Quotes about end
page 63

Doug Stanhope photo
Samuel Beckett photo
James Kenneth Stephen photo
Brian Leiter photo
Richard Nixon photo
Max Beerbohm photo

“The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IV

Michael Sheen photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
William Dean Howells photo

“What the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

As quoted in French Ways and Their Meaning http://www.archive.org/details/frenchwaysandthe00wharuoft (1919) by Edith Wharton, p. 65
Variant:
What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.
As quoted in A Backward Glance http://archive.org/details/backwardglance030620mbp (1934) by Edith Wharton, p. 147

Denis Diderot photo
Thomas Browne photo
George F. Kennan photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen – that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.”

Source: Eugenics and Other Evils (1922), Ch. VII: "The Established Church of Doubt" (pp. 76-77). https://books.google.com/books?id=m2xaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA76&dq=%22the+thing+that+really+is+trying+to+tyrannise+through+government+is+science%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9uKmM_6jMAhUHgj4KHZr3DW0Q6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20thing%20that%20really%20is%20trying%20to%20tyrannise%20through%20government%20is%20science%22&f=false Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society, commenting of this passage writes: "Eugenics is also about the tyranny of science. Forget the tired old argument about religion persecuting science. Chesterton points out the obvious fact that in the modern world, it is the quite the other way around." http://www.chesterton.org/lecture-36/ Lecture 36: Eugenics and Other Evils

Wesley Willis photo

“"It's the end of World War I / It's the end of World War II!" - It's the End of the Western”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Lyrics, Solo

David Attenborough photo
Van Morrison photo

“From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
We’ll be lovers once again on the
Bright side of the road”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Bright Side of the Road
Song lyrics, Into the Music (1979)

William S. Burroughs photo
Han-shan photo

“Worry for others— it does no good in the end.
The great Dao, all amid joy, is reborn.
In a joyous state, ruler and subject accord,
In a joyous home, father and son get along.
If brothers increase their joy, the world will flourish.
If husband and wife have joy, it's worthy of song.
What guest and host can bear a lack of joy?
Both high and low, in joy, lose their woe before long.
Ha ha ha.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Translated by Mary Jacob[citation needed]
It is unlikely that this poem, translated by Mary Jacob, is authored by Han-shan. In comparing it with every poem in the corpus it will be found that there is not a close match. Moreover, neither the language nor the content of this poem is that of Han-shan. Most importantly, this poem does not have the appropriate number of lines for a Han-shan poem. Jacob's poem has 9 lines; there is not a single example of a 9 line poem in all of Han-shan's poetry. All of Han-shan's poems are 4, 8, 10 or 14 lines, with a few that have more than 14. Further, Jacob's poem has an odd number of lines; there is not a single example of a poem with an odd number of lines in all of Han-shan's poetry. Finally, the 9th and final line in Jacob's poem has the words “ha ha ha.” Not a single Han-shan poem has those words as a final line. Perhaps someone is having a joke?
Disputed

Laisenia Qarase photo

“Opponents seem to think the end of the world is nigh and that law and order will grind to a complete halt. Their strategy is based on attack, attack, attack.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, Address to the Editors' Forum, Suva, 27 July 2005

Theodore Dalrymple photo

“Blanket compassion will shift the distribution decisively towards the manipulative end of the spectrum, and may paradoxically decrease the compassion with which the genuinely despairing are treated: for they are apt to get lost in the great mass of pseudo-distress and manipulation, and often their conduct draws less attention precisely because it is less attention-seeking.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Theodore Dalrymple on Terence Rattigan, Suicide and Prison - or how incontinent compassion has become a Keynesian stimulus to the economy of the caring profession http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001768.php (April 18, 2008).
The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“You are a small exclamation mark at the end of a very long and insignificant sentence in the book of history.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

a remark made in the House of Commons responding to a Laborite speech; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Disputed

Andrew Bacevich photo
Jerome David Salinger photo

“How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back "What?"”

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955)

Francis Bacon photo
Camille Paglia photo

“It is heartening to be able to end a textbook that has no prerequisites with a problem that has not yet been solved.”

Irving Copi (1917–2002) American logician

Last words, referring to the Skolem's paradox
Symbolic Logic

Stephen Colbert photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Alan Charles Kors photo

“Suspicion is the mother of invention
And a fishin' expedition
Needs no repetition
For the end is never new: you need a friend
and you.”

