Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
Quote in a letter from Pourville c. 1882, to his art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 50
1870 - 1890
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
Quote in a letter from Pourville c. 1882, to his art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 50
1870 - 1890
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)
1870s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1871)
Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player
When asked what type of hitter he would consider himself to be. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Variant translation: The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
“I have to admit that I drive past Bridgwater quite regularly. And fast.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
Usenet
Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician
As quoted in LIFE magazine (July 1966), also in Ray Charles : Man and Music (1998) by Michael Lydon, p. 264 <br class="br">As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom (198 http://interview.sweetsearch.com/2010/11/ray-charles.html <br class="br">Variant: What is soul? It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Preface to the 2004 edition of Dreams from My Father, p. x
2004
Amy Sherman-Palladino (1966) American television writer, director, and producer
NYTimes.com, "Job Title: The 'Gilmore' Noodge" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/arts/television/23heff.html?ex=1121313600&en=6a20ddae804ec0a8&ei=5070&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1106535613-AH4C904DjoUiEAdysK3Zow&oref=login.
"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp <br class="br">Words Aptly Spoken (1995)
Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney
2016, Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives? (December 5, 2016)
Christopher Lee (1922–2015) British actor and singer
Listen Back To A 1990 Interview With Actor Christopher Lee http://www.npr.org/2015/06/12/413936419/listen-back-to-a-1990-interview-with-actor-christopher-lee (1990)
Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality
Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter
Picture to Burn, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)
“I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.”
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,
quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.
Book I, epistle i, line 14
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
Sander Gilman (1944) American historian
page 118.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)
Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader
Journal of Discourses 3:224 (March 2, 1856)
1850s
Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
2000s, White House speech (2006)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Letter to Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird printed in Weird Tales 3, no. 3 (March 1924), pp. 89-92. Quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 122
Non-Fiction, Letters
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2016, Disabled American Veterans Convention (August 2016)
Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion
Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 11 (p. 91)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
The New York Herald-Tribune Magazine (6 March 1938)
1930s
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (1535. Translation revised 1953 by Philip S Watson. On Galatians 1:4.)
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States
Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 37.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
“Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye…”
Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic
Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)
Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor
I'm not gonna lie to you guys, George knows that I do it; I don't think he likes it!
Hot & Fluffy (2007)
“It's not doubt that drives people crazy, it's certainty that does.”
Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer
Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)
Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist
Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
“Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher
Gottlob Frege, Montgomery Furth (1964). The Basic Laws of Arithmetic: Exposition of the System. p. 10
Hans-Hermann Hoppe book Democracy: The God That Failed
Source: Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), P.145
Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor
WHAT?! "Check it out, eh, it's the Fat and the Furious!"
Hot & Fluffy (2007)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Ronald Reagan, Time magazine (20 October 1980)
1980s
Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah
“The fruit of the tree of knowledge, always drives man from some paradise or other.”
William Ralph Inge The Idea of Progress
"The Idea of Progress" http://books.google.com/books?id=TbgYAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+fruit+of+the+tree+of+knowledge+always+drives+man+from+some+paradise+or+other%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage, Romanes Lecture (27 May 1920), reprinted in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2009, A World without Nuclear Weapons (April 2009)
Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music
2012
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
"Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!", reddit.com (8 October 2015) https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv/; also quoted in "Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots" Huffington Post (8 October 2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 418
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology
Tragedy vs Evil (5th Biennial International Conference on Personal Meaning, July 24-27, 2008). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLp7vWB0TeY&t=32m21s <br class="br">Other
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 78-79
Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human
Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 173-174
Human, All Too Human (1878)
Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer
Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, p. 116. cited in: Daniel A. Wren (1994) The evolution of management thought. p. 137.
Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910
Patrik Baboumian (1979) German strength-athlete
“Vegan strongman shoulders 550 kg — a record, perhaps — at vegetarian food fest,” interview with Toronto Star (8 September 2013) https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/09/08/vegan_strongman_shoulders_550_kg_a_record_perhaps_at_vegetarian_food_fest.html.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain
Speech to the House of Commons (January 29, 1828).
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Statement at Paris (23 January 1814)
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Ragged Wood http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1673/ <br class="br">In The Seven Woods (1904) <br class="br">Context: p>O hurry where by water among the trees<br>The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,<br>When they have but looked upon their images--<br>Would none had ever loved but you and I!Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed<br>Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,<br>When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--<br>O that none ever loved but you and I!O hurry to the ragged wood, for there<br>I will drive all those lovers out and cry—<br>O my share of the world, O yellow hair!<br>No one has ever loved but you and I.</p
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
The Cup, Act i, Scene 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1910s, Principles of Research (1918)
Context: In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.
I am quite aware that we have just now lightheartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the buildings of the temple of science; and in many cases our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do, if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances.
Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it.
“Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence.”
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist
From 1980s onwards, Cosmography (1992)
Context: Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.
James P. Hogan (1941–2010) British writer
Source: Paths to Otherwhere (1996), Ch. 38
Context: It turns out that information leaks between universes at the quantum level. We think it accounts for all kinds of phenomena, from what drives evolution to strange insights and mystical experiences through the ages. The machine was built as an attempt to investigate and amplify them.
“These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2008, A World that Stands as One (July 2008)
Context: I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please. These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart.
Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book
“It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank account, that drives our democracy.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)
Context: Citizenship means standing up for everyone's right to vote. Last year, part of the Voting Rights Act was weakened, but conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats are working together to strengthen it. And the bipartisan commission I appointed, chaired by my campaign lawyer and Governor Romney's campaign lawyer, came together and have offered reforms so that no one has to wait more than a half hour to vote. Let's support these efforts. It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank account, that drives our democracy.
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII
Context: Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility. For one thing, these trends are bad for our economy. One study finds that growth is more fragile and recessions are more frequent in countries with greater inequality. And that makes sense. When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art.
Carlos Almaraz (1941–1989) Chicano artist
On mortality driving his creative energies (as quoted in [https://www.lacma.org/carlos-almaraz-other-voices “Other Voices: Reflections on Almaraz's Legacy”)
“No one yet has learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study.”
Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism
Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Ch. 7, p. 101
Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality
The curve of human capacity for pain actually does seem to sink dramatically and almost precipitously beyond the first ten thousand or ten million of the cultural elite; and for myself, I do not doubt that in comparison with one night of pain endured by a single, hysterical blue stocking, the total suffering of all the animals who have been interrogated by the knife in scientific research is as nothing.
Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
“Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round”
Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist
Source: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
“There's no luck in business. There's only drive, determination, and more drive.”
Sophie Kinsella book Shopaholic Abroad
Source: Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love
This passage contains some phrases King later used in "Where Do We Go From Here?" (1967) which has a section below. <br class="br">1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957) <br class="br">Variant: Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. <br class="br">Source: Mentioned in "Out of Osama's Death, a Fake Quotation Is Born" by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic (May 2011) http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/, and widely distributed on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/jmadly/status/65314784136011776 as a quote of King, after the death of Osama bin Laden, the first sentence is one written by Jessica Dovey http://i.imgur.com/cqtjw.jpg on her Facebook page, which became improperly combined by others with genuine statements of King, whom she quoted, and which occur in Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 5 : Loving your enemies, and in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62.<br>For the full story see "Anatomy of a Fake Quotation" by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic (May 3, 2011) http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ and for the Facebook version of the quote see Did Martin Luther King, Jr. say that “I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”? at skeptics.stackexchange.com http://skeptics.stackexchange.com. <br class="br">Context: Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. <br class="br">Context: Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says "love your enemies," he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies-or else? The chain reaction of evil-Hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. <br class="br">Context: I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director
Source: Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good