Quotes about elicit

A collection of quotes on the topic of elicit, doing, response, responsibility.

Quotes about elicit

“Language is at the heart of poetry and it is difficult to commandeer words which elicit no personal echo. Of what we can speak, we need not be silent.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Interview with Eugene O'Connell 'Cork Literary Review vol xiii 2009
Poetry Quotes

Heart, Personality

“The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

As quoted in This much I know: Jim Carrey, actor, 46, Los Angeles http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/19/jim-carrey-interview by Tony Horkins in The Observer (19 October 2008) Context: Comedic actors can be looked at as a lower form because we have to put ourselves in a lower place than most of the audience. I think lofty emotions are somehow considered more special. The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.

World

“Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts.”

Nicolaus Copernicus book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

Preface Letter to Pope Paul III, Tr. E. Rosen, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1978) pp. 4-7.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)
Context: Those who devised the eccentrics seen thereby in large measure to have solved the problem of apparent motions with approximate calculations. But meanwhile they introduced a good many ideas which apparently contradict the first principles of uniform motion. Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts. On the contrary, their experience was just like someone taking from various places hands, feet, a head, and other pieces, very well depicted it may be, but for the representation of a single person; since these fragments would not belong to one another at all, a monster rather than a man would be put together from them.

Universe, Parting

“For this companion volume to A New Earth, I selected passages from the original book that felt particularly suitable for inspirational or meditative reading. For this reason I do not recommend that you read this book straight through from cover to cover. It would be far more beneficial to read, at the most, one chapter at a time, stopping at and perhaps rereading whatever passages elicit an inner response. Then let the words sink in and sense the truth to which they point, which is, of course, already within you. It can also be helpful to open the book at random occasionally, read one page or just one passage and let the words point the way to that dimension deep within that is beyond words, beyond thought. The truth to which the words point, the timeless dimension of consciousness, cannot be arrived at through discursive thought and conceptual understanding.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

From The Introduction https://eckharttolle.com/oneness-with-all-life-excerpt/ Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth (2008)

Time, Reading, Understanding, Help

“Puck laughed, and it wasn't like that weird high-pitched giggle she'd heard out of children before, the one that begged the question: why would one possibly tickle a child just to elicit that noise?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

Children, Question

“In this pause, I suddenly saw something very clearly.

Whatever it was I wanted from my mother was simply not there to be had. It was not her fault.

And it was therefore not my fault that I was unable to elicit it.”

Alison Bechdel book Are You My Mother?

Source: Are You My Mother?

“The primary contribution of government to this world is to elicit, entrench, enable, and finally to codify the most destructive aspects of the human personality.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: Facebook post, Facebook.com, 2016-05-30 https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.albert.tucker/posts/10151379889671198,

World, Personality

“The general notion in communication theory is that of information. In many cases, the flow of information corresponds to a flow of energy, e. g. if light waves emitted by some objects reach the eye or a photoelectric cell, elicit some reaction of the organism or some machinery, and thus convey information.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 41

Communication, Light

“So let us listen to the light—what music do we hear? For one thing, we can elicit from each chemical element its own, unique chord. You may sometimes have noticed that a bright yellow flash is produced if ordinary table salt is sprinkled on a flame…a first bare hint of the subject of flame spectra… The fact that different elements emit light with different color characteristics is exploited by the makers of fireworks.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Music, Color, Light

“There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Quoted in Wilford, H: The New York Intellectuals: From Vanguard to Institution, Manchester University Press, 1995.
1990s

“Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
Harmonium (1923)

Music

“I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Pain, Justice, Soul, Search

“The attempt made to establish a separate and independent Confederation has failed; but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully, and to the end, will, in some measure, repay for the hardships you have undergone. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the merits of the Cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, has elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

1860s, Farewell address (1865)

Men, Way, Courage, Success

“At the opening of the Joburg Sexpo at Gallagher Estate in Midrand yesterday, Patch, who paints under the name Pricasso, elicited gasps of amazement from the hundreds of people who looked on.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Lee Rondganger, Artist with unusual technique a Sexpo hit, The Star, South Africa, 28 September 2007, 2, Independent Online]
About

People, Painting

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 402-403; As cited in: Edwin Inglee Megargee, Charles Donald Spielberger (1992) Personality assessment in America: a retrospective on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Personality Assessment. p. 20-21

Life, World, Way, Feeling

“There is so much to be learned by studying how Dr. Ishikawa managed to accomplish so much during a single lifetime. In my observation, he did so by applying his natural gifts in an exemplary way. He was dedicated to serving society rather than serving himself. His manner was modest, and this elicited the cooperation of others. He followed his own teachings by securing facts and subjecting them to rigorous analysis. He was completely sincere, and as a result was trusted completely.”

