Quotes about end
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Rob Enderle photo

“If [Apple's watch] bounces, folks will begin to lose faith. … watch the iWatch execution. That'll tell you whether this is a rebirth or the beginning of the end.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Apple's Tim Cook faces make-or-break week http://marketwatch.com/story/apples-cook-set-to-lead-post-jobs-era-offensive-2014-09-03 in MarketWatch (4 September 2014)

Margaret Mead photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Theo van Doesburg photo

“Gradually we began [ De Stijl-artists in The Netherlands, 1918] to present a closed front. By working there had been created not only a clarity in the collective consciousness of our group, but we had gained a certainty, which made it possible for us to define our collective attitude towards life and to perpetrate it according to the requirements of the period... As the world war [ World War I ] was coming to an end, we all came to feel the need of securing an interest in our efforts beyond the narrow boundaries of Holland.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 1929, p. 172 (Van Doesburg); as quoted in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01_0003.php, J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1956, p. 17
Van Doesburg is looking back on the starting years of De Stijl-movement
1926 – 1931

Richard Holbrooke photo

“The situation also gave U. N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali a chance to start the U. N.'s disegagement from Bosnia, something he had long wanted to do. After a few meetings with him, I concluded that this elegant and subtle Egyptian, whose Coptic family could trace its origins back over centuries, had disdain for the fractious and firty peoples of the Balkans. Put bluntly, he never liked the place. In 1992, during his only visit to Sarajevo, he made the comment that shocked the journalists on the day I arrived in the beleaguered capital: "Bosnia is a rich man's war. I understand your frustration, but you have a situation here that is better than ten other places in the world. … I can give you a list." He complained many times that Bosnia was eating up his budget, diverting him from other priorities, and threatening the whole U. N. system. "Bosnia has created a distortion in the work of the U. N.", he said just before Srebrenica. Sensing that our diplomatic efforts offered an opportunity to disengage, he informed the Security Council on September 18 that he would be ready to end the U. N. role in the forme Yugoslavia, and allow all key aspects of implementation to be placed with others. Two days later, he told Madeleine Albright that the Contact Group should create its own mechanism for implementation - thus volunteering to reduce the U. N.'s role at a critical moment. Ironically, his weakness simplified our task considerably.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), pp. 174-175

William Empson photo

“Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Just a Smack at Auden" (1937), line 15; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 81.
The Complete Poems

Henry David Thoreau photo
Prakash Javadekar photo

“We have to reduce our carbon emissions. But I have not created the carbon emission problems, which have been done by others. But I am not into any blame game. The issue is that I have a right to grow. India and developing countries have the right to grow. These are the emerging economies. To that end, we need to grow. Our net emission may increase.”

Prakash Javadekar (1951) Indian politician

On India's carbon emissions, as quoted in " India's Carbon Emission may Increase as it Grows: Javadekar http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Indias-Carbon-Emission-may-Increase-as-it-Grows-Javadekar/2014/06/18/article2286148.ece, The New Indian Express (18 June 2014)

Philip K. Dick photo
William L. Shirer photo

“man is by nature designed to live in the polis, the highest form of koinonia, community; that is man's end or goal if he achieves the full potentiality of his nature.”

Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 90

Al Gore photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Paul Klee photo

“I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. The end has met the beginning.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

German original version: Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar. Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten, wie bei den Ungeborenen. Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich. Und noch lange nicht nahe genug.
Quote from Exhibition catalogue, Galerie Goltz, Munich, published in the gallery's house journal Der Ararat (May 1920). These words were later used as Klee's epitaph in 1940.
Variant translation: I cannot be understood at all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
As quoted in Paul Klee: His Work and Thought (1991) by Marcel Franciscono, p. 5
1916 - 1920

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Pauline Kael photo
Edmund Burke photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Stephen Corry photo
William Winwood Reade photo
Peter Cain photo

“Since organizations are established to do something, to perform work directed to some end, all organizations have goals – some implied, some explicit.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 133

Galway Kinnell photo
Ammon Hennacy photo
Norman Mailer photo
Elie Wiesel photo
Elon Musk photo
Ross Mintzer photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,… I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. Ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! The signature is what destroys us. We do portraits, but what we do is not so great. Thèse kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. The fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. They made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the Renascence. And then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. As for us, we are modellers. And what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! It is a mere swindling in art. Art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would hâve laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. When once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. How curious it would hâve been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must hâve discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!… Whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. And even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. We need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven…”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 63-64; About the genius of the Gothic sculptors.

Torquato Tasso photo

“Chance in uncertain, fortune double-faced,
Smiling at first, she frowneth in the end:
Beware thine honor be not then disgraced,
Take heed thou mar not when thou think'st to mend.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Giunta è tua gloria al sommo e per lo innanzi
Fuggir le dubbie guerre a te conviene,
Ch' ove tu vinca sol di stato avvanzi
Nè tua gloria maggior quindi diviene;
Mal' Imperio acquii'tato e prefo dianzi
El' onor perdi, se 'l contrario avviene.
Canto II, stanza 67 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Steve Jobs photo

“I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was OK and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Steve Jobs (2011) by Walter Isaacson, p. 254
2010s

Neil Gaiman photo
Adrienne von Speyr photo
Derek Jeter photo

“I only wanted to play baseball. I only wanted to play shortstop. I only wanted to play for the Yankees. My whole life. It wasn't like I wanted to play for another team and ended up in New York. It wasn't like I wanted to play another position and ended up at short. This has always been the dream of mine: to play shortstop for the New York Yankees. And I get a chance to do it.”

Derek Jeter (1974) American baseball player

Reported in Tom Verducci, " Derek Jeter: In his own words http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/magazine/specials/sportsman/2009/11/30/jeter.interview/index.html", Sports Illustrated (November 30, 2009).
2000s, 2009

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Since Sputnik, the earth has been wrapped in a dome-like blanket or bubble. Nature ended.”

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

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

Jackson Pollock photo

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't meant it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Only he didn't know it.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

In 'Unframed Space' interview with Berton Roueché, The New Yorker (5 August 1950); as quoted in The Grove Book of Art Writing: Brilliant Words on Art from Pliny the Elder to Damien Hirst ed. Martin Gayford and Karen Wright [Grove Press, 2000, ISBN 0-802-13720-2], p. 546
1950's

Joe Jackson photo
Iain Banks photo

“There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Descendant” (p. 40)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

John Muir photo
Philip Roth photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Zane Grey photo

“If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.”

Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist

Tales of Southern Rivers (1924).

“I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

On turning 70 in Journals 1939-83 (1986), as quoted by R Z Sheppard in TIMEmagazine (20 January 1986)

Vitruvius photo
Jonathan Miller photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“The one from among the Muslims who recites the Qur'an but in the end finds his way to hell, is considerd to be among those that have taken the word of Allah in jest.”

Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol. 92, p. 182.
Regarding the Qur'an

Colin Wilson photo
Karl Dönitz photo
Mahmud Tarzi photo

“The ways of the British are inscrutable but they always seem to obtain their own ends without compromising their dignity or their honor.”

Mahmud Tarzi (1865–1933) Afghan writer

Foreign Minister Mahmud Tarzi, October 28, 1919

Elton Mayo photo
Werner Erhard photo

“I take responsibility for ending starvation within twenty years. The Hunger Project is not about solutions. It's not about fixing up the project. It's not about anybody's good idea. The Hunger Project is about creating a context - creating the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Quote from 1977, re: The Hunger Project
[178, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

Cesare Pavese photo

“When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Hassan Nasrallah photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx.
Christ: the principle of love.
Marx: the principle of hate.”

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

Der Kampf, den wir heute ausfechten bis zum Sieg oder bis zum bitteren Ende, ist im tiefsten Sinne ein Kampf zwischen Christus und Marx.
Christus: das Prinzip der Liebe.
Marx: das Prinzip des Hasses.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

“A man spends the first year of his life learning that he ends at his own skin, and the rest of his life learning that he doesn't.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

"The Individual and Political Life of Information Systems", in Heilprin, Markuson, and Goodman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on Education for Information Science, Warrenton, Virginia, September 7-10, 1965 (Washington, DC: Spartan Books, 1965)

John Cage photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Ken Livingstone photo
Iain Banks photo
D. S. Bradford photo

“Stolen away were the bitter ends of yesterday
Marked for destruction
Mark these words
Bellowed from the collective consciousness
Of all that is pure
A life that we don't understand”

D. S. Bradford (1982) musician

A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky, verse 2, lines 5-11
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)

Frank Bruno photo
Jason Aldean photo
Samuel T. Cohen photo

“Teller’s irascible behavior forced him out of the mainstream but not out of the lab, thanks to Oppenheimer who didn’t think we should be without geniuses, even those whose enormous egos caused serious friction. As bright and innovative as Teller was, his overall performance during the war left a lot to be desired. He was not content to be part of a team effort (like yours truly) and preferred to work off to the side on new and different and sometime pretty far-out ideas (like yours truly). This caused considerable resentment. After all there was a war going on and most people thought future nuclear weapon concepts should be worked on sometime in the future, after we had finished our primary assignment. Edward’s behavior was like a colonel on a planning staff during a military campaign who tells his commanding general that he’d like to plan for the next war. That would be the end of the colonel, who would be demoted and shipped off to some base in the Aleutian Islands.
[5]Oppenheimer, however, realized that guys like Teller, despite their shortcomings, were necessary to have around; one never knows when a guy like that can be worth his weight in gold, which to the best of my recollection never happened with Teller. So an arrangement was worked out where Teller and a handful of like-minded theoretical physicists, willing to put up with his domineering ways, formed a small group dedicated to doing what they pleased, realizing their efforts stood precious little chance of impacting on the project.
[5]The one idea dearest to Teller’s heart was the H-bomb. He and a couple of his cronies applied themselves to devising various schemes on designing such a weapon. All of them turned out to be impractical and most of them unworkable. Which never slowed him down in the slightest for reasons we’ll never know nor will he. I’ve known Edward for a very long time and although I’ve never known him well, one thing about him became clear to me from the very beginning: he was a creature possessed. By what? Again, who knows? Many, if not most, who have read about his life and what he has done, plus those who have known him directly and observed him close at hand and at great length, would say by Satan (which has been said all over the world about me). I wouldn’t go along with that and although I have seen Teller give some of the most impassioned statements morally defending his positions, some of which I have found deeply moving and thoroughly convincing, I would not say that the God I’ve been told exists has had a tight hold on him. If Edward has been possessed by anyone it’s been himself. I’d say the same for myself, and I’ve given you some reasons why, but hardly all of them. I don’t know all of them and would be ashamed to tell you if I did.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Katherine Philips photo
H. Rider Haggard photo
Bob Rae photo

“History has only ended for those caught inside the Marxist hothouse. For the rest of us the argument is just getting interesting.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Three, The End of Government?, p. 54

Keiji Inafune photo

“I want to end comments that Capcom games made in Europe aren't really Capcom games … basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love.”

Keiji Inafune (1965) Japanese video game designer

Source: "Interview with Keiji Inafune of Capcom" https://www.primagames.com/games/dead-rising-2/strategy/interview-keiji-inafune-capcom. Prima Games. Retrieved 2018-07-15.

Charles Taze Russell photo
Archimedes photo
Heinrich von Treitschke photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Charles Taze Russell photo
Michelle Pfeiffer photo
Tawakkol Karman photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Will Eisner photo
John Gray photo
Richard Dawkins photo