Quotes about down
page 82

“This spirit thrusts itself forward, confident of commendation and esteem. It is superior to all, monarch of all it surveys; hence it should be subservient to nothing, finding no task too heavy, and nothing strong enough to weigh down the shoulders of a man.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind

Confidence, Strong, Self-confidence

“It is interesting to notice that the extreme pessimist and the extreme optimist agree on at least one point. They both feel that we must sit down and do nothing in the area of race relations. The extreme optimist says do nothing because integration is inevitable. The extreme pessimist says do nothing because integration is impossible. But there is a third attitude that can be taken, namely the realistic position. The realist in this area seeks to combine the truths of two opposites, while avoiding the extremes of both, and so the realist would agree with the optimist that we have come a long, long way in grappling with this problem, but he would balance that by agreeing with the pessimist that we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved in the United States. And it is this realistic position that I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together as we think of progress and as we think of the future of integration.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Truth, Way, Feeling, Problem

“Even in terms of breaking down the barriers of segregation, there is still much to be done. It may be true, as I just said, figuratively speaking that old man segregation is on his deathbed. But history has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. And so segregation is still with us. We still confront it in the South in its glaring and conspicuous forms. We still confront it in every other section of this country in its hidden and subtle forms. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die, for racial segregation is a cancer in the body politic. Segregation must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Health, Democracy, History, Country

“Work me Lord, work me Lord.
Please don't you leave me,
I feel so useless down here
With no one to love
Though I've looked everywhere
And I can't find me anybody to love,
To feel my care.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Work Me, Lord", from her album I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969) was written by her bandmate Nick Gravenites, whom she credits at the start of her famous performance of the song at the Woodstock Music Festival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsDFbwMCTKY, as well as others, such as a live performance in Stockholm (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-irXmqIzGA Misattributed

Love, Making love, Feeling

“Family is not a social institution that should be overthrown. But is should be transformed. The claim of ownership over women and children, handed down from the hierarchy, should be abandoned.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp. 79

Women, Children, Family

“Our intuition gets obscured by the fears and beliefs that we have erected in front of it. When we lose trust in our intuitive knowledge, we begin to close down that channel of information by ignoring it. The good news is, though we may shut out the messages we receive from the higher self, the higher self continues to give them, so it is impossible to completely lose the ability to be intuitive.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Fear, Knowledge, Self-confidence

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Love, Wisdom, Making love

“We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.”

Phyllis Diller (1917–2012) American actress and stand-up comedianne

Children, Funny

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good””

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

God, People, Books, World

“As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!", and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood (Ch. III).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Fear, Clothes

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared."”

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

I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.
1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Death, Men, Truth, World

“For four thousand years the strong had been rushing on in the road of privilege and power, seeking greatness. Christ stood in the path, and said, " Ye seek greatness. Ye are not even in the way to it. Ye are going up, but the way to greatness is down. Let him who would be great be the love-servant of all."”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Greatness consists in the facility and power of going down, and not in the facility of going up.
Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 26

Love, Making love, Way, Strong

“The legal system can force open doors, and sometimes-even knock down walls, but it cannot build bridges. That job belongs to you and me. The country can't do it. Afro and White, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, our fates are bound together. We can run from each other, but we cannot escape each other. We will only attain freedom if we learn to appreciate what is different, and muster the courage to discover what is fundamentally the same. America's diversity offers so much richness and opportunity. Take a chance, won't you? Knock down the fences, which divide. Tear apart the walls that imprison you. Reach out. Freedom lies just on the other side. We shall have liberty for all.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Speech delivered on September 6, 1990, before the Annual Judicial Conference of the Second Circuit, quoted in Supreme Justice Speeches and Writings Thurgood Marshall. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (2002).

Fate, Education, Courage, Tear

“We went on the day on the boat train. I was 7, I had never seen a ship before. It looked very big. Everybody was very excited. We went down to the cabin and that's when my mother said to my father that she had made up her mind quite firmly that she would not go to bed in that ship. She would sit up at night. She decided that she wouldn't go to bed at night and she didn't!" I saw that ship sink, "I never closed my eyes. I didn't sleep at all. I saw it, I heard it, and nobody could possibly forget it." "I can remember the colours, the sounds, everything," she said. "The worst thing I can remember are the screams." "It seemed as if once everybody had gone, drowned, finished, the whole world was standing still. There was nothing, just this deathly, terrible silence in the dark night with the stars overhead." The band played one version of 'Nearer My God to Thee' of which there are three and the one they played was the one that was played in church."”

Eva Hart (1905–1996) Titanic survivor

"I never closed my eyes at all – I saw that ship sink. And I saw that ship break in half. Interview from 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5J43Z9AWI, quoted in New York Times, 16 February 1996

God, World, Star, Sleep

“I felt everything crashing down and I didn't know what to do. It was such a harrowing experience being with his body. I sat in a room with him all night, his body, dealing with the police. And then I had to go to the border and deal with immigration and have all of his papers…By the time I got back to San Diego, I had forgotten English. It took me a minute to get back into being an American. I had only one way to deal with it, which was writing. I had been writing since high school, and so I wrote about it…”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On how his father’s death propelled him towards writing in “Mexican-American Author Finds Inspiration In Family, Tragedy And Trump” https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/590839936/mexican-american-author-finds-inspiration-in-family-tragedy-and-trump in NPR (2018 Mar 5)

School, Way, Time, Night

“As a seven-year-old, I remember people were appalling – they would just comment on his physicality…We’d walk down the street together and people would shout out insults. I remember feeling incredibly angry.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On becoming a disability rights advocate after witnessing the treatment that her stepfather received from having polio in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted’” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/19/saffron-burrows-i-was-raised-to-feel-like-i-could-love-who-i-wanted in The Guardian (2020 Feb 19)

People, Feeling

“It was just a bowl of peasant's clay, red brown in color, thickly made and rough to the touch, not perfectly round, with a small indentation on one side where the potter had damaged the unfired clay. It was worth pennies, perhaps nothing. Yet it was the greatest treasure of Christendom. And he kissed it once, and then he drew back his strong archer's right arm, ran down to the sucking sea's edge, and threw it as far and as hard as he could. He hurled it away and it span for an instant above the gray waves, seemed to fly a heartbeat longer as if it were reluctant to let go of mankind, and then the bowl was gone.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Color, Kiss, Strong, Flying

“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it, and die for it. The Church would make money from it, it would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror in men's hearts. So he would do what Planchard had said he would do. 'Hurl it into the deepest sea,' he quoted the old Abbott, 'down among the monsters, and tell no one.'”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Men, Money, Lie, Making love

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Are we still of any use?, p. 16

Men, Truth, Art, Way

“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)

Life, Truth, Feeling, Question

“On this day the whole nation at all levels, in all its professions, occupations, and estates, acknowledges the dignity and blessedness of labour. On a day when in former times we heard the rattles of machine-guns and the hate-inspired songs of the class struggle and the Internationale, in this first year of Hitler’s government and the German people is assembled in unanimous, unswerving loyalty to the state, the race (Volk), and the German nation to which we all belong. Every difference is wiped away. The barriers of class hatred and the arrogance of social status that for over 50 years divided the nation from itself have been torn down. Germans of all classes, tribes (Stämme), professions, and denominations have joined hands across the barriers that separated them and have vowed henceforth to live as a community, to work and fight for the fatherland that unites us all. … The class struggle is at an end. The idea of the national community rises above the ruins of the bankrupt liberal-capitalist state. … Thus the German people marches into the future.”

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

Speech at the first Labor Day celebration held under Nazi auspices (1 May 1933) Sheri Berman, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancient Regime to the Present Day, New York, Oxford University Press, (2019) p. 254
1930s

Hate, People, Communication, Idea

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found — and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

From Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon (1964). Baldwin's text for the volume can be found " here https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cibs".

Life, Children, Faith, Lovers

“My dad sat me down, gave me my first paycheck and explained what would be taken out for taxes,” he said. “The top tax rate in Quebec was something like 51 percent and I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, that’s my money!’””

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Money, Thinking

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.””

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

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. "The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Age, World, Boy, Business

“I was on a plane, and the steward was coming down the aisle. "Asian chicken salad…Asian chicken salad…Asian chicken salad…" And he gets to me and he's like, "…chicken salad!"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

What does he think I'm gonna do? "Dis is not de salad of my people! In my homeland, dey use mandarin orange slices...and crispy wonton crunches!"
From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

“Unlike capitalism free enterprise which can only occur truly through voluntary transaction, Socialism can only occur at gunpoint. That's what it comes down to.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Chapter 6 (p. 74)

Children, Way, Time

“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done.”

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

Regarding known coronavirus cases.
White House press conference, , quoted in * 2020-03-11
Coronavirus: US passes 1,000 cases – two weeks after Trump said number would soon be 'close to zero'
Chris Riotta
The Independent
UK
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-cases-us-map-trump-how-many-infected-a9393061.html
2020s, 2020, February

People

“If a Communist shouts “Down with nationalism!”, he means the hypocritical bourgeois patriotism that sees the economy only as a system of slavery. If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Making love, Water

“The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. Forms of the economy, however firm they may seem, are changeable. The national is eternal. If I mix the eternal and the temporal, the eternal will necessarily collapse when the temporal collapses. This was the real cause for the collapse of liberal society. It was rooted not in the eternal, but in the temporal, and when the temporal declined it took the eternal down with it. Today it is only an excuse for a system that brings growing economic misery. That is the only reason why international Jewry organizes the battle of the proletarian forces against both powers, the economy and the nation, and defeat them.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love.”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 5, p. 20
Poetry, Couplets
Source: https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly05hornuoft/page/18/mode/2up

Love, Making love, Tear

“Calm, calm down. The (COVID-19) virus has become rampant. Everyone here is anxious.”

Gao Fu (1961) Chinese virologist and immunologist

Gao Fu (2020) cited in " China Urges Calm Over Virus During ‘Critical Period’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-urges-calm-over-virus-during-critical-period-11580045718" on The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2020.

“When you're white you don't know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it's like to be poor...You don't know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street, or dragged out of a car. And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear, we will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2016-03-06
Sanders: If You're White You Don't Know What It's Like To Be Poor
Amanda Terkel
Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ghetto_n_56dce712e4b03a405679062b
2010s, 2016

Making love, Justice, Cars

“It totally matters to me that teenagers think I'm cool. I mean, teens keep their fingers on the pulse of culture. When things shift, it's usually because they shift them. They call the shots. So if teenagers think I'm cool, then hopefully they'll want to get down with whatever I'm doing. My hope is that reading and writing becomes the new "waiting in line to buy Jordans."”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in [Garcia, Elisa, Get to Know Jason Reynolds, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/03/interview-jason-reynolds, New York Public Library, 10 March 2020, April 3, 2015]

Hope, Thinking, Waiting, Reading

“There is a historic battle going on across the west, in Europe, America, and elsewhere. It is globalism against populism. And you may loathe populism, but I’ll tell you a funny thing. It is becoming very popular! And it has great benefits. No more financial contributions, no more European Courts of Justice. No more European Common Fisheries Policy, no more being talked down to. No more being bullied, no more Guy Verhofstadt! What’s not to like. I know you’re going to miss us, I know you want to ban our national flags, but we’re going to wave you goodbye, and we’ll look forward in the future to working with you as a sovereign nation…”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Farage is cut off by the chair
EU Farewell Speech, as quoted in Nigel Farage’s Final EU Speech: Mic Gets Cut as He Waves UK Flag in Victory, Breitbart news
2020

Justice, Guy, Future

“Twiddling is one of my autistic things. I do it to calm me down. I twiddle frantically for a while, and I fantasize about all kinds of things while I twiddle.”

Jonathan Mitchell (1955) American writer and activist

American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome

“Do not think much of me, please. Think kindly of me; but oh, my friend, direct your thoughts to the Eternal Truth. I am, like you, struggling on the road. Perhaps a veil might in an instant fall down from your spirit, and you would be long ahead of us all. The reason you have had help is that in other lives you gave it to others. In every effort you made to lighten another mind and open it to Truth, you were helped yourself. Those pearls you found for another and gave to him, you really retained for yourself in the act of benevolence. For when one lives thus to help others, he is thereby putting in practice the rule to try and "kill out all sense of separateness," and thus gets little by little in possession of the true light.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Vol. I, Letter 1
Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

Truth, Thinking, Sense, Effort

“There is, too, a sort of relief in admitting defeat. Struggling to drag a mountain from my path, acknowledging at last the mountain would remain, lying down beneath the mountain, thankful for the shade of it.”

Tanith Lee book Quest for the White Witch

Book Two, Part I “In the Wilderness”, Chapter 2 (p. 234)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Mountain, Lying

“Days, up and down they come
Like rain on a congadrum
Forget most, remember some
But don't turn none away
Everything is not enough
And nothin' is too much to bear
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the getting there
To live is to fly
Low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

To Live Is to Fly

Sleep, Flying, Forgetting

“Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
That's the way it goes
All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

Pancho and Lefty (1972)

World, Way, Feeling, Boy

“Let us have faith.
No, let us not be cast down.
To despair is to desert.
Let us look to the future.
The future,—no one knows what tempests still separate us from port, but the port, the distant and radiant port, is in sight; the future, we repeat, is the republic for all men; let us add, the future is peace with all men.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Men, Peace, Faith, Distant

“I wear the cap and he the crown;—
What of that?
I sleep on straw and he on down;—
What of that?
And he's the king and I'm the clown;—
What of that?
If happy I, — and wretched he, —
Perhaps the king would change with me!”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Differences", V
The Collected Songs of Charles Mackay (1859)

Happiness, Sleep, Change

“What, then, is it to treat of philosophy, unless to lay down the rules of the true religion by which we seek rationally and adore humbly God, who is the first and sovereign cause of all things? Hence it follows that the true philosophy is the true religion, and reciprocally that the true religion is the true philosophy.”

John Scotus Eriugena (810–877) Irish theologian

Original: (la) Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi verae religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur, et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam.

De Divina Praedestinatione, ch. 1; translation from Kenelm Henry Digby Mores Catholici, vol. 8 (London: Booker & Dolman, 1837) p. 198.

God, Religion

“And I have known the arms already, known them all —
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

Lie, Making love, Light

“Having been involved in a couple of lawsuits as an expert probability witness and having observed that a prudent skepticism is often less prized than an indefensible certainty, I turned down preliminary requests from both sides to testify.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 9, “Fraud Alleged in Pennsylvania Senate Race” (p. 45)

“The sky is colored like a peacock's breast;
There lingers yet one thin, chill line of gold
Down where the woods their somber branches hold
In silhouette against the fading west.
Dark leaves, dark earth, slow-breathing and at rest,
Whence frail scents rise of dew-wet grass and mold.
A single star gleams diamond-clear and cold,
Like one sharp note from elfin viol wrest.
This is the haunted hour,—such woods surround
Grey Merlin in his oak, adrouse with dwale;
In such a gloaming once the lorn knight found
⁠The faery woman in the river-vale;
And underneath this star long, long ago
The Dark Tower heard a lonely slug-horn blow!”

Leah Bodine Drake (1914–1964) American writer

1941, Weird Tales, Vol. 36, p. 105
Haunted Hour

Color, Star, Grass

“Metamorphosis is death. Inside a pupa larval flesh breaks down utterly, as if in chemical spill. Eyes do not become other eyes nor mouthparts mouths. All parts are lost in a reconfiguring slop, as absolutely formless as a salted slug, that ex liquid nihilo self-organizes into a quite other animal. A cocoon is not a transformation pod but an execution chamber, one that doubles as a birthplace, and is parsimonious with matter.”

China Miéville book The 9th Technique

The 9th Technique (p. 104)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Death, Animals, Parting, Self-confidence

“We are not kids, we are adults. I hope you are old enough to understand that life is full of ups and downs.”

Darko Miličić (1985) Serbian basketball player

As quoted in "Darko Responds To Carmelo About '03 Draft: 'Not Necessary To Ridicule'" https://971theticket.radio.com/articles/news/darko-responds-to-carmelo-not-necessary-to-ridicule (31 March 2020), 97.1 The Ticket 2020s

Life, Hope, Understanding

“We are stronger, we are better, but while we are building a great future, the radical left Democrats in Washington are trying to burn it all down. They have spent the last three years, and I can even go further than that, three years since the election, but we go before the election, working to erase your ballots and overthrow our democracy. But with your help, we have exposed the far left’s corruption and defeated their sinister schemes and let’s see what happens in the coming months. Let’s watch. Let’s just watch. Very dishonest people. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.””

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

They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

People, Democracy, Future, Help

“Another old-fashioned practice I maintain is carrying a notebook, a small one I keep in my shirt pocket and never leave the house without. In it I register all the little things that strike me, not in great detail but just quickly. The following morning I'll review what I jotted down and look for the most meaningful moment in the previous day, the one in which I felt truly present.
It's worth mentioning that this is my edit. It wasn't easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

"Introduction". p.6, 7 [Page numbers per the 2017 Little, Brown hardback UK edition.]
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

Fashion, Housing

“The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil. The "reasonable" people's failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naive lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world's unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party.
Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. Fanatics think that their single-minded principles qualify them to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull they rush at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; they exhaust themselves and are beaten. They get entangled in non-essentials and fall into the trap set by cleverer people.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 4

Life, People, World, Justice

“Every day, COVID-19 seems to reach a new and tragic milestone. More than 210,000 cases have now been reported to WHO, and more than 9,000 people have lost their lives. Every loss of life is a tragedy. It’s also motivation to double down and do everything we can to stop transmission and save lives. We also need to celebrate our successes. Yesterday, Wuhan reported no new cases for the first time since the outbreak started. Wuhan provides hope for the rest of the world, that even the most severe situation can be turned around. Of course, we must exercise caution – the situation can reverse. But the experience of cities and countries that have pushed back this virus give hope and courage to the rest of the world.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Life, People, World, Hope

“All I can say is that the fake news just doesn’t get it, do they? They don’t get it. [inaudible 00:02:54] They just don’t get it. Hello Charleston, and I’m thrilled to be back in the great state of South Carolina with thousands of hardworking American Patriots who believe in faith, family, God, and country. Thank you. It’s a phenomenal crowd, only topped by the number of people outside that didn’t get in. If anybody would like to give up where you’re standing or your seat, please raise your hand. All right. Then let’s begin, right? Thank you all very much though. This is great. No, they don’t get it. Down the road, they have a rally for one of the people that are going to be running tomorrow. They’re trying to get to a hundred, but they’re not going to make it. So I think they’re going to set up a round table. Well, that’s what they do. So people want to go to a rally, they end up sitting at a round table talking about their definition of impeachment. Crazy.”

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

2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

God, People, Making love, Family

“There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life...”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/covid-19-is-natures-wake-up-call-to-complacent-civilisation?, The Guardian, 25 March 2020

Life, Money, Pain, People

“I grew up in Kentucky so that's the land of casseroles and barbecue and meat. So when I transitioned over to an entirely plant-based diet, I wasn't sure if I was gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine. […] I just immediately started feeling like I could go kick ass and not need the recovery in between. It was mind-blowing to my teammates. […] I was about ready to retire, as I should've been, because I'm like 35 at that time. But I just kept getting better, and so they had to take me to the Olympics. We were complete underdogs as Team USA. In our semi-final ride against Australia, we were down by 1.7 seconds. No one's ever come back in team pursuit from a deficit that large. And we beat them on the line by eight one-hundredths of a second. I was 39 and a half years old when I stood on the Olympic podium. I'm still the oldest person, male or female, to even go to the Olympic Games in my event. My diet was the most powerful aspect to me being able to perform and produce for the US team at the Olympic Games.”

Dotsie Bausch (1973) cyclist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Feeling, Game, Time, Personality

“In the NFL, the injury rate is a 100 percent. It's a violent game. And so, how you respond to injury and how quickly you heal from injury is important because if you're not on the field, you're not helping the team. I was reading the research and seeing that a plant-based diet could be beneficial, specifically for recovery. And so I started incorporating it and I started seeing really good results with it. I was recovering better. I wasn't getting as sore. I was a lot less swollen. Basically, to confirm what I was feeling, I got my blood tested. Six months after being on the diet, all of my markers were down, my blood pressure, my cholesterol. But the main thing I was looking at was the inflammation marker in your blood and mine was... almost obsolete. It wasn't there anymore.”

Derrick Morgan (American football) (1989) Player of American football

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Feeling, Game, Reading, Help

“[A]crobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don’t see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime’s every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that’s another topic.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Feeling, Thinking, Parting

“Our country is far less at risk from the coronavirus than it is from the thousands of small and large authoritarians who have suddenly flexed their muscles across the country. President Trump would do well to end this ridiculous shutdown so that Americans can get on with their lives and get back to work. Americans should remember the tyrants who locked them down next time they go to the ballot box. Let’s demand an end to the shutdown so we can resurrect our economy, our lives, and our liberties!”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Time, Country, Box

“Communism is all about breaking down nationalism, about uniting workers around the world, and North Korea has always been about the opposite, it’s been about racial purity and pride, so remember North Korea was isolated even inside the old east-block, even inside the Soviet block.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Park Jin Keol (March 2012)

World, Communication

“If people want to pursue accountability (about the lockdown of Wuhan City due to the COVID-19 outbreak and Wuhan City Government below-standard handling of the outbreak) and the public has a strong opinion, we (Zhou Xianwang and Wuhan Communist Party Chief Ma Guoqiang) are willing to step down.”

Zhou Xianwang (1963) Chinese politician

Zhou Xianwang (2020) cited in " Mayor of Wuhan, epicenter city of coronavirus, offers to resign over outbreak https://nypost.com/2020/01/27/mayor-of-wuhan-epicenter-city-of-coronavirus-offers-to-resign-over-outbreak/" on New York Post, 27 January 2019.

People, Strong

“I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

On his response to misstatements by Donald Trump during COVID-19 press briefings, in Jon Cohen, " ‘I’m going to keep pushing.’ Anthony Fauci tries to make the White House listen to facts of the pandemic https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/i-m-going-keep-pushing-anthony-fauci-tries-make-white-house-listen-facts-pandemic", Science (March 22, 2020).

Time

“Don’t you start. It’s bad enough that one of us feels he could have done more. We’re human, Campion—that’s all it boils down to. Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that’ll be the epitaph.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 39 (p. 509)

Bad luck, Feeling

“I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995–1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

War, People, World, History

“The second I saw those bastards coming down the street, I knew it was over for me. I’m dead. It’s just a matter of time is all.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

“That’s always true,” Lydia said, her mind taken with other matters. “For everyone.”
The Churn (2014)

Time, Dead

“It first starts with an intrepid rat... that goes up to the toilet bowl of the Speaker, just as he's sitting down to do his business... Some readers who couldn't get past the first few pages... called it disgusting and upsetting, and I said, "Well, you're describing the behavior of Congress..."”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

"How The Rats Reformed The Congress" (2018)

Behavior, Business, Past

“We have a lot of employment, but the quality of the jobs has collapsed over the last 10 years. The people who work now used to be people who had a job with good income, good benefits and good security. The jobs, overwhelmingly, created have none of those things: low wages—that’s why our wages have gone nowhere; bad benefits—those are shrinking, pensions and so on; and the security is virtually gone. One of our biggest problems in America is people don’t know one week to the next what hours they’re working, what income they’ll get. You can’t have a life like this. So, what we’ve done is we’ve ratcheted down the quality of jobs. We’ve made people use up their savings since the great crash of 2008, so they’re in a bind. They have really no choice but to offer themselves at lower wages or at less benefit or at less security than before, which is why there’s the anger, which is why there was the vote for Mr. Trump in the first place, because this talk of recovery really is about that stock market with the funny money that the Fed Reserve pumped in, but is not about the real lives of people, which are in serious trouble, hence the numbers, like a average American family can’t get a $400 emergency cost because it doesn’t have that kind of money in the background. So, you’ve undone the underlying economy, you have this frothy stock market for the 1 percent, and this is an impossible tension tearing the country apart.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

We Need a More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich (December 26, 2018)

Life, Money, Bad luck, People

“Whatever you do will change the world. If you take the most default option, you follow the most mainstream, down the line, ‘just keep your head down and get on with what they’re telling you to do’, approach, then that’s the world that you’re helping to create. There is no way that you can not change the world.”

Shaun Chamberlin

Kosmos interview on grief, Dark Optimism, aliveness and activism (2014) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2014/12/21/dark-optimism-power-of-grief/#post-4075

World, Way, Change, Help

“They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Lafcadio Hearn, Creole Sketches, ed. Charles Woodward Hutsun (1880; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1924), p. 136. Lafcadio Hearn referring to the cemeteries in New Orleans.

Beauty, Art

“I deplore racism and all the cruelty and strife it breeds. I am convinced the only long-term solution to every brand of ethnic animus is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ alone are the barriers and dividing walls between people groups broken down, the enmity abolished, and differing cultures and ethnic groups bound together in one new people... It is a startling irony that believers from different ethnic groups, now one in Christ, have chosen to divide over ethnicity. They have a true spiritual unity in Christ, which they seem to disdain in favor of fleshly factions.”

John F. MacArthur (1939) American pastor and author

"Social Injustice and the Gospel" https://www.gty.org/library/blog/B180813/social-injustice-and-the-gospel (13 August 2018), Grace to You 2010s

People, Christ

“I had read in the story-cube that the speed of light was a universal limit; that in a thousand years of experimentation—despite any number of false dawns—no one had ever managed to circumvent it. This had made me feel hemmed in and claustrophobic—it was like being told I must never run or skip down the long, dreary corridors of the house, but must walk instead, with my neck straight and my hands held behind my back. I felt affronted, as if the speed of light was a personal assault on my liberty. Why should I not go as fast as I pleased? Why should I not skip and run? But I could no more explain why the speed limit existed than I could explain why two and two did not make five. It was simply the way things were, one of those rules—like the edict not to visit certain parts of the house—that were not to be questioned.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 2 (p. 100)
House of Suns (2008)

Making love, Way, Feeling, Question

“They were more than a thousand in number, including the mere partizans of my enemies. Several attempts were made to press me down. I got many blows in the sides; and if I had been either a short or a weak man, I must have been pressed under foot, and inevitably killed. ... I had, when I left the Booth, my snuff-box in my right hand. It is oblong square, and has very sharp corners. The Savages pressed me side-ways towards my left; and I had to fight with my right hand, in order to prevent them from getting me down. I had to strike back-handed. One of the sharp corners of the snuff-box, which stuck out beyond the bottom of my little finger, did good service. It cut the noses and eyes of the Savages at a famous rate, and assisted mainly in securing my safe arrival, on the raised pavement, on which I got just opposite to the door of a shop. Just at this time, one of the Savages, foaming at the mouth like a mad dog, exclaimed: “damn him, I'll rip him up.””

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

He was running his hand into his breeches pocket, apparently to take out his knife, but I...drew up my right leg, armed with a new and sharp-edged gallashe over my boot, dealt Mr. Ellice's ripping Savage so delightful a blow, just between his two eyes, that he fell back upon his followers.

‘History of the Coventry Election’, Political Register (25 March 1820), pp. 102–3
1820s

Dogs, Way, Time, Fight

“All of management’s efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

Effort

“Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“My trust towards China was both built up and broken down by Deng Xiaoping. There was hope due to his economic reforms, but the 4 June massacre killed all that.”

Szeto Wah (1931–2011) Hong Kong politician and teacher

Szeto Wah obituary https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/10/szeto-wah-obituary

Hope

“Out of nowhere I have appeared. They see me for the first time. No longer the image, but reality. They see and they hear me. I raise my arms, and the gasps and babble die down. I begin to speak the words we knew and decided long ago. Each hears me in his own tongue.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p.200

Reality, Appearance, Time

“Walking down 8th Avenue, I fell in behind two muscled gym queens. When a car alarm went off, one of them turned to the other, saying, "That's the Puerto Rican national anthem."”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

"Really?" the other guy said. "That's actually their anthem?"

04.09.1992 - p.291
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

Cars

“One night you discover to your great surprise that you have not spent all your money that day, he said. Next morning you wake up early and go out and buy yourself a hat – and when you have got the hat you realize that you now have even more money in your pocket. You invite a friend, two or three of them perhaps, to come with you to a restaurant, and you eat your fill of all the best food and wines available there. When you simply can’t force down another bite and you leave the restaurant, you discover that you’ve made yet another haul while you were sitting inside. You become flurried and go and buy a house with a garden to try to rid yourself of this trash, but no sooner have you paid for the house cash down than you notice that your money has multiplied through the purchase. Now you are seized with a kind of frenzy that Björn of Brekkukot would never understand, far less your grandmother. You set off travelling round and round the world, pouring out money with both hands to other demented vagrants wherever you go, and you don’t even dare to open your letters because you know that they will all say the same thing: your deposits at I don’t know how many banks all over the world are still growing with ever increasing speed.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Money, World, Food, Travel

“Going to Bits. This phrase me to day and is indeed the one I have been looking for; not tragic, not mortal disintegration; only a central weakness which prevents me from concentrating or settling down I have so wanted to write and write ahead. The phrase "obligatory creation" has haunted me. I have so wanted to get out of my morning bath promptly: have decided to do so beforehand, and have then lain in it as usual and watched myself not getting out. It looks as if there is a physical as well as a moral break in the orders I send out. I have plenty of interesting thoughts but keep losing them like the post cards I have written, or like my cap. I can't clear anything up yet interrupt a 'good read' in order to clear up. I hope tomorrow to copy out a piece of someone else's prose: it is the best device known to me for taking one out of inself, Plunge into anothers minutiae.'”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

31-1-61

p. 224
Commonplace Book (1985)

Hope, Reading

“First to go will be the world’s stock markets. They are, as Maitreya has said, about to crash. They will come down because they stand in the way of right relationship. They really bear no relation to the needs even of trade between countries. They are an anachronism, what Maitreya calls, very accurately, “gambling casinos” which have no part to play in the future time, at least in their present form.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

World, Way, Relation ships, Time

“A country that can afford a $738 billion defense budget but will not ensure its school children a more healthy diet is a country whose moral values are spiraling down and whose future health care costs will be spiraling up.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (18 Jan 20) Williamson's quotes in social media

Children, Health, School, Future

“I have certainly experienced severe trials, and some hard dispensations of Providence … To travel with some dignity, innocence, and usefulness, down the Road which leads from the Morning of Youth to the Night of the Grave, is perhaps as much as we can flatter ourselves with accomplishing.”

Elizabeth Willing Powel (1743–1830) American socialite and women letter writer

As quoted in [Maxey, David W., 2006, A Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powel (1743–1830), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20020407, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, en, 63, 4, 10.2307/20020407, harv]

Youth, Travel, Night

“It's really, really tough because you have to be honest with the American public and you don't want to scare the hell out of them. And then other times, in attempts to calm people down, [leaders] have had people be complacent about it. This is particularly problematic in a ‘gotcha” town like Washington.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico.

People, Hell, Time

“Go down to City Hall and see what is on the agenda for the next council meeting—garbage collection, water supply, it does not matter which one—then go and learn everything you can about it. Read past reports, talk to people, learn the topic until you know it as well as anyone. Then when you get up to speak, or to make a suggestion for change, your voice will be heard because you are knowledgeable. That is how reform works.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

According to daughter Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, as told to biographer Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2009), p. 130.
Attributed

People, Making love, Knowledge, Learning

“In some of the configurations in which the scanned square is blank... the machine writes down a new symbol on the scanned square: in other configurations it erases the scanned symbol.”

Alan Turing Computable Numbers

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)

“Here’s to the ghost
We still seem to host
How he’s becoming us
Here come the vultures
Here come the vultures
Screaming down at us”

Charlotte Wessels (1987) Dutch singer

Here Come the Vultures, The Human Contradiction (2014)

“I think I am a tough mountaineer who, when he has the top in sight, is bounced off again [by mental break-downs], but some day I will succeed.. .I must do it, there is no other way for me. It is always such a pity that Jo [his wife] is cracked up so quickly, otherwise I didn't mind very much.”

Herman Kruyder (1881–1935) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Herman Kruyder uit zijn brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vind mij een stoere bergbeklimmer die steeds als hij de top in zicht heeft er weer afgestoten wordt, maar eens lukt het.. .Toch moet ik, ik kan niet anders. 't Is zoo jammer dat Jo [zijn vrouw] altijd zo gauw instort, anders vond ik de zaak niet zo heel erg.

Quote of Kruyder in a letter to P.A. Regnault, from Limburg April 1930; as cited in Herman Kruyder 1881 – 1935: gedoemde scheppingen, ed. Mabel Hoogendonk; (ISBN 90-400-9905-7), Waanders, Zwolle 1997, p. 31

both had very frequently their break-downs and went into the mental hospital for some time
dated quotes

Way, Mountain, Thinking

“He had been a handsome man, when they married, fourteen years ago. A handsome, happy man, proud and kind, very good at his work. There had been a splendor to him, a wholeness.
That was gone. There was no more room in the world for whole people, they took up too much space. What she had done to him was only a part of the general program for cutting him and people like him down to size, for chopping and paring and breaking up, so that in the texture of life nothing large, nothing hard, nothing grand should remain.”

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

The House (p. 176)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)

Life, Happiness, People, World

“References to what have been interpreted as configurations of stars have been used to suggest dates of about 4000 BC for these hymns”, .... [but] “planetary positions could have been observed in earlier times and such observations been handed down as part of an oral tradition”, [so that they] “do not constitute proof of the chronology of the Vedic hymns.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

Romila Thapar: “The Perennial Aryans”, Seminar, December 1992., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate https://web.archive.org/web/20100412074243/http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Star, Time, Parting

“I remember the birds and the animals and going down to the river with my dog to play…My grandparents and uncles who farmed in Puerto de Luna were so beautiful, I wanted to keep them around, to contain them.”

Rudolfo Anaya (1937) Novelist, poet

On his childhood in “Rudolfo Anaya: Man of visions” https://www.abqjournal.com/1074636/man-of.html in Albuquerque Journal (2017 Oct 7)

Beauty, Dogs, Bird, Animals

“In the "heat of battle" whether military or corporate- kindness, like calmness, reassures followers and holds their confidence. Kindness connects you with other human beings in a bond of mutual respect. If you care for your followers and show them kindness, they will reciprocate and care for you. They will not let you down or let you fail. They will accomplish whatever you have put in front of them.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Source: It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership (2012), p. 23

Confidence, Self-confidence

“I may be down, but never out. An infantry officer can do anything.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Source: It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership (2012), p. 6

“I've tried several varieties of sex. Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw, and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.”

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) American actress

Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead (1980)

Sex

“‘It closes the Gate of Interpretation. It lays down that legists and jurisconsults are to be divided into certain categories and no freedom of thought is allowed.’”

Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee (1899–1981) Indian educator, jurist, author, diplomat, and Islamic scholar

Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

Freedom

“You can see the other female strawweights fighting, and c’mon. They cannot compare themselves to me. They are all are only jealous and talking too much all the time. I’m telling them, bow down. I’m the queen.”

Joanna Jędrzejczyk (1987) Polish mixed martial artist

Joanna Jedrzejczyk shocked at UFC 223 loss to Namajunas, tells other strawweights: 'Bow down', Edward Vkanty, May 14, 2017, August 25, 2017 https://mmajunkie.com/2018/04/joanna-jedrzejczyk-shocked-at-ufc-223-loss-tells-strawweights-bow-down-rose-namajunas, Jędrzejczyk to other women's strawweight fighters, at UFC 223 post-fight press conference, after her second loss to Rose Namajunas.

Time, Fight

“I think it would a good idea now if all the ugly ones came and sat down near the front! You have! Good!”

Ken Dodd (1927–2018) English comedian, singer-songwriter and actor

Idea, Thinking

“Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[Van Doren, Mark, The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 118–119, 1928, New York, Macy-Masius, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=124]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Fish, Water, Appearance, Time

“The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.”

Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic

p. 28 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b325850;view=1up;seq=34 Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

Books

“This is my child . I planted it . I saw it grow . I loved it . Don't cut it down .”

R. K. Narayan book Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days(1943)

Love, Making love

“Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

For a Dancer (1974)

World, Drawing

“I’m interested in coaching, modeling, and teaching various writing practices and less in discovering talent. I want students to develop their own unique writing practices rather than impose my aesthetic values from the top down…”

Gregory Pardlo (1968) American writer

On his teaching process in “Gregory Pardlo: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/gregory-pardlo-how-i-write/ in The Writer (2019 Jul 17)

Quotes about down page 82

Quotes about down
page 82