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) American cartoonist

The Jack Acid Society Black Book (1960)

Guy Debord photo
Boris Johnson photo

“Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Friends, Voters, Countrymen p59
2000s, 2001

Margaret Thatcher photo
Dennis Prager photo
Adam Schaff photo
Lewis H. Lapham photo

“Seeking the invisible through the imagery of the visible, the Americans never can get quite all the way to the end of the American dream.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 1, The Gilded Cage, p. 28

“For domination has nothing whatsoever to do with good government, and power as an end in itself destroys good government.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Five faces of Corruption, p. 45
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Samuel R. Delany photo
Douglas Hofstadter photo
Francis Bacon photo

“The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html (1939), p. 19
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Joseph Conrad photo
Johann Hari photo

“The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers… They are denying the reality of a force that — unless we change the way we live pretty fast — will kill millions.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

The shame of the climate change deniers, JohannHari.com, April 24, 2005, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=606,

Dan Abnett photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo
Kent Hovind photo

“I took one of my kids to the dentist one time when he was about six or seven years old. The dentist said, "Mr. Hovind, this kid has a cavity." I said, "Yes sir, I know about that. Are you talking about the big one in his head or the one in his tooth?" He said, "Well, just the one in his tooth. That's the one we are going to fix today." I said, "Okay, let's fix it Doc." Then I said, "Now son, you've got to sit still. The dentist has to give you a shot." He says, "A SHOT! A SHOT!" I said, "Yes, he's going to give you a shot. Calm down; I've had one before." I showed him where I had mine. I said, "It's no problem. When he gives you the shot, your mouth will go numb so he can drill out the bad part and fill the hole with silver." He says, "Daddy, he's going to give me a SHOT!" I said, "Yes son, he's going to give you a shot. Now, listen carefully. SIT STILL! If you wiggle, I'm going to have to take you outside and spank you, so, don't -- wiggle!" He did his best. He tried to sit still, but when the doctor pulled out that giant needle about twelve feet long, and poured in about eighteen gallons of Novocain, and said, "Okay kid, open up," he freaked. [….. ] We tried to hold him still, but we couldn't hold him still enough for that kind of operation. [….. ] Finally, after a few minutes the doctor gave up and said, "I can't work on this kid. I'm sorry, I just can't do it." I said, "Doc, let me take him outside and talk to him for a few minutes." We went out to the parking lot, got in the old Chevy van and sat in the back seat. I said, "Son, listen carefully. You know that I love you." He said, "I know daddy." I said, "Now son, I told you to sit still. You did not sit still. What happens when you disobey daddy?" He said, "Sniff, sniff… I get a spanking?" I said, "Correct, bend over." Boy, did I give him a spanking, and it was a doozy. A few minutes later, smoke was rising off his hind end, tears were coming out of his eyes, and pearls were coming out of his nostrils -- the whole thing. I said, "Okay son, listen carefully. We are going to go back into the dentist office, and you are going to sit in that chair. If you wiggle one time, I'm not going to yell at you and I'm not going to scream at you. I'm going to calmly take you back out here to the van, and I'm going to give you two spankings just like the one you just received. Then, we are going to go back into the dentist office, and you are going to sit in the chair. If you wiggle, we are going to come back out to the van, and you are going to get three spankings just like the one you just got. Son, we are going to go back and forth all day long until I get tired, and I have played tennis for years. I have a wonderful forehand smash. I don't believe I'll get tired for a long time, son." I believe that he knew that, and I knew that. We went back into the dentist office. That kid sat in the chair. The dentist said, "Open your mouth." He opened his mouth. The dentist said, "Open it wider." He held it open real wide, and I said, "Son, sit still." He looked over at me, then he looked at that dentist with that giant needle. He started to shake; then he looked at me again. As he gripped the chair, he did not move a muscle. I don't think the kid even breathed for twenty minutes. The doctor gave him the shot; drilled it out; filled the tooth full of silver; and we were on our way out the door in fifteen or twenty minutes. It wasn't long at all. The doctor then said, "Mr. Hovind, come here." I said, "Yes sir?" He said, "Look, I don't know what you said to that kid while you were outside, but I would like for you to work for me."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

I said, "No sir, you don't want me to work for you, the Child Welfare would have me in jail in a flash."
Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

William Luther Pierce photo
Taraji P. Henson photo
Ian Smith photo
Gordon R. Dickson photo
André Gide photo

“This article [entitled A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations], was one of three independent statements in 1967 of what came to be called "contingency theory." It held that the structure of an organization depends upon (is ‘contingent’ upon) the kind of task performed, rather than upon some universal principles that apply to all organizations. The notion was in the wind at the time.
I think we were all convinced we had a breakthrough, and in some respects we did — there was no one best way of organizing; bureaucracy was efficient for some tasks and inefficient for others; top managers tried to organize departments (research, production) in the same way when they should have different structures; organizational comparisons of goals, output, morale, growth, etc., should control for types of technologies; and so on. While my formulation grew out of fieldwork, my subsequent research offered only modest support for it. I learned that managers had other ends to maximize than efficient production and they sometimes sacrificed efficiency for political and personal ends.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, in "This Week’s Citation Classic." in: CC, Nr. 14. April 6, 1981 (online at garfield.library.upenn.edu)
Comment:
The other two 1967 publications were Paul R. Lawrence & Jay W. Lorsch. Organization and environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967, and James D. Thompson. Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
1980s and later

George Herbert photo

“534. At the game's end we shall see who gaines.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“Our common speech contains numberless verbs with which to describe the infliction of violence or cruelty or brutality on others. It only really contains one common verb that describes the effect of violence or cruelty or brutality on those who, rather than suffering from it, inflict it. That verb is the verb to brutalize. A slaveholder visits servitude on his slaves, lashes them, degrades them, exploits them, and maltreats them. In the process, he himself becomes brutalized. This is a simple distinction to understand and an easy one to observe. In the recent past, idle usage has threatened to erode it. Last week was an especially bad one for those who think the difference worth preserving…Col. Muammar Qaddafi's conduct [killing his protesters] is far worse than merely brutal—it is homicidal and sadistic…and even if a headline can't convey all that, it can at least try to capture some of it. Observe, then, what happens when the term is misapplied. The error first robs the language of a useful expression and then ends up by gravely understating the revolting reality it seeks to describe…Far from being brutalized by four decades of domination by a theatrical madman, the Libyan people appear fairly determined not to sink to his level and to be done with him and his horrible kin. They also seem, at the time of writing, to want this achievement to represent their own unaided effort. Admirable as this is, it doesn't excuse us from responsibility. The wealth that Qaddafi is squandering is the by-product of decades of collusion with foreign contractors. The weapons that he is employing against civilians were not made in Libya; they were sold to him by sophisticated nations.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

Robert Frost photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Ippen photo

“Once our false thinking has completely ceased
There is neither start nor conclusion, beginning nor end
In the oneness of Buddha and sentient beings
Say Namu-amida-butsu.”

Ippen (1239–1289) Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of the Jishu school.

"Hymn of Amida's Vow" (Chapter 1, p. 4).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

Fernand Léger photo
Paul Mason (journalist) photo
Thomas Aquinas photo
Michel Seuphor photo
Arthur Travers Harris photo

“We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go on with the war. That is our object; we shall pursue it relentlessly.”

Arthur Travers Harris (1892–1984) Royal Air Force air marshal

Radio address (28 July 1942), as quoted by Sir Courtauld Thomson, in a House of Lords debate on bombing policy (9 February 1944) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1944/feb/09/bombing-policy

Slavoj Žižek photo
Maurice de Vlaminck photo
Gerry Rafferty photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Aleister Crowley photo

“The ending of the words is the Word Abrahadabra.”

III:75.
The Book of the Law (1904)

John Calvin photo

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

Babe Ruth photo
John Green photo
Neil Gaiman photo

“It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. You have failed.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Source: Norse Mythology (2017), Chapter 16, “Ragnarok: The Final Destiny of the Gods” (p. 278)

Jean Metzinger photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Daniel Tosh photo

“Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Margaret Wheatley (2006) " Leadership Lessons for The Real World http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/leadershiplessons.html". Leader to Leader Magazine, Summer 2006

Calvin Coolidge photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Ralph Waldo Trine photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“Agreed, reject…This is the end of negotiations with America, once and for all! If Wilson wants war, let him provoke it and then have it.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Minute in response to a memorandum by Henning von Holtzendorff (18 March 1917), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 306, n. 3
1910s

Camille Paglia photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“At the end of the day, we are so many digits in the machine. The point is – are these digits stronger than the competitors' digits?”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

MM Lee Kuan Yew on Singapore workers, History of Singapore, 2005
2000s

Michael J. Sandel photo
Sam Harris photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo

“Lenin’ s often-quoted speech to the Komsomol Congress on 2 October 1920 deals with ethical questions on similar lines, "We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’ s class struggle. Morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, a communist society … To a Communist all morality lies in this united discipline and conscious mass struggle against the exploiters. We do not believe in an eternal morality, and we expose the falseness of all the fables about morality" (Works, vol. 31, pp. 291-4). It would be hard to interpret these words in any other sense than that everything which serves or injures the party’ s aims is morally good or bad respectively, and nothing else is morally good or bad. After the seizure of power, the maintenance and strengthening of Soviet rule becomes the sole criterion of morality as well as of all cultural values. No criteria can avail against any action that may seem conducive to the maintenance of power, and no values can be recognized on any other basis. All cultural questions thus become technical questions and must be judged by the one unvarying standard; the "good of society" becomes completely alienated from the good of its individual members. It is bourgeois sentimentalism, for instance, to condemn aggression and annexation if it can be shown that they help to maintain Soviet power; it is illogical and hypocritical to condemn torture if it serves the ends of the power which, by definition, is devoted to the "liberation of the working masses". Utilitarian morality and utilitarian judgements of social and cultural phenomena transform the original basis of socialism into its opposite. All phenomena that arouse moral indignation if they occur in bourgeois society are turned to gold, as if by a Midas touch, if they serve the interests of the new power: the armed invasion of a foreign state is liberation, aggression is defence, tortures represent the people’ s noble rage against the exploiters. There is absolutely nothing in the worst excesses of the worst years of Stalinism that cannot be justified on Leninist principles, if only it can be shown that Soviet power was increased thereby.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age, pp. 515-6

“The land is numb.
It stands beneath the feet, and one may come
Walking securely, till the sea extends
Its limber margin, and precision ends.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

"The Slow Pacific Swell"
The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

Stephen King photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo