Quotes about down
page 47

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

John Stuart Mill photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Alan Greenspan photo

“We are obviously all hurt by inflation. Everybody is hurt by inflation. If you really wanted to examine who percentage-wise is hurt the most in their incomes, it is the Wall Street brokers. I mean their incomes have gone down the most.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

At a conference on inflation, Washington, D.C. (September 19, 1974). In Report of the Health, Education, and Welfare, Income Security, Social Services Conference on Inflation (1974), pp. 804–5.
1970s

H. D. Deve Gowda photo
Robert Stawell Ball photo
Ray Charles photo
Mike Watt photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Ted Nelson photo

“Everybody has only a 24-hour day. Most people, if they increase consumption of one medium (like magazines or books) will cut down on another (like TV). This drastically reduces the sort of growth some people have been expecting.”

Ted Nelson (1937) American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist; coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

Dream Machines
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974, rev. 1987)

Paul Klee photo
Allan Kaprow photo
Madonna photo
James Herriot photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“"The door is locked, Captain." "Then I'll break it down." "It is a shrine." "Then I'll say a prayer of forgiveness after I've knocked it down."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Pedro Ferreira and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 13
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Bob Dylan photo

“Have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down all the earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon?”

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

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Slow Train

Lucio Russo photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo

“Process-chart notes and information should be collected and set down in sketch form by a highly intelligent man, preferably with an engineering training and experience, but who need not necessarily have been previously familiar with the actual details of the processes. In fact, the unbiased eye of an intelligent and experienced process-chart maker usually brings better results than does the study of a less keen man with more special information regarding present practices of the processes. The mere act of investigating sufficiently to make the notes in good enough condition for the draftsman to copy invariably results in many ideas and suggestions for improvement, and all of these suggestions, good and bad, should be retained and filed together with the description of the process chart. These suggestions and proposed improvements must be later explained to others, such as boards of directors, managers and foremen, and for best results also to certain workmen and clerks who have special craft or process knowledge. To overcome the obstacles due to habit, worship of tradition and prejudice, the more intelligence shown by the process-chart recorder, the sooner hearty cooperation of all concerned will be secured. Anyone can make this form of process chart with no previous experience in making such charts, but the more experience one has in making them, the more certain standard combinations of operations, inspection and transporting can be transferred bodily to advantage to the charts of proposed processes.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Process charts (1921), p. 5-6.

Stevie Wonder photo

“Would you like to go with me
Down my dead end street?
Would you like to come with me
To village ghetto land?”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Village Ghetto Land
Song lyrics, Songs In The Key of Life (1976)

Nikolai Berdyaev photo
Jerry Siegel photo

“Initially, we were turned down by almost every comics publisher in the country.”

Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) American co-creator of Superman

In the beginning (1983)

Sam Harris photo

“We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

[Sam Harris, 10 October 2005, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html, "Bombing Our Illusions", The Huffington Post, 2006-10-16]
2000s

Fred P. Cone photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Brandon Boyd photo
D. S. Bradford photo

“When the rains have fallen down
We can live our lives underground
No recollection of before
We'll make our own history
Fulfill our destiny
For sure, we can save humanity”

D. S. Bradford (1982) musician

A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/D-S-Bradford/A-Call-to-the-Stars-Ii-A-Home-in-the-Sky, verse 1
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)

Alan Moore photo
Bouck White photo
Maria Mitchell photo
Mitt Romney photo
Colette photo

“The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Paris From My Window (1944)

Ray Ozzie photo

“All programs in the future will be written in a way that there is no single point of failure. There's no one server that can die and take down the service.”

Ray Ozzie (1955) American businessman

Ray Ozzie's view from the clouds http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10400244-56.html in CNET (18 November 2009).

Winston S. Churchill photo
Raheem Kassam photo
Norman Angell photo
Peter D. Schiff photo
Pentti Linkola photo

“Finnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970’s winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake...”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Can Life Prevail? (2004) Pentti Linkola Voisiko elämä voittaa - ja millä ehdoilla Tammi 2004 page 65 (Muistettakoon vaikka 1970-luvun talviset satelliittikuvat , joissa vrttunut metsä näkyi mustana ja ukot ja taimikot valkeina. Jo silloin Suomen rajat erottuivat ikään kuin ne olisivat karttaan piirretty.: valkea Suomi mustan karjalan ja mustan Ruotsin välissä. Metsäntutkimuslaitos nikotteli aikansa, kunnes se teki päätöksen, että kuvat ovat väärennettyjä. . . )

Rand Paul photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
Ray Charles photo
Ryan Adams photo
David Myatt photo

“For nearly four decades I placed some ideation, some ideal, some abstraction, before personal love, foolishly - inhumanly - believing that some cause, some goal, some ideology, was the most important thing and therefore that, in the interests of achieving that cause, that goal, implementing that ideology, one's own personal life, one's feelings, and those of others, should and must come at least second if not further down in some lifeless manufactured schemata. My pursuit of such things - often by violent means and by incitement to violence and to disaffection - led, of course, not only to me being the cause of suffering to other human beings I did not personally know but also to being the cause of suffering to people I did know; to family, to friends, and especially to those - wives, partners, lovers - who for some reason loved me. In effect I was selfish, obsessed, a fanatic, an extremist. Naturally, as extremists always do, I made excuses - to others, to myself - for my unfeeling, suffering-causing, intolerant, violent, behaviour and actions; always believing that 'I could make a difference' and always blaming some-thing else, or someone else, for the problems I alleged existed 'in the world' and which problems I claimed, I felt, I believed, needed to be sorted out […] Yet the honest, the obvious, truth was that I - and people like me or those who supported, followed, or were incited, inspired, by people like me - were and are the problem.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Letter To My Undiscovered Self (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/letter-to-self.html

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

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

As quoted in "What a Real President Was Like: To Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society Meant Hope and Dignity" http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/doc/307079109.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Nov+13%2C+1988&author=Moyers%2C+Bill+D&desc=What+a+Real+President+Was+Like%3B+To+Lyndon+Johnson%2C+the+Great+Society+Meant+Hope+and+Dignity, by Bill Moyers, The Washington Post (13 November 1988).
Attributed

Barry Humphries photo
Jerry Glanville photo

“If you think you're tougher than we are, we're going to run a play called 32 Cut, and I don't care if we gain a yard, we're going to knock somebody down.”

Jerry Glanville (1941) American former football player and sports coach

David Albright, Glanville looking for a little more action at Portland State http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/preview07/columns/story?id=2967161, ESPN.com, August 9, 2007.

Maurice Thompson photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Johnny Cash photo
Ann Coulter photo

“We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

On her desire to insure that Bill Clinton would be impeached, as quoted in Uncovering Clinton : A Reporter's Story (1998) by Michael Isikoff, p. 183.
1980s-90s

Bruce Springsteen photo
Stanley Holloway photo
Ralph Ellison photo
Colette Dowling photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo
David Quammen photo
Tod A photo
William Carlos Williams photo

“I liked this because of the elimination of the essential in the composition. I cut it down and down, and down. This squeezed up to make it vivid.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Annotation on "Chicory and Daisies" (1915) on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (c. 1958)
General sources

Robin Morgan photo
Bob Rae photo

“Constitutions do not emerge perfectly formed from the brain of the philosopher king, as Mr. Trudeau himself discovered in 1980 and 1981. They are always messy processes that are easier to knock down or tear apart than they are to construct.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Seven, The Three Questions and the Question of Canada, p. 158

African Spir photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Neil Peart photo
Sarah Palin photo
William Sharp (writer) photo

“Down beyond the haven the tide comes with a shout.”

William Sharp (writer) (1855–1905) Scottish writer

An old Tale of Three, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Doug Stanhope photo
Franz Kafka photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Jerome Frank photo
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk photo

“If you don't have ammunition, you have bayonets! FIX BAYONETS! GET DOWN!”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Instructions to his soldiers to answer an ANZAC attack on Chunuk Bair (25 April 1915)

David Eugene Smith photo
James Salter photo
Michael Ende photo

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.

'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

John Howard photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Clement Attlee photo
Warren G. Harding photo

“Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. … I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by U. S. Marines.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech during Warren Harding's 1920 presidental campaign, critizing Woodrow Wilson's Haitian policies; quoted in Democracy at the Point of Bayonets (1999) by Mark Penceny, p. 2. (The Assistant Secretary of the Navy he refers to is Franklin Roosevelt, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1920).
1920s

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Alvin C. York photo

“I noticed the bushes all around where I stood in my fight with the machine guns were all cut down. The bullets went over my head and on either side. But they never touched me.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

Clarence Darrow photo
Abul A'la Maududi photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin" http://books.google.com/books?id=OF-YSMKCVwMC&q=%22A+proud+man+is+always+looking+down+on+things+and+people+and+of+course+as+long+as+you+are+looking+down+you+cannot+see+something+that+is+above+you%22&pg=PA124#v=onepage
Mere Christianity (1952)

Vladimir Lenin photo
David Lloyd George photo
Fred Dibnah photo

“I set out as a steeplejack in my youth to preserve chimneys. I've finished by knocking most of them down.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“Mahmud, as soon as his eyes fell on this idol, lifted up his battle-axe with much anger, and struck it with such force that the idol broke into pieces. The fragments of it were ordered to be taken to Ghaznin, and were cast down at the threshold of the Jami Masjid where they are lying to this day.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Somnath (Gujarat) . Tarikh-i-Alfi in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 471
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians