Quotes about editor (168 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I never feel like a text is completely finished. Over and over again I reread it, preferably out loud, until a certain tiredness leads me to send it to the editor, who will decide whether it is published or not.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Entrevista de Miguel Esteban Torreblanca. https://www.fondodeculturaeconomica.com/Noticia/706

Feeling

“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers who, as literary guides of Germany, had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life; but they, too, were mute.Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in “The Conflict Between Church And State In The Third Reich”, by S. Parkes Cadman, La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press (28 October 1934), viewable online on p. 9 of the issue here http://newspaperarchive.com/us/wisconsin/la-crosse/la-crosse-tribune-and-leader-press/1934/10-28/ (double-click the page to zoom). The quote is preceded by “In this connection it is worth quoting in free translation a statement made by Professor Einstein last year to one of my colleagues who has been prominently identified with the Protestant church in its contacts with Germany.” [Emphasis added.] While based on something that Einstein said, Einstein himself stated that the quote was not an accurate record of his words or opinion. After the quote appeared in Time magazine (23 December 1940), p. 38 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765103,00.html, a minister in Harbor Springs, Michigan wrote to Einstein to check if the quote was real. Einstein wrote back “It is true that I made a statement which corresponds approximately with the text you quoted. I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi-Regime — much earlier than 1940 — and my expressions were a little more moderate.” (March 1943) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200706A19.html
In a later letter to Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn, who asked if Einstein would write out the statement in his own hand, Einstein was more vehement in his repudiation of the statement (14 November 1950) http://books.google.com/books?id=T5R7JsRRtoIC&pg=PA94: <blockquote><p>The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own.</p><p> The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude.</p></blockquote>
: In his original statement Einstein was probably referring to the actions of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors organized by Martin Niemöller, and the Confessing Church which he and other prominent churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer established in opposition to Nazi policies.
: Einstein also made some scathingly negative comments about the behavior of the Church under the Nazi regime (and its behavior towards Jews throughout history) in a 1943 conversation with William Hermanns recorded in Hermanns' book Einstein and the Poet (1983). On p. 63 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q&f=false Hermanns records him saying "Never in history has violence been so widespread as in Nazi Germany. The concentration camps make the actions of Ghengis Khan look like child's play. But what makes me shudder is that the Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence.' Dr. Hermanns, you will live to see that there is moral law in the universe. . . .There are cosmic laws, Dr. Hermanns. They cannot be bribed by prayers or incense. What an insult to the principles of creation. But remember, that for God a thousand years is a day. This power maneuver of the Church, these Concordats through the centuries with worldly powers . . . the Church has to pay for it. We live now in a scientific age and in a psychological age. You are a sociologist, aren't you? You know what the Herdenmenschen (men of herd mentality) can do when they are organized and have a leader, especially if he is a spokesmen for the Church. I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2000 years had always the blessings of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him. The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the Ten Commandments state: Thou shalt not kill." And then on p. 64 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false: "I'm not a Communist but I can well understand why they destroyed the Church in Russia. All the wrongs come home, as the proverb says. The Church will pay for its dealings with Hitler, and Germany, too." And on p. 65 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false: "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanely in the past 2000 years. The fear of punishment makes the people march. Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the Inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an alter boy! The truly religious man has no fear of life and no fear of death—and certainly no blind faith; his faith must be in his conscience. . . . I am therefore against all organized religion. Too often in history, men have followed the cry of battle rather than the cry of truth." When Hermanns asked him "Isn't it only human to move along the line of least resistance?", Einstein responded "Yes. It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli, who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time? And he is now the Pope! The moment I hear the word 'religion', my hair stands on end. The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity. It would have been fine if the spirit of religion had guided the Church; instead, the Church determined the spirit of religion. Churchmen through the ages have fought political and institutional corruption very little, so long as their own sanctity and church property were preserved."
Misattributed

Love , Life , Truth , Feeling

“In the preamble written by his wife of the 1953 edition published by the publishing house "Heidenheimer Zeitung", she clearly states that all the chapter titles as well as the book title were chosen by the editors, thus not Erwin Rommel himself.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Disputed

Books , Housing

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time

“How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“You don't need to show them to me [the notes of the complete interview which Christian Zervos], editor of 'Cahiers d'Art' showed Picasso after their conversations at Boisgeloup: Picasso's country place then]. The essential thing in our period of weak morale is to create enthusiasm. How many people have actually read Homer? All the same the whole world talks of him. In this way the Homeric legend is created. A legend in this sense provokes a valuable stimulus. Enthusiasm is what we need most, we and the younger generation.”

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

Boisgeloup, 1935
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

People , World , Way , Sense

“Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Men , Friendship , Pleasure , World

“Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Democracy

“Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Truth

“All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create.
-from the Editor's Note, The Alpinist (April 1, 2010)”

George Michael Sinclair Kennedy (1926–2014) British historian

Dreams , Mountain , Reading

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”

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

“the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Books , World

“What editors are obliged to appear to say thatwant from women is actually what theirwant from women.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women , Appearance

“The editors of the Blaue Reiter will now be the starting point for new exhibitions... We will try to become the center of the new movement. The association may assume there the role of the new”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Scholle
Quote from a letter to his brother (4 Dec. 1911); as cited in 'Lankheit, Almanac 14'; as quoted in 'Leaders', in Movement, Manifesto, Melee: The Modernist Group, 1910-1914, Milton A. Cohen, Lexington Books, Sep 14, 2004, p. 67
1911 - 1914

“In Australia during WWII, a couple of established poets invented the supposedly nonsensical works of a fictitious poet called Ern Malley and used them to discredit the modernist pretensions of the young editor who printed them. It never occurred to them that as writers of talent they were not in a position to suppose that they could deliberately write something perfectly meaningless.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Congratulations!', on scams, frauds and hoaxes.
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

“[Unnamed actress on the set of Grand Prix] never had eyes for me. Hell, she wouldn't even talk to me, after she'd found out that I was just an unimportant actor. Good grief! Then, this is what happened: We were sitting in the foyer of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. She, myself and Antonio. Then an assistant director crossed our path. That actress was trying to get him to take us to the theatre where they were showing the rushes of the day before. After some discussion, she persuaded him. He said: `Be quiet, I'm gonna lose my job…' So we hid in the balcony, looking down, where that wonderful director Frankenheimer was sitting. After some minutes of racing cars, finally her scene came, and she was doing a phone call - she was playing a sophisticated magazine editor -, and suddenly you could hear the director, who had this loud, resonant voice, howling in rage, because he didn't like her at all. `Oh my God, she's awful! She can't walk, she can't talk, look at her hair!' So he turned to that faggot hairdresser, who was like Katherine the Great, and this guy said: `Well, usually she plays this peasant types. I don't know why you cast her for this role in the first place!”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

And remember, this actress was sitting there with us, and she nearly went crazy! She was squirming with embarrassment. This is an actor's nightmare, you know. The next day she was fired.
Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

God , Cars , Guy , Hell

“One night in Boston I went out to dinner with my editor and his wife—this was my first editor, the beloved editor, and I was in awe of him; I still am in awe of him. The editor kissed me on the cheek as we parted and called me his “darling boy,” as if thereby investing me with the Order of Letters Genteel. It was among the happiest nights of my life; I was filled with sadness as I watched the two of them, the editor and his wife, walk away.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Life , Sadness , Boy , Kiss

“The liberal-hearted who run the newspapers and the university English departments and organize the bookstores have turned literature into well-meaning sociology. Thus do I get invited by the editor at some magazine to review your gay translation of a Colombian who has written a magical-realist novel. Trust me, there has been little magical realism in my life since my first trip to Disneyland.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life , Literature , Universe , Heart

“Writers take words seriously — perhaps the last professional class that does — and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Writers on Themselves (1986)

“I cannot be associated with a publication that dumps a staff member simply because his work has upset some readers. Journalism, when done well, always angers some readers, and it is the duty of the newspaper or magazine’s editors and managers to stand by writers and other members of the staff when readers complain about the analysis and opinions expressed by its staff. This is all the more true in the case of editorial cartoonists, whose very job is satire—and a good satirist never pauses to worry about angering the citizenry.”

Haim Watzman (1956) American writer

In a letter of resignation http://web.archive.org/web/20180726214951/https://www.facebook.com/haim.watzman/posts/10160660063290022?notif_id=1532534669809157&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic from The Jerusalem Report, on the dismissal of Avi Katz.

Anger

“It may be noted that some of the Christian correspondents objected to Ram Swarup’s article being published in The Times of India. The plea sounds strange, to say the least. The Christians in this country own and control a large-sized press which includes several daily newspapers and many periodicals. The language which is used in this media vis-a-vis Hinduism is not always decorous; quite often, it is intemperate. Besides, the Christians get ample space in the press which is supposed to be owned and controlled by the Hindus. It is only once in a while that an article critical, of Christian dogmas and/or missions, gets through. That, too, when the editor concerned finds that the facts cited and the conclusions drawn deserve the attention of his countrymen. The Christians who object to such articles being published at all have to think calmly and coolly whether their attitude reflects tolerance or otherwise. They have been telling us for many years now that they want and are prepared for a dialogue. We hope that the word “dialogue” in their current dictionary does not mean a monologue, as it did in past.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Hope , Thinking , Time , Past

“In electronic publishing, they're are no editors and if their are there not very good.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

"Five Columns", in The Keillor Reader (2014), p. 257

“Fritz Nonnenbruch, the financial editor of the Voelkischer Beobachter, states: ‘There exists no law which binds the State. The state can do what it regards as necessary, because it has the authority…. The next stage of National-Socialist economic policy consists of replacing capitalist laws by policy.”

Günter Reimann (1904–2005) German economist

Source: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, 2014, p. 13 (Fritz Nonnenbruch, Die Dynamische Wirtschaft (Munich, Centralverlag der N.S.D.A.P., 1936), pp. 114-119

Law

“An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
Quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0231071949 by Robert Andrews (1993)
"Newspaper editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA568&lpg=PA568&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation)
"Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=OTi0DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA701&lpg=PA701&dq=print+the+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22print%20the%20chaff%22&f=false (variation)
"Journalists separate the wheat from the chaff... and then print the chaff." https://books.google.com/books?id=5pXjFMzIUO8C&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=adlai+chaff&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false (variation) 
This statement has also been attributed https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=adlai+chaff#v=onepage&q=adlai%20chaff&f=false to an earlier usage by Elbert Hubbard.

“He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill- being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,—Heaven's blessed life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation. 'Hero-worship,' if you will,—yes, friends; but, first of all, by being ourselves of heroic mind.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Men , God , World

“Whenever an orthodox editor attacks an unbeliever, look out for kindness, charity and love.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Love

“I understand that it is the wish of the Editor of this collection of essays that each contributor should describe his own system of philosophy. Were I to interpret this demand literally I could not contribute anything at all, for two excellent reasons. In the first place, I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower. If this be a defect I see no likelihood of its ever being cured. Secondly, if I had a system of my own, I should doubt the propriety of "pushing" my crude philosophical wares in competition with the excellent products of older firms with well-earned reputations.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Critical and Speculative Philosophy (1924)

Faith , Understanding

“Former Times of India editor Girilal Jain chaired the press meeting presenting my book. It was on this occasion that BJP leader L. K. Advani gave a speech on his Ayodhya policy, waving my book in his hand, and that he made his offer to persuade the VHP to confine their campaign for the liberation of Hindu temple sites to the Ayodhya site, i. e. to drop their claim on the mosque-occupied Krishna Janmabhoomi site in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath site in Varanasi. That way, my … first book made the front page of most Indian newspapers.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Koenraad Elst, ed.: India’s Only Communalist. In Commemoration of Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, Delhi 2005
2000s

Books , Way , Time

“That accounts for a truly crazy cycle in which students repeat the worst stylistic excesses the journals contain, learn that those very excesses are what makes their work different from what every damn fool knows and says, write more articles like those they learned from, submit them to journals whose editors publish them because nothing better is available (and because academic journals cannot afford expensive copy editing) and thus provide the raw material for another generation to learn bad habits from.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 41.

Fools , Learning

“It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.”

Bob Woodward (1943) American journalist

Post Reporter's Pulitzer Prize Is Withdrawn; Pulitzer Board Withdraws Post Reporter's Prize (19 April 1981)

“The editor of this catalog asked me to make a statement about my work. I don't have much to write:
- Be a child of your age.
- Be naturalistic against your own ego.
- Be matter-of- fact toward your inner visions
- My love is dedicated to the four great masters of masculine mysticism: Mäleskirchener ([church-painters / muralists, Grünewald, Breughel [both famous painters in the late Middle Ages, ed. ] and Van Gogh.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

a catalog-text for his first major graphic show, November 1917; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
1900s - 1920s

Love , Age

“What I do is dangerous for sponsors, dangerous for editors. But I'm really a radio kid. I grew up on radio, not TV. Ultimately, I'll probably do radio.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Chuck Darrow (May 30, 2003) "'Diamond Dave' rehashes old tunes to new beats", Courier-Post, p. 22S.

“The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being.”

Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian

His reply after being called a heathen by John Marshman. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354

Dependency

“Not once did an off-the-record comment return to haunt me. For example, my relationship with Walter Pincus, editor of the New Republic, one of the nation’s most liberal magazines, developed to the point were he understood our conversations went off the record without my having to say so. I never divulged anything of great substance, but many of my comments about personalities and my own prejudices could have been extremely embarrassing had he (or others) betrayed my confidence.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 236
At That Point in Time, Off-the record meetings

Confidence , Personality

“Our editor came to work today in a vibrant pink shirt. Vibrant. Several members of staff have had to go home sick.”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

From the PM Newsletter and Weblog
Source: PM Newsletter. August 2006.

Home

“Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering, editor Thomas Alvin Boyd, 1961”

Charles Kettering (1876–1958) American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 140 patents

References

“Arakawa: At the beginning, I was contracted for a one-shot publication. However, the editor-in-charge of the storyboards passed down a request, "Let us serialise this, okay…". With a story that is meant to be completed in one chapter at this time, "How on earth am I going to do it?" [laughs]. I pounded my brains for around half a month, thinking about ideas to serialise this work.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Idea , Thinking , Time

“Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle … At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.… The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair.… It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

"How I Became a Socialist", New York Call (3 November 1912)

War , Error , Time , Fight

“You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

HOPE Speech (2006) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76pHIYx3ik
2000s

“Wadewitz said to attract more women editors, attitudes within the Wikipedia community need to change. This became clear when she revealed her gender, after writing anonymously for several years.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.
About

Women , Communication , Change

“Under its first two Indian editors [The Illustrated Weekly] became a vehicle of Indian culture devoting most of its pages to art, sculpture, classical dance and pretty pictures of flowers, birds, and dencing belles. It did not touch controversial subjects, was strictly apolitical and asexual (save occasional blurred reproductions of Khajuraho or Konarak). It earned a well-deserved reputation for dull respectability. I changed all that. What was a four-wheeled victoria taking well-draped ladies out to eat the Indian air I made a noisy rumbustious, jet-propelled vehicle of information, controversy and amusement. I tore up the unwritten norms of gentility, both visual and linguistic…. And slowly the circulation built up, till the Illustrated did become a weekly habit of the English-reading pseudo-elite of the country. It became the most widely read journal in Asia (barring Japan) because it reflected all the contending points of view on every conceivable subject: politics, economics, religion, and the arts.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

In Khushwant Singh's editor's page http://books.google.co.in/books?id=sNBOAAAAMAAJ, IBH Pub. Co., 1981, p. 4

Religion , Art , Flowers , Bird

“Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)

Books , Fear , Hell , Reading

“Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fastest female marathon in history – for a few days, that is, until a couple of students remembered seeing her jump out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.
Something of the sort has been going on recently with the shade of Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist, who died in 1992 just short of what would have been his ninety-third birthday, never made false claims for himself – far from it: he knew all too well the loneliness of the long distance runner. And scrupulous work as editor by the late W. W. Bartley, interpreter Bruce Caldwell, and biographer Alan Ebenstein, have made it possible to see the man clear.
But the claims conservatives are making about the role he played as an economist are beginning to smack of Ruizismus. That is, they have jumped a caricature out of the bushes late in the day and claim that their guy ran a great race.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

"Ruizismus among the Austrians," 4 December 2011

Age , Guy , History , Birthday

“"Make them read that it is no longer the fashion to wear birds upon hats. That will afford relief to your poor milliner and at the same time set free thousands of our darling birds who have been so cruelly used."
Popopo thanked the wise king and followed his advice.
The office of every newspaper and magazine in the city was visited by the knook, and then he went to other cities, until there was not a publication in the land that had not a "new fashion note" in its pages. Sometimes Popopo enchanted the types, so that whoever read the print would see only what the knook wished them to. Sometimes he called upon the busy editors and befuddled their brains until they wrote exactly what he wanted them to. Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived.
The following morning when the poor milliner looked over her newspaper she was overjoyed to read that "no woman could now wear a bird upon her hat and be in style, for the newest fashion required only ribbons and laces."”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

"The Enchanted Types", in American Fairy Tales (1901)
Short stories

Fashion , Business , Bird , Time

“Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

Nature , Help

“The Communist-Fascists, who are managers of the press, remove unwanted editors and monopolize the printing base, as it is widely practiced today in Belarus.”

Vasil Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

“Ён Прыехаў, Сам Памёр, Усё Спакойна…” Апошнія Тыдні Васіля Быкава https://www.svaboda.org/amp/24853764.html // svaboda.org
(in Belarusian)

“I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor [Karen Berger]. She told me, "There's no masturbation in the DC Universe." To which my reaction was, "Well that explains a lot about the DC Universe."”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

The Sandman Companion (1999)

Universe

“I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

President Buzz Windrip in his autobiography "Zero Hour."
It Can't Happen Here (1935)

Men , Family , Light

“Perhaps the editor may be accused of nationality, when he says, that, taking the total merits of this work together, he prefers it to the early exertions of even the Italian muse, to the melancholy sublimity of Dante, and the amorous quaintness of Petrarca…Here indeed the reader will find few of the graces of fine poetry, little of the attic dress of the muse; but here are life and spirit, and ease and plain sense, and pictures of real manners, and perpetual incident and entertainment. The language is remarkably good for the time, and far superior in neatness and elegance even to that of Gawin Douglass, who wrote more than a century after.”

John Barbour (1316–1395) Scottish poet

John Pinkerton, in his edition of The Bruce (London: G. Nicol, 1790) vol. 1, p. x.
Criticism

Life , Sense , Time

“Mrs Prentice: Are you ashamed of the fact that you write to strange men?
Prentice: There's nothing furtive in my relationship with the editor of The Guardian.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

Men

“He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all night. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings

Men , Way , Time , Night

“I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Love , Money , People , Books

“I don't see a great deal in editorial cartooning today, and neither do the editors. Damn few of them want cartoons that say something that should be said, politically, that is. As long as that continues, cartoonists are going to be in bad shape, but not as bad shape as the publishers and owners of the newspapers will be in when the people realize they're not reading anything.”

Paul Conrad (1924–2010) German theologian

As quoted in Pompilio, N. (2002). Not So Funny http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=2651. American Journalism Review.

People , Reading

“Get, by six hundred and fifty-eight votes, or by no vote at all, by the silent intimation of your own eyesight and understanding given you direct out of Heaven, and more sacred to you than anything earthly, and than all things earthly,—a correct image of the fact in question, as God and Nature have made it: that is the one thing needful; with that it shall be well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact. Get, by the sublimest constitutional methods, belauded by all the world, an incorrect image of the fact: so shall it be other than well with you; so shall you have laud from able editors and vociferous masses of mistaken human creatures; and from the Nature's Fact, continuing quite silently the same as it was, contradiction, and that only. What else?”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

God , World , Understanding , Question

“When I asked Amin [Husain] and Katie [Davison] what Occupy Wall Street’s ultimate goal was, they said, “A government accountable to the people, freed up from corporate influence.” … Organizers described Occupy Wall Street as “a way of being,” of “sharing your life together in assembly.” … The ambitions of the core group of activists were more cultural than political, in the sense that they sought to influence the way people think about their lives. “Ours is a transformational movement,” Amin told me with a solemn air. Transformation had to occur face to face; what it offered, especially to the young, was an antidote to the empty gaze of the screen.
In meetings and elsewhere, this Tolstoyan experience of undergoing a personal crisis of meaning, both political and of the soul, seemed deeply shared. Apart from Amin, I’ve met an architect, a film editor, an advertising consultant, an unemployed stock trader, a spattering of lawyers, and people with various other jobs who, after joining OWS, found themselves psychologically unable to go about their lives as before. … Michael Ellick, the minister at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, said that when he first visited Zuccotti Park he was reminded of his years at a monastery. “When people enter a monastery, they don’t know why they’ve come,” said Ellick. “They are there to find out why they are there, why they were compelled to leave the other world.””

Michael Greenberg (1952) American author

“What Future for Occupy Wall Street?” The New York Review of Books, vol. 59, no. 2, February 9, 2012

Life , People , World , Way

“This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language, by writers not living, and none besides the best. The Editor will regard as his fittest readers those who love poetry so well, that he can offer them nothing not already known and valued.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861) Preface.

Love

“We are more interested in the monthly trade returns than in Debrett, more preoccupied with what is said by the industrial correspondents and economic editors than what is said by William Hickey; more concerned with modernizing the machinery of government and the action that will need to follow the report of the Estimates Committee on the Civil Service than in altering the layout of Burke's Landed Gentry.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
Prime Minister

“Tor is the hard one. They employ a lot of editors, whose tastes vary. They don't always indicate who has edited what (on the choice of the editor, I think) so editor stalking can be more difficult with Tor. Ear-tagging works but is rather surprisingly illegal.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[ddd4ej$hiv$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Thinking

“In the lifetime that has passed since Calvin Coolidge gave his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in which he famously proclaimed that “the chief business of the American people is business,” the dominion of the ants has grown enormously. Look about: The business of business is everywhere and inescapable; the song of the buyers and the sellers never stops.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

People , Business

“In the final analysis, The Better Angels of Our Nature is an inflated political tract that misuses data and rewrites history in accord with its author’s clear ideological biases, while finding ideology at work only in the actions of his opponents. […] Small wonder, then, that the message of Better Angels pleases so well the editors of the New York Times and the large U. S. permanent-war establishment. It is regrettable that despite its manifest problems, the book has bamboozled so many other people who should know better.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman and Peterson (2012), Reality Denial: Steven Pinker’s Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.12/PDFs/0812.PinkerCrit.pdf, pp. 92-93.
2010s

War , People , Books , Angels

“Assange is not a 'journalist,' any more than the 'editor' of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'…Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?…Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle WikiLeaks?”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

On Wikileaks after the release of confidential US diplomatic cables http://web.archive.org/web/20101202005050/news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101130/pl_afp/usdiplomacypoliticswikileaksinternetpalin_20101130001458
2014

“Author unknown; reported in Dante Leonardi, Spighe d'oro, Remo Sandron Editore, 1924.”

Pope Sixtus V (1520–1590) pope

Sisto V, accorso a vedere il miracolo di un Gesù Cristo di legno che inondava sangue dalle ferite, lo ruppe dicendo: – Come Cristo ti venero, ma come legno ti rompo!
E il Cristo rotto mostrò che al suo interno era stata collocata una spugna inzuppata di liquido rosso, per simulare il sangue grondante.
About
Variant: Author unknown; reported in Dante Leonardi, Spighe d'oro, Remo Sandron Editore, 1924.

“I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby — I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters… "Betrayal"… "Confrontation"… "Management"… My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Milne, Act I
Night and Day (1978)

Life , Death , God , Sex

“A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.”

Ring Lardner (1885–1933) Sportswriter, short story writer

Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=U_xaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+good+many+young+writers+make+the+mistake+of+enclosing+a+stamped+self-addressed+envelope+big+enough+for+the+manuscript+to+come+back+in+This+is+too+much+of+a+temptation+to+the+editor%22&pg=PAx#v=onepage to How to Write Short Stories (1924)

“ Citizens of a modern society need […] more than that ordinary "common sense" which was defined by Stuart Chase as that which tells you that the world is flat. They need to be systematically aware of the powers and limitations of symbols, especially words, if they are to guard against being driven into complete bewilderment by the complexity of their semantic environment. The first of the principles governing symbols is this: The symbol is NOT the thing symbolized; the word is NOT the thing; the map is NOT the territory it stands for. (editor's link)”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

See also: The Meaning of Meaning (1923)
See also: Science and Sanity (1933)
Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Word Is Not the Thing, pp. 29-30

World , Sense

“On balance, the Islamic media's taste for what the West terms sensationalizing and conspiracy mongering is less than meets the eye. Based on my research, it is apparent that the Islamic media's correspondents and editors work harder, dig deeper, and think more than most of their Western counterparts. This is not to say that the Islamic media do not suffer from sensationalized conspiracy theories, but they probably are no more prone to those faults than their Western colleagues.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (p. 280)
2000s

Thinking , Suffering

“Yet scientists are required to back up their claims not with private feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must have rigorous controls to eliminate spurious effects. And statistical analysis eliminates the suspicion (or at least measures the likelihood) that the apparent effect might have happened by chance alone.Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the £740,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe. Why don't the television editors insist on some equivalently rigorous test? Could it be that they believe the alleged paranormal powers would evaporate and bang go the ratings?Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans. The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.”

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

[Human gullibility beyond belief,— the “paranormal” in the media, The Sunday Times, 1996-08-25]

Truth , Secret , Feeling , Decision

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem. We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that "against this every man should raise his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who wrote this admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions seriatim, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter http://books.google.com/books?vid=0Fz_zz_wSWAiVg9LI1&id=vvVVhCadyK4C&pg=PA192&vq=%22impeachment+is+an+impracticable+thing%22&dq=%22jeffersons+works%22 to Thomas Ritchie (25 December 1820)
1820s

Life , Books , Law , Decision

“I don't think so. I don't think any editor can make a difference to a daily paper because more than half, even three quarters is wire material and from correspondents in different places all over the country. And foreign news. And really the only thing the editor has is writing the editorials.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

Thinking , Country

“Extract from The Abolition of the Slave Trade quoted in a letter: "To The Editor Of The Times." Times [London, England] 30 Apr. 1810: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.”

Elizabeth Benger (1775–1827) British writer

Quotes , Time

“I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA

War , World , Family , Hope

“ Now, to use the famous metaphor by Alfred Korzybski in his Science and Sanity (1933), this verbal world ought to stand in relation to the extensional world as a map does to the territory it is supposed to represent. If a child grows to adulthood with a verbal world in his head which corresponds fairly closely to the extensional world that he finds around him in his widening experience, he is in relatively small danger of being shocked or hurt by what he finds, because his verbal world has told him what, more or less, to expect. He is prepared for life. If, however, he grows up with a false map in his head […] he will constantly be running into trouble, wasting his efforts, and acting like a fool. He will not be adjusted to the world as it is: he may, if the lack of adjustment is serious, end up in a mental hospital. (editor's link) ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Maps and Territories, p. 31

Life , World , Fools , Effort

“Most editors run poems and poetry reviews the way a prosperous Montana rancher might keep a few buffalo around — not to eat the endangered creatures but to display them for tradition's sake.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Way

“I was an English major. I studied a lot of English literature, so got interested in the literary magazine and was a contributing editor. That's the closest I got to journalism then, but I always hankered to get into news.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Literature , Study

“The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently “administering the Discipline of the Church.””

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

War , People , Peace , Way

“"It's gonna be just like war!" an editor exults. "That's it! War! You put that in the lead.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

'WAR - GANG WAR!'" Scarface (1932)
Screenplays

War

“Delmore carries such a petty, personally involved, New Yorkish atmosphere around with him it's almost unpleasant for me to see him. He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

Quoted in Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Books of the Times," The New York Times (6 May 1985) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E0D7173BF935A35756C0A963948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. The quote is cited from a 1952 letter in Randall Jarrell's Letters: An Autobiographical and Literary Selection, ed. Mary Jarrell, assisted by Stuart Wright (Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
General sources

Thinking , Personality

“There’s an editor for you.
They’re all the same. At first they’re all honey and sweet talk, with those long alcoholic lunches and blue-sky conversation about million-copy printings while they wheedle you into signing the contract. Then they turn nasty. They want the actual book delivered. When they don’t get it, or when the censors say they can’t print it, then there isn’t any more sweet talk and all the conversation is about how the aediles will escort you to debtors’ prison.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

Waiting for the Olympians (p. 257)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Alcohol , Books

“Editor’s Preface In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous author to the supreme ideality. Yet the requirement should indeed be stated, presented, and heard. From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it-instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard-and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone—so that I might learn not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace. S. K.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. xii

Books , Understanding , Learning , Personality

“The medieval student had to be paleographer, editor, and publisher of the authors he read.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 109

Reading

“Anybody want a binary telemetry frame editor written in Perl?”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199708012226.PAA22015@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Certainly no one could have predicted what has happened. Back then, after 121 others had turned this book down, one lone editor offered a standard $3,000 advance. He said the book forced him to decide what he was in publishing for, and added that although this was almost certainly the last payment, I shouldn't be discouraged. Money wasn't the point with a book like this.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)

Money , Books

“I should have done my novel before this, but I was a journalist and a junkie for 20 years and unlike the junkie cliché, I had good jobs all over the world. I was a books editor, I did financial journalism for Asia Week for five years, I was Bombay correspondent for the South China Morning Post for 18 months, I worked for every newspaper in India doing arts journalism. I was a hardworking junkie.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Books , World , Art

“It is not true that Kafka wanted Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death. Rather it is the case that Kafka was on fire to be published…rushed to the postbox day after day…ate with editors…intrigued for favorable notices…read the Writer’s Digest…consorted with critics…autographed napkins…made himself available to librarians…spoke on the radio…”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

praragraph deleted from “Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel”, in Tracy Daugherty’s Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (2009), p. 335.

Death , Reading

“At the time, I was working for The Times. My story ran in full. Then an official of the Foreign Office lunched my editor and told him my report was "not helpful". Because, of course, we supported President Saddam at the time and wanted revolutionary Iran to suffer and destroy itself. President Saddam was the good guy then. I wasn't supposed to report his human rights abuses. And now I'm not supposed to report the slaughter of the innocent by American or RAF pilots because the British Government has changed sides.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The ministry of mendacity strikes again http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles209.htm, April 4, 2003
2003

Guy , Support , Suffering , Change

“At every turn, skeptical observers have attacked the idea that pooling our cognitive surplus could work to create anything worthwhile, or suggested that if it does work, it is a kind of cheating, because sharing at a scale that competes with older institutions is somehow wrong. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft denounced the shared production of software as communism. Robert McHenry, a former editor in chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, likened Wikipedia to a public rest room. Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, compared bloggers to monkeys. These complaints, self-interested though they were, echoed more broadly held beliefs. Shared, unmanaged effort might be fine for picnics and bowling leagues, but serious work is done for money, by people who work in proper organizations, with managers directing their work.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Money , People , Communication , Idea

““.. I felt angry when I learnt that a great artist like Mani Madhava Chakyar was awarded a mere Padma Shri. A man of his artistic genius and erudition deserved to be decorated with the highest state honour (Bharat Ratna)”
- RKG (Editor, The Illustrated Weekly, Columnist for Times of India), 2000”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: RKG, India : A Nation in Turmoil, Vedam Books, New Delhi (2000), ISBN 81-7476-268-X, p. 256 http://books.google.com/books?id=pKkBbf7doAUC&pg=RA1-PA256&ots=46YGGQqKUK&dq=Mani+Madhava+Chakyar&sig=BtI2LnPjtmf8b9sIMMlC4ihk40Y#PRA1-PA256,M1

Time

“The general ignorance of the visual arts, especially their theoretical bases, deplorable even in the so-called intellectual world; the artist’s well-founded despair of ever reaching the mythical “masses” with “advanced art”; the resulting ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world itself, with its resentful reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, critics, editors, and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the “real world’s” power structure—all of these factors may make it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts.”

Lucy R. Lippard (1937) American art curator

John Chandler and Lucy R. Lippard, " The Dematerialization of Art http://www.c-cyte.com/OccuLibrary/Texts-Online/Lippard-Chandler_The_Dematerialization_of_Art.pdf," in Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

World , Art , Despair

“"Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions," murmmured Lönnrot.
"Like Christianity," the editor put in.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"Death and the Compass"
Ficciones (1944)

History

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

Life , Children , Home , Lovers

“The editor introduces Muhammad Ghuri in the Taj-ul-Maasir of Hasan Nizami as follows: 'After dwelling on the advantage and necessity of holy wars, without which the fold of Muhammad's flock could never be filled, he says that such a hero as these obligations of religion require has been found, 'during the reign of the lord of the world Mu'izzu-d dunya wau-d din, the Sultan of Sultans, Abu-l Muzaffar Muhammad bin Sam bin Husain' the destroyer of infidels and plural-worshippers etc.,' and that Almighty Allah had selected him from amongst the kings and emperors of the time, 'for he had employed himself in extirpating the enemies of religion and the state, and had deluged the land of Hind with the blood of their hearts, so that to the very day of resurrection travellers would have to pass over pools of gore in boats, - had taken every fort and stronghold which he attacked, and ground its foundations and pillars to powder under the feet of fierce and gigantic elephants, - had sent the whole world of idolatry to the fire of hell, by the well-watered blade of his Hindi sword, - had founded mosques and colleges in the places of images and idols'.'The narrative proceeds: 'Having equipped and set in order the army of Islam, and unfurled the standards of victory and the flags of power, trusting in the aid of the Almighty, he proceeded towards Hindustan…”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 209-212. Quoted in Sita Ram Goel : The Calcutta Quran Petition, ch. 6.

War , World , Religion , Travel

“Wadewitz was probably best known as a longtime Wikipedia editor. She edited her first entry in 2004, and went on to create pages for female writers, scholars, and their works, editing nearly 50,000 posts in total”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Solé, Elise (April 18, 2014). "Remembering Adrianne Wadewitz, Beloved Wikipedia Wiz" https://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/adrianne-wadewitz-died-rock-climbing-200336364.html. Yahoo Shine.
About

“I was an Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science during its early years. Now, over a half century later, I have to admit that I was not very clear what the journal was about, except that it tried to reflect on the meaning of science and its relation to other human activities. At this time I am even less sure of its purposes.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman "Guest editorial: what is philosophy of science" In: Philosophy of Science Vol. 61, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), p. 132-141
1980s and later

Science , Time

“In 2000, Ed Bradley celebrated his nineteenth season as co-editor of and correspondent for 60 Minutes. … He covered presidential campaigns and national conventions from 1976 through 1996 for CBS.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

About

Season

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Books , Feeling , Decision , Effort

“I doubt myself every day. I think most writers do. It’s part of the process. It’s in part what keeps you trying to write better each day, each book. If you were ever completely satisfied, I think you might just move on to something else. So you persevere. My bandmate, Stephen King, says successful writing is 5% talent, 5% luck, and 90% perseverance. You hit walls, reviews, dead-ends, editors, trends, and you wake up in the morning and keep going. You write for the joy of writing. It’s the best job in the world. I never—never—take this opportunity for granted. I try to earn it every day I’m in the chair.”

Ridley Pearson (1953) American writer

Interview with Ridley Pearson http://blog.booksamillion.com/author-spotlight/author-interviews/2016/08/interview-ridley-pearson/ (August 22, 2016)

Books , World , Thinking , Success

“Unlike the Wikipedia editor stereotype, Wadewitz was not a young male who was tech-obsessed. Still she found Wikipedia appealing as a way to spread her academic knowledge, which was sometimes seen by few, whereas her encyclopedic entries might be read by millions.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Michelle Broder Van Dyke (April 21, 2014). "Prolific Wikipedia Editor Adrianne Wadewitz Dies After Rock Climbing Accident" http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/prolific-wikipedia-editor-adrianne-wadewitz-dies-after-rock. BuzzFeed.
About

Way , Knowledge , Reading