Joseph M. Juran (1904–2008) Quality guru

Joseph M. Juran (1989), cited in: Russell T. Westcott, "Leave A Legacy". Quality Progress. December 2009. p. 63.

Way, Nature, Study, Learning

“The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act So As To Elicit the Best In Others and Thereby In Thy Self.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Book III, Ch. 7, Title of the chapter. This has sometimes appeared in modernized or paraphrased forms:
Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby oneself.
Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby one's Self.
Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby in yourself.
Act so as to encourage the best in others, and by so doing you will develop the best in yourself.
Founding Address (1876), An Ethical Philosopy of Life (1918)

“I've trained myself to propose solutions instead of ask for them, to elicit responses instead of react, and to be assertive without burning bridges. To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Decision, Training

“The large (in English) unphilosophical, 'poetic' or 'religious' questions are elicited from their precise and technical microcosms.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Question

“A review of our party's seventy-plus-year history elicits an important conclusion. Our party earned the people's support during the historical periods of revolution, construction and reform because it always represented the requirements for developing China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The party also earned popular support because it fought tirelessly to realize the fundamental interests of the country and the people by formulating a correct line, principles and policies. Today, humanity once again stands at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium. How our party can better effectuate the Three Represents under the new historical conditions is a major issue all Party comrades, especially high-ranking party cadres, must consider deeply.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

Three Represents (25 February 2000).
2000s

People, History, Support, Country

“Among the fundamental values linked to women's actual lives is what has been called a 'capacity for the other.' Although a certain type of feminist rhetoric makes demands 'for ourselves,' women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness in their lives of those actions which elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection of the other…. But, in the final analysis, every human being, man or woman, is destined to be 'for the other.'… Therefore, the promotion of women within society must be understood and desired as a humanization accomplished through those values, rediscovered thanks to women. Every outlook which presents itself as a conflict between the sexes is only an illusion and a danger; it would end in segregation and competition between men and women, and would promote a solipsism nourished by a false conception of freedom.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Doctrinal document On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, July 31, 2004
2003

Life, Women, Men, Sex

“When you read sutras don't seek to understand them. Stay in touch with precisely what they are eliciting in terms of experience in you.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Heart Sutra Workshop http://www.unfetteredmind.org/heart-sutra-commentary-3#sect6. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (2008-09-13) (Topic: Practice)

Understanding, Reading

“Government is essentially a big computer that elicits from citizens their preferences and uses this information to produce social decisions.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 6, Political Economy, p. 117

Decision

“The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

As quoted in No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People (2001) by Evan T. Pritchard

Question

“I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Lunar Park

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307264305&view=auqa

People, Books, Hope, Way

“Do not elicit your child's political opinions. He doesn't know any more than you do.”

Fran Lebowitz book Social Studies

" Parental Guidance https://books.google.com/books?id=xCV8OXwBuNcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22fran+lebowitz%22+%22parental+guidance%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX3rO2xPvPAhXl1IMKHbrqAqAQ6AEIKjAC#v=onepage&q=%22Parental%20Guidance%20s%22&f=false". Social Studies (1981)

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Montrose and Leadership (1930), p 24; republished in Men and Deeds (1977)

Leadership

“After society has decided on a social choice rule-a recipe for choosing the optimal social alternative (or alternatives) on the basis of individuals' preferences over the set of all social alternatives-the social planner still faces the problem of how to implement that rule. In particular, the planner may not know individuals' preferences. He might attempt to elicit them, but this may not be an easy task, even abstracting from communication costs. If individuals know the rule by which the planner selects alternatives on the basis of reported preferences, they may have an incentive to report falsely.”

Eric Maskin (1950) American Nobel laureate in economics

Eric Maskin, " Nash equilibrium and welfare optimality http://emlab.whu.edu.cn/syzx/upfiles/20071108083852736.pdf." The Review of Economic Studies 66.1 (1999): 23-38.

Communication, Optimism, Problem, Falseness

“My views may seem to ignore a moral imperative that businesses should follow virtuous principles, whether or not it is most profitable for them to do so. Instead I prefer to recognize that, throughout human history, […] government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found to be necessary for the enforcement of moral principles. Invocation of moral principles is a necessary first step for eliciting virtuous behavior, but that alone is not a sufficient step.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "Big businesses and the environment: different conditions, different outcomes", section "Businesses and the public" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 484-485, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Behavior, History, Business

“What we now need is a multitude of participants to take part in the great discussion and to join in the search for the larger truth and the more fruitful patterns of belief which we confidently believe is waiting to be elicited.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)

Truth, Confidence, Search, Waiting

“At the religious discussion meetings held by Akbar, 'at which every one… might say or ask what he liked,' the emperor examined people about the creation of the Quran, elicited their belief, or otherwise, in revelation, and raised doubts in them regarding all things connected with the Prophet and the imams. He distinctly denied the existence of Jins, of angels, and of all other beings of the invisible world, as well as the miracles of the Prophet.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by Abdul Qadir Badaoni, vol. II, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

People, World, Angels

“Problems connected with political boundaries have frequently elicited the interest of geographers. In all countries with chronic or acute boundary problems the geographers are drawn into the general discussion, more or less as experts, and in some cases the professional geographer has actually been called upon to assist in the determination and demarcation of boundaries.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Hartshorne (1933) " Geographic and political boundaries in Upper Silesia http://piotrwroblewski.us.edu.pl/rudy/Richard_Hartshorne.pdf" in: Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec., 1933), p. 195

Problem, Country

“Unlike pure theorists, we shall not assume at the outset that rational behavior exists or that rational behavior constitutes the topic of economic analysis. We shall study economic behavior as we find it. In describing and classifying different reactions, as well as the circumstances that elicit them, we shall raise the question whether and in what sense certain reactions may be called “rational.” After having answered that question and thus defined our terms, we shall study the fundamental problem: Under what conditions do more and under what conditions do less rational forms of behavior occur?”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 16; as cited in: Erik Angner and George Loewenstein. "Behavior economics," in: Philosophy of Economics, (2012), p. 657

Behavior, Question, Problem, Sense

“The goal and intent of the book of the Qur'an, is not only not to detract from God the creator or from Christ or from God's prophets and envoys or from the divine books of the Testament, the Psalter, and the Gospel, but also to give glory to God the Creator, to praise and bear witness to Christ (the son of the Virgin Mary) above all prophets, and to confirm and approve of the Testament and the Gospel. When one reads the Qur'an with this understanding, assuredly some fruit can be elicited from it”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

Cribratio Alkorani (Sifting the Qur'an)

God, Books, Understanding, Reading

“When the responses elicited by the Epic of Evolution are gathered together several religious principles emerge that I can believe, serve as a framework for a global Ethos.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 167

“The paramount political benefit of membership on a large-sized intelligence committee is the capacity to leak information to favored reporters in order to elicit media good will.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

A Tight Plug on Intelligence Leaks http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/10/opinion/a-tight-plug-on-intelligence-leaks.html, The New York Times (June 10, 1987)

Intelligence

“Where a man speaks upon a subject of his own accord, he naturally tells the whole of what he knows; but where he is examined on interrogatories formally administered to him, his answers are naturally confined to the particulars to which he is so interrogated; and as the examining party generally knows beforehand the scope of the witness's evidence, he has an opportunity of so shaping his questions as that they may elicit everything in his favour with which the witness is acquainted, and keep back everything of a contrary tendency.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

Berkeley Peerage Case (1811), 4 Camp. 405.

Question, Nature

“If you pass the light from a sodium flash through a prism, you get a pattern very different from the familiar continuous rainbow that Newton elicited from natural sunlight. Instead of a continuous pattern, in which all gradations of pure color are apparently represented, the sodium flash generates a series of lines of light. …in the musical analogy, sodium produces a chord where sunlight produced all possible tones—"white noise."”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Other elements produce other chords.
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Music, Color, Nature, Light

“An operation is some action one object performs upon another in order to elicit a reaction.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 80

“I passed by a corner office in which an employee was typing up a document relating to brand performance. … Something about her brought to mind a painting by Edward Hopper which I had seen several years before at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In New York Movie (1939), an usherette stands by the stairwell of an ornate pre-war theatre. Whereas the audience is sunk in semidarkness, she is bathed in a rich pool of yellow light. As often in Hopper’s work, her expression suggests that her thoughts have carried her elsewhere. She is beautiful and young, with carefully curled blond hair, and there are a touching fragility and an anxiety about her which elicit both care and desire. Despite her lowly job, she is the painting’s guardian of integrity and intelligence, the Cinderella of the cinema. Hopper seems to be delivering a subtle commentary on, and indictment of, the medium itself, implying that a technological invention associated with communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others. The painting’s power hangs on the juxtaposition of two ideas: first, that the woman is more interesting that the film, and second, that she is being ignored because of the film. In their haste to take their seats, the members of the audience have omitted to notice that they have in their midst a heroine more sympathetic and compelling than any character Hollywood could offer up. It is left to the painter, working in a quieter, more observant idiom, to rescue what the film has encouraged its viewers not to see.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), pp. 83-84.

War, Beauty, Art, Intelligence

“[I]t is the publicness of socio-sexual identities rather than the sexual acts themselves that elicits repression”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., p.197.
Desiring Arabs

“When I lump all my sins together and confess them en masse, I neglect to feel the pain or embarrassment or shame that should be elicited in me.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Pain, Feeling

“It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Speech on receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969)

Lie, Understanding

“The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one—the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective. The one artisanal, teachable thing is outer conduct.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

Girl, Nature, Parent, Help

“Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Context: No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

Problem, Time

“The role of religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. xiv
Context: The role of religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings. As each culture evolves, a unique Cosmos and Ethos appear in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the first humans, the stories, ceremonies, and art associated with our religions-of-origin are central to our matrix.
I stand in awe of these religions. I am deeply enmeshed in one of them myself. I have no need to take on the contradictions or immiscibilities between them, any more that I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipes coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies.

Religion, Understanding

“Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: We can justify the list we will submit on several grounds. First, many of these questions have literally been asked by children and adolescents when they are permitted to respond freely to the challenge of "What's Worth Knowing?" Second, some of these questions are based on careful listening to students, even though they were not at the time asking questions. Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't. (An old aphorism describing this process goes: Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.) In other cases they do this because they do not know how to ask certain kinds of questions. In any event, a simple translation of their declarative utterances will sometimes produce a great variety of deeply felt questions.

Children, Learning

“Let us then enunciate the functions of a state and we shall easily elicit what we want: First there must be food; secondly, arts, for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants….”

Aristotle book Politics

Book VII, 1328b.4
Politics

Life, Food, Art, Communication

“I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. A novelist writes a novel and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.”

August Wilson (1945–2005) American playwright

On what attracted him to theater in “August Wilson, The Art of Theater No. 14” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/839/august-wilson-the-art-of-theater-no-14-august-wilson in The Paris Review (Winter 1999)

Time, Reading, Personality, People

“In the west, where supplication to gurus is not the cultural norm, he elicits such a response from a cadre of longtime yoga practitioners. They credit him with changing their lives -- and the face of yoga in the United States.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Stacie Stukin in: "10 Yogis gather around the guru"

Change

“This rare and inspiring exhibition could hardly help but elicit wonder.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Art media on Kapoor’s first major exhibition in Australia.
Exhibition: Anish Kapoor

Help

“They could not have known that Ella’s whispered story of deception and murder had been the first experience in my life that had elicited from me a total emotional response. No words or punishment could have possibly made me doubt. I had tasted what to me was life, and I would have more of it, somehow, someway.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Life

“The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of "Fuck You", so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

letter to Alexander Cockburn (1 March 1990), later paraphrased in Deterring Democracy (1992) p. 345.
Quotes 1990s, 1990–1994

Truth

“Public servants are not entitled to abuse their power to do anything illegal.
Writers are not supposed to misuse their flair to elicit evil thoughts.
Professionals are never easy to cultivate.
Immoral is one when he applies his knowledge to the breachment of morality and law.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 持槍作盜進行侵，利筆文章誨殺淫。
技藝人才培不易，植因造業孽緣深。

"Professional morality" (專業道德)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 84.

Knowledge, Law, Evil

“When a man is touching 50 and has never had any productive job in his life, he cannot elicit respect from me as an individual... If you stand in the capital of India and say you support “Bharat ke tukde honge” (India will be broken into pieces), I don’t have an iota of respect for such individuals.”

Rahul Gandhi (1970) Indian politician

Smriti Irani (2020). https://web.archive.org/web/20200517065839/https://www.opindia.com/2020/05/smriti-irani-says-cant-embarrass-rahul-gandhi-as-he-is-an-embarrassment/

Support, Life

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

Horace (-65–-8 BC) Roman lyric poet