”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 335)

Women, Men, Money, Law

“It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call for freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, (January 1963)
1960s

Love, People, History, Freedom

“These are strange times, when we are healthier than ever but more anxious about our health. According to all the standard benchmarks, we've never had it so healthy. Longevity in the West continues to rise -- a typical British woman can now expect to live to seventy-nine, eight years more than just half a century ago, and over double the life expectation when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. Break the figures down a bit and you find other encouraging signs even in the recent past; in 1950, the UK experienced 26,000 infant deaths; within half a century that had fallen by 80 per cent. Deaths in the UK from infectious diseases nearly halved between 1970 and 1992; between 1971 and 1991 stroke deaths dropped by 40 per cent and coronary heart disease fatalities by 19 per cent -- and those are diseases widely perceived to be worsening.”

Roy Porter (1946–2002) British historian

Introduction, lead paragraph; as cited nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/porter-benefit.html 1998 The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1997)

Life, Death, Health, Disease

“My body feels young but my mind is very old
So what do you say / You can't give me the dreams that are mine anyway / You're half the world away
I've been lost, I've been found / But I don't feel down”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Half the World Away, 18 December 1994
B-sides released by Oasis

World, Dreams, Feeling

“I just wanted to study how to portray clairvoyance, and I finally took an ocular approach. She has these beautiful blue eyes and her gaze is gently penetrating. All the obvious stuff about her you can find online but I wanted more of the nitty-gritty, like how did it affect her sex life? If you're domestic ballbuster by day and a ghostbuster by night, how does that affect your home life? I opted not to go down to their museum of the occult that they maintain in the basement, Patrick and I both. We stayed upstairs.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

On getting to know Lorraine Warren for her role in The Conjuring, as quoted in " Vera Farmiga on The Conjuring, Bates Motel, maternal angst … and knitting https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/01/vera-farmiga-conjuring-bates-motel-interview" by John Patterson at The Guardian (August 2, 2013)

Life, Beauty, Sex, Home

“When it comes to computer games, many academics seem to be one step down from judges in their lack of engagement with the real world.”

Richard Bartle (1960) British writer

From Richard Bartle's blog http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2007/QBlog180507A.html, dated 18th May 2007

World, Game

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 185

Soul, Nature, Water

“He fell behind his brothers two or three inches in height, and proportionally in bone and weight. His character and processes of mind seemed to share in this fining-down process of scale. He was not good in a fight, and his nerves were more delicate than boys' nerves ought to be. He exaggerated these weaknesses as he grew older. The habit of doubt; of distrusting his own judgment and of totally rejecting the judgment of the world; the tendency to regard every question as open; the hesitation to act except as a choice of evils; the shirking of responsibility; the love of line, form, quality; the horror of ennui; the passion for companionship and the antipathy to society — all these are well-known qualities of New England character in no way peculiar to individuals but in this instance they seemed to be stimulated by the fever, and Henry Adams could never make up his mind whether, on the whole, the change of character was morbid or healthy, good or bad for his purpose. His brothers were the type; he was the variation.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love, World, Way, Boy

“All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Boulevard.
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Free Fallin, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Full Moon Fever (1989)

Home, Girl, Boy, Heart

“Ultimately, knowledge worker performance comes down to the behaviors of individual knowledge workers.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Source: Thinking for a Living, 2005, p. 111

Behavior, Knowledge

“Jim Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of the Jelly-beans well below the Mason-Dixon line.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Jelly-Bean"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Feeling, Season

“Well I don't know why I came here tonight.
I got the feeling that something ain't right.
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs.
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.”

Gerry Rafferty (1947–2011) Scottish singer and songwriter

Stuck in the Middle with You, written with Joe Egan, from the Stealers Wheel album Stealers Wheel (1972).
Song lyrics, With Stealers Wheel

Feeling

“I could trace own EST brainwave to a flight back from a trip to Japan. But, of course, great ideas are often simultaneously conceived by several people who have responded in a similar way to the climate of thinking, and it can be hard to pin down when and precisely how a flash of inspiration is born. Kaplan had taught me that good ideas are a dime of dozen for a smart person, and the only thing that distinguishes good from great is in how an idea is executed—how it becomes reality. Scientific history is littered with stories of one person having an idea but not following through on it only to see another have a similar inspiration and then prove it to be valid.”

Craig Venter (1946) American biochemist

A Life Decoded by Craig Venter, p. 129 http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Life_Decoded.html?id=jx9JsHry1PgC&pg=PA129

People, Way, History, Idea

“When my neighbor A—broke in business, and twenty-four hours made him a bankrupt, he came home, saying to himself, "Well, my money is gone, but Jesus is left." He did not merely come down to "hardpan," he came to something far more solid — to the everlasting arms. When another friend laid her beautiful boy in his coffin, after the scarlet fever had done its worst, she laid her own sorrowful heart upon the everlasting arms. The dear little sleeper was there already. The Shepherd had His lamb.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 594.

Money, Beauty, Home, Boy

“All this sitting about in cafés to calm down
Simply wears me out. And their idea of literature!
The idiotic cut of the stanzas; the novels, full up, gross.

I have lived it, and I know too much.
My café nerves are breaking me
With black, exhausting information.”

Rosemary Tonks (1928–2014) British poet

The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas

Literature, Idea

“There was a time,' Nikolai Artemyevitch resumed, 'when daughters did not allow themselves to look down on their parents—when the parental authority forced the disobedient to tremble. That time has passed, unhappily: so at least many persons imagine; but let me tell you, there are still laws which do not permit—do not permit—in fact there are still laws. I beg you to mark that: there are still laws”

Ivan Turgenev book On the Eve

Source: On the Eve (1860), Ch. 30.

Law, Imagination, Parent, Time

“Most of the time I sit down with my guitar or at the piano, and I play for awhile until I get a new riff or groove that I like a lot. Then I'll concentrate on building around that line of thought by adding words and textures. At first I'm only trying to please myself, and hopefully what I like will appeal to others.”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

Swingin' Chicks of the 60s http://www.swinginchicks.com/jackie_deshannon.htm (September 2000)

Time

“I'm going down 2 Alphabet Street
I'm gonna crown the first girl that I meet
I'm gonna talk so sexy
She'll want me from my head 2 my feet.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Alphabet St.
Song lyrics, Lovesexy (1988)

Girl

“Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

The World; A Rising Sense That Iraq's Hussein Must Go, New York Times, July 7, 1991, 2008-01-13 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDC1530F934A35754C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all,

World

“Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?”

Stewart Brand book Whole Earth Discipline

Whole Earth Discipline (2009), page 277.

Tear, Housing

“Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees.”
Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur." Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur."
Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.
De Providentia (On Providence), 2.6; translation by John W. Basore
Moral Essays

Love, Men, God, Suffering

“It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?"… By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly's question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday "Trafigura" was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers.
… One or two legal experts uncovered the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, wondering if that would help? Common #hashtags were quickly developed, making the material easily discoverable. By lunchtime – an hour before we were due in court – Trafigura threw in the towel. The textbook stuff – elaborate carrot, expensive stick – had been blown away by a newspaper together with the mass collaboration of total strangers on the web. Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger " The Trafigura fiasco tears up the textbook http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook" The Guardian, Wednesday 14 October 2009; As cited in Paul Bradshaw, ‎Liisa Rohumaa (2013) The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to survive and thrive in the Digital Age. p. 176. 2000s

Home, Search, Question, Light

“It is important to remember that when the body tells you to sleep or rest, it does so because it needs time to rejuvenate itself. Therefore, getting proper rest will help all aspects of existence. […] Try to eat no later than three hours before lying down. If you want to maximize the nourishing benefits of sleep, you should try to go to bed before 10 p. m.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 23

Lying, Sleep, Time, Help

“Muhammad Tughlaq confined Shaikhzada Jami in an iron cage leading to his death. Under him punishments laid down by the Shariat were scrupulously awarded. The mother of prince Masud was ordered by the Sultan to be stoned to death for adultery, the verdict having been pronounced by Qazi Kamaluddin. Ibn Battutah relates that on one occasion he himself as Qazi gave eighty stripes to one Razi of Multan for making himself drunk and stealing five hundred dinars. He also says that during Muhammad Tughlaq's reign people used to admit uncommitted crimes and courted death to escape torture. When the royal order was issued for the execution of any person, he was executed at the gate of the palace where his corpse remained for three days. The Diwan-i-Siyasat worked vigorously and every day hundreds of culprits were brought for punishments.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Death, People, Personality

“In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I'd make one a week and finally I'd pull a bad one about once a month. Now, I'm trying to keep it down to one a season.”

Lou Gehrig (1903–1941) American baseball player

SPORT Magazine's All-Time All Stars (Quentin Reynolds)

Game, Season

““You know the answers, but just between ourselves, that sketch smells a bit. It’s sloppy.”
“I never did have any artistic talent,” Art said defensively. “I’d rather take a photograph any day.”
“You’ve taken too many photographs, maybe. As for artistic talent, I haven’t any either, but I learned to sketch. Look, Art—the rest of you guys get this, too—if you can’t sketch, you can’t see. If you really see what you’re looking at, you can put it down on paper, accurately. If you really remember what you have looked at, you can sketch it accurately from memory.”
“But the lines don’t go where I intend them to.”
“A pencil will go where you push it. It hasn’t any life of its own. The answer is practice and more practice and thinking about what you are looking at. All of you lugs want to be scientists. Well, the ability to sketch accurately is as necessary to a scientist as his slipstick. More necessary, you can get along without a slide rule.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Rocket Ship Galileo

Source: Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), Chapter 10, “The Method of Science”, p. 108

Life, Art, Guy, Thinking

“When I first came up with the lines, I don't know what it is, but you got to do it/ I don't know where to go but you got to be there, I was at this party for The Strokes in New York. There was this prevailing sense of, 'We're not quite sure what's happening or what is cool, but we know that it's somewhere around here, in this room.' It was this vague confusion, with everybody kind of sniffing for blood. It wasn't that it was a bad party, or that I don't like The Strokes; I just think there's a lot of confusion right now in the music business. Then, later on, I realized the song was really personal. I didn't know where I was, and I didn't know I was actually lost. It wasn't about the party at all; it's about searching but not knowing what you're searching for. There's the train motif, being on this train heading for either oblivion or salvation – and just holding on for dear life. That song came down from some mountain somewhere, because it was right after I wrote it that I sort of packed it in.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

About I Don't Know What It Is,

Life, Music, Search, Mountain

“The Dyer backed away from him another step and stood watching him, the exaltation in his face clouding slowly over until it was replaced by a strange, heavy look; it was as if reasoning thought were laboring to break through the storm of words and feelings and visions that confused him. Finally he turned around without a word and began to run back down the road, into the haze of dust that had not yet settled on his tracks.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 6, "Lorbanery"

Feeling

“The musicians had played on the deck as the ship went down. They had forfeited their lives for the sake of others. They had played the tunes of hymns to induce a spirit of peace and calm. They were heroic.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 13

Peace

“If upon a white canvas I jot down some sensations of blue, of green, of red – every new brush stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I set out to paint an interior... If I paint a green near the red, if I paint in a yellow floor, there must still be between this green, this yellow, and the white of the canvas a relation that will be satisfactory to me. But these several tones mutually weaken one another. It is necessary, therefore, that the various elements that I use be so balanced that they do not destroy one another..”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

Painting

“Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Repeated chorus.
Atlantis (1968)

Way

“The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds—
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Liner She's a Lady, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

War, Sea

“Oh who and oh who will sing Jesus down
to help with struggling and doing without and being colored
all through blue Monday?
Till way next Sunday?”

Robert Hayden (1913–1980) American writer and academic

Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday (lines 10-13), from Collected Poems (1985)

Color, Way, Singing, Help

“How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Miro, on English Wikipedia
Miró's quote on 'automatic painting and drawing', explaining the start of his work 'Harlequin's Carnival' he made in Paris, strongly admired then by Surrealists like André Breton
1915 - 1940

Home, Idea, Thinking, Drawing

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly, down in Texas. I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous—or treasonous in my opinion.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-08-16
Perry: We'd Lynch Ben Bernanke In Texas
Andrew
Sullivan
The Dish
The Daily Beast
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/perry-wed-lynch-ben-bernanke-in-texas.html
2011

Money, Guy, History, Time

“The opera-glasses she stole from the bookcase so that each morning she could look through them down into the street in order to make people bigger and bring them close to her in order to feel less lonely.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 263

People, Feeling

“I do like movies that take a toll on the audience. I want to work the subconscious. I want to involve you in ways in which you might not necessarily want to get involved. I want to play off those things that you're expecting to get when the lights go down and the 20th Century Fox logo comes up. There's an audience expectation and I'm interested in how movies play with--and off--that expectation. That's what I'm interested in.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

Fightin Words (1999)

Way, Light

“Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet… Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street.”

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

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Things Have Changed (recorded 1999)

Love, Feeling

“Once knowing is no longer understood as the search for an iconic representation of ontological reality but, instead, as a search for fitting ways of behaving and thinking, the traditional problem disappears. Knowledge can now be seen as something which the organism builds up in the attempt to order the as such amorphous flow of experience by establishing repeatable experiences and relatively reliable relations between them. The possibilities of constructing such an order are determined and perpetually constrained by the preceding steps in the construction. That means that the “real” world manifests itself exclusively there where our constructions break down. But since we can describe and explain these breakdowns only in the very concepts that we have used to build the failing structures, this process can never yield a picture of a world that we could hold responsible for their failure.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Glasersfeld (1984) "An Introduction to Radical Constructivism", as cited in: Frederick Burwick, Walter Pape (1990) Aesthetic Illusion: Theoretical and Historical Approaches. pp.26-27

World, Way, Search, Failure