Quotes about end
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“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to Socialist measures and to war against reaction from without; that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society.”

Leon Trotsky book The Permanent Revolution

The Permanent Revolution (1929)

War, Sense, Success

“Above all, in this speech, as in so many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of to-day, for if we approach the work of reform in a spirit of vindictiveness-in a spirit of reckless disregard for the rights of others, or of hatred for men because they are better off than ourselves—we are sure in the end to do not good but damage to all mankind, and especially to those whose especial champions we pro-fess ourselves to be.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men

“Mr. MADISON said that he had brought with him into the Convention a strong bias in favor of an enumeration and definition of the powers necessary to be exercised by the national Legislature; but had also brought doubts concerning its practicability. His wishes remained unaltered; but his doubts had become stronger. What his opinion might ultimately be he could not yet tell. But he should shrink from nothing which should be found essential to such a form of Govt. as would provide for the safety, liberty and happiness of the community. This being the end of all our deliberations, all the necessary means for attaining it must, however reluctantly, be submitted to.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Madison's notes (31 May 1787)
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

Exercises, Communication, Strong, Happiness

“To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Source: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), Ch. 5, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

Love, Feeling, Passion

“It is only at first that pity, like morphine, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphine, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say 'no', and then one must not mind the other person's hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one's pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawn-brokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still - a dangerous thing pity, a dangerous thing!”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Pain, Hate, World, Law

“Yes, I was a funny guy for a long time. When I started out, I just wanted to write humor. I wrote humor for kids. My very first book was called How to be Funny. It was about how to get big laughs at the dinner table and how to get laughs in school. Parents hated this book. I wrote joke books, like A Hundred and One Monster Jokes, and other joke books for years. I did maybe a hundred of them. I had a great time, and I did this humor magazine called Bananas for ten years. It was sort of Mad Magazine, but it was all in color, and it was great. That was all I ever wanted to do. I couldn't believe it. When that ended, I figured I would just coast for the rest of my career. That was it. I'd already done what I wanted to do. I had no idea what was coming up.”

R.L. Stine (1943) American writer and producer

Reading Rockets interview http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript hi you know it’s me cardi B

Hate, Books, School, Color

“Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

Original: (ru) Человечество не останется вечно на земле, но в погоне за светом и пространством сначала робко проникнет за пределы атмосферы, а затем завоюет себе все околосолнечное пространство Source: from Воздухоплавание в наше время // Современный мир. — 1912. — № 7. — С. 260. (and His epitaph) Source: Mentioned in Beyond the Planet Earth, by K. Tsiolkovsky (1920), translated by K. Syers (1960), reviewed by M. G. Whillans, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 55 (1961), p. 144 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/JRASC/0055//0000144.000.html

Light

“The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity…”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Feeling

“I see people giving me looks because I'm so opinionated. That hurts my feelings, but at the end of the day I have to live with me and respect myself. And I've done enough things in my life where I was confused and didn't respect myself that I will not do it any more.”

Sherilyn Fenn (1965) American actress

Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "'Three of Hearts' may be Fenn's winning card", by Nancy Mills. Boston Herald (USA). April 25, 1993. p. 41

Life, People, Feeling, Hurt

“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting — the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 6

Age, Game, Motivation, Science

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

BBC (2 December 2014) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540

Intelligence, Help

“The logical conclusion of intersectionality is individuality. There's so many different ways of categorizing people's advantages and disadvantages, that if you take that all the way out to the end you say 'Well, the individual is the ultimate minority' – and that's exactly right. And that's exactly what the West discovered. The intersectionalists will get there if they don't kill everyone first.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege talk, 3rd November 2017

People, Way

“I always get into arguments, with people who want to retain the old values in painting — the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object..”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1960 - 1970 Source: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=XUoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49, Vol. 64, nr. 3, 19 January 1968, p. 49

People, Painting

“612. At the end of reasons comes persuasion.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

“Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants — and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse — we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.”

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

1860s, Last public address (1865)

Men, School, Color, Question

“You mustn't feel sorry for me. Don't you see I'm happy at last — free — free! — freed from the farm — free to wander on and on — eternally! Look! Isn't it beautiful beyond the hills? I can hear the old voices calling me to come — And this time I'm going! It isn't the end. It's a free beginning — the start of my voyage! I've won to my trip — the right of release — beyond the horizon! Oh, you ought to be glad — glad — for my sake!”

Eugene O'Neill Beyond the Horizon

Robert: Act 3, Scene 2
Beyond the Horizon (1918)

Beauty, Feeling, Time, Happiness

“Money, you've got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When you're gone, spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don't take too much.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

God Bless The Child

Money, Help

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Love, Life, People, Nature

“The whole world would have been destroyed if compassion did not put an end to anger.”
Perierat totus orbis, nisi iram finiret misericordia.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca (-54–39 BC) Roman scholar

Book I, Chapter I; slightly modified translation from Michael Winterbottom, Declamations of the Elder Seneca (London: Heinemann, 1974) vol. 1 p. 33
Controversiae

World, Anger

“Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defence of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be. Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life, but if we also look at the issue from the standpoint of faith, “every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offence against the creator of the individual.””

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 213
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, Life, God, Children

“Some Vietnam veterans have told me what they did over there when they were animals. They have been giving testimony about it to the public, to juries, to judges. Some of the juries cry, and so do some of the judges.
One Ex-Marine has a face like a Puerto Rican angel and a body count of 390. That means he and his unit killed 390 people in a variety of hideous ways, and the angel got to go count the dead bodies for the record.
And now he and a lot of his buddies are trying to make up for what we made them do. We paid the taxes that bought the war that hired the men and dropped the fire that burned the huts and killed the people who then were the bodies that Scott counted. It's a rotten thing to brainwash someone into doing the dirty part of killing while we stay at home. It's a rotten thing to pretend the war is coming to an end when it's only taken to the air. And in 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it.
What I'm asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work … in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows.”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Text notes on Come From The Shadows (1972)

Love, Men, Money, Hate

“From my youth onwards, I have felt sure that all thought which thinks itself out to an issue ends in mysticism. In the stillness of the African jungle I have been able to work out this thought and give it expression.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

Youth, Thinking

“In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Bend Sinister

Source: Bend Sinister (1963), p. x.

Art

“America, this is our moment. This is our time, our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face, our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love. The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Barack Obama’s Remarks in St. Paul http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/us/politics/03text-obama.html (3 June 2008) 2008

Love, War, Children, People

“About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of the truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons gave credence while others denied them. A few days later a report was confirmed to me in a letter from a noble Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to inquire into means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did shortly afterwards, my basis being the theory of refraction. First I prepared a tube of lead, at the ends I fitted two glass lenses, both plane on one side while on the other side one was spherically convex and the other concave. Then placing my eye near the concave lens I perceived objects satisfactorily large and near, for they appeared three times closer and nine times larger than when seen with the naked eye alone. Next I constructed another one, more accurate, which represented objects as enlarged more than sixty times. Finally, sparing neither labor nor expense, I succeeded in constructing for myself so excellent an instrument that objects seen by means of it appeared nearly one thousand times larger and over thirty times closer than when regarded with our natural vision.”

Galileo Galilei book Sidereus Nuncius

Translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957)
Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1609)

Nature, Distant, Appearance, Time

“When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!”

Clive Staples Lewis book Perelandra

Perelandra (1943)

Men, World

“Never stop learning. The thirst to gain more knowledge should never come to an end.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

How I made it: CNR Rao, Scientist (2010)

Knowledge, Learning

“If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Wisdom, World, Education

“So that's my home town, and I come from a perfectly ordinary working-class family; and in fact, I didn't really meet middle-class people until I went to university. It was quite a shock, really. People were saying things like 'Well, I was always going to end up doing English, because I was brought up surrounded by books - brought up in a house full of books'; and I'd think 'Yes, so was I; but they were full of Green Shield stamps.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

I suppose we could have swapped them for books, but we had our eye on a twin-tub.
Stand-up

People, Books, Family, Home

“I took opium but once — in the year of the plague, when doctors sought to deaden the agonies they could not cure. There was an overdose — my physician was worn out with horror and exertion — and I travelled very far indeed. In the end I returned and lived, but my nights are filled with strange memories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to give me opium again.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Travel, Memory, Night

“It is the study of the Chemists to liberate that unsensual truth from its fetters in things of sense, for through it the heavenly powers are persued with subtle understanding…. Knowledge is the sure and undoubted resolution by experiment of all opinions concerning the truth…. Experiment is manifest demonstration of the truth, and resolution the putting away of doubt. We cannot be resolved of any doubt save by experiment, and therefore is no better way to make it than on ourselves. Let us therefore verify what we have said above concerning the truth, beginning with ourselves. We have said that piety consists in knowledge of ourselves, and hence it is said that we make philosophical knowledge begin from this also. But no man can know himself unless he know what and not who he is, on whom he depends and whose he is (for by the law of truth no one belongs to himself, and to what end he was made. With this knowledge piety begins, which is concerned with two things, namely, with the Creator and the creature that is made like unto him. For it is impossible for the creature to know himself of himself, unless he first know his Creator…. No one can better know the Creator, than the workman is known by his work.”

Gerhard Dorn (1530–1584) alchemist, bibliophile, philosopher, physician, translator

Theatrum Chemicum Volume 1 phil. med.

Truth, Law, Way, Understanding

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, People, Age

“The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the corporation derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic element or tendency in its business. There would be no hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that supervision of corporations by the National Government need not go so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over them by so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce excellent results. When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that the several States were the proper authorities to regulate, so far as was then necessary, the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different and wholly different action is called for. I believe that a law can be framed which will enable the National Government to exercise control along the lines above indicated; profiting by the experience gained through the passage and administration of the Interstate-Commerce Act. If, however, the judgment of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional power to pass such an act, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted to confer the power.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Wisdom, People, Law, Exercises

“Mathematics is more than a tool and language for science. It is also an end in itself, and as such, it has, over the centuries, affected our worldview in its own right.”

Stephen Hawking book God Created the Integers

Preface
God Created the Integers (2007)

Mathematics, Science

“However intimate we may be with the operations of the mind, we cannot think more than two or three minutes a day; — unless, by taste or by profession, we practice, for hours on end, brutalizing words in order to extract ideas from them. The intellectual represents the major disgrace, the culminating failure of Homo sapiens.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Idea, Failure, Thinking

“I believe with all my heart in athletics, in sport, and have always done as much thereof as my limited capacity and my numerous duties would permit; but I believe in bodily vigor chiefly because I believe in the spirit that lies back of it. If a boy can not go into athletics because he is not physically able to, that does not count in the least against him. He may be just as much of a man in after life as if he could, because it is not physical address but the moral quality behind it which really counts. But if he has the physical ability and keeps out because he is afraid, because he is lazy, because he is a mollycoddle, then I haven't any use for him. If he has not the right spirit, the spirit which makes him scorn self-indulgence, timidity and mere ease, that is if he has not the spirit which normally stands at the base of physical hardihood, physical prowess, then that boy does not amount to much, and he is not ordinarily going to amount to much in after life. Of course, there are people with special abilities so great as to outweigh even defects like timidity and laziness, but the man who makes the Republic what it is, if he has not courage, the capacity to show prowess, the desire for hardihood; if he has not the scorn of mere ease, the scorn of pain, the scorn of discomfort (all of them qualities that go to make a man's worth on an eleven or a nine or an eight); if he has not something of that sort in him then the lack is so great that it must be amply atoned for, more than amply atoned for, in other ways, or his usefulness to the community will be small. So I believe heartily in physical prowess, in the sports that go to make physical prowess. I believe in them not only because of the amusement and pleasure they bring, but because I think they are useful. Yet I think you had a great deal better never go into them than to go into them with the idea that they are the chief end even of school or college; still more of life.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)

Life, Pain, People, Pleasure

“Whoever puts his feet on Shirdi soil, his sufferings would come to an end.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Eleven important sayings

Suffering

“We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right… And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Speech at the XIIIth Party Congress (May 1924)

Way, History, Support, Thinking

“My temptation is quiet.
Here at life’s end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Acre of Grass http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1438/, st. 2 Last Poems (1936-1939)

Life, Truth, Imagination

“"He's not just trying to hurt the man - he's out to end his career!" (usually said when a heavyweight or superheavyweight is destroying his opponent)”

Jim Ross (1952) American professional wrestling commentator, professional wrestling referee, and restaurateur

Commentary Quotes

Hurt

“We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.”

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life

Life, People, World, Faith

“This time I think that my lover
Understands me
If we have faith in each other
Then we can be
Strong, baby I will be your father figure
Put your tiny hand in mine
I will be your preacher teacher
Anything you have in mind
I will be your father figure
I have had enough of crime
I will be the one who loves you …
'Til the end of time.”

George Michael (1963–2016) English singer-songwriter, musician, producer

Father Figure
Faith (1987)

Love, Faith, Lovers, Understanding

“Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times -- a never-ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American. Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens. And then sometimes, there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)

Justice, Reality, Effort, Change

“By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 31
Opticks (1704)

Way

“I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey’s end
With Landor and with Donne.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

To A Young Beauty http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1728/, st. 3 The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

Life, Beauty, Fools, Winter

“People look to me and say
Is the end near, when is the final day?
What's the future of mankind?
How do I know, I got left behind”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I Don't Know, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)

People, Future

“They are not only the warrior caste who shout as they fight and have joy of it, not only those whom universal slavery has clothed in magic power, the mighty by birth, who tower here and there above the prostration of the human race and will take their sudden stand by the scales of justice when they think they see great profit to gain; not only these, but whole multitudes who minister consciously or unconsciously to their fearful privilege.
"There are those who say," now cries one of the somber and compelling talkers, extending his hand as though he could see the pageant, "there are those who say, 'How fine they are!'"
"And those who say, 'The nations hate each other!'"
"And those who say, 'I get fat on war, and my belly matures on it!'"
"And those who say, 'There has always been war, so there always will be!'"
"There are those who say, 'I can't see farther than the end of my nose, and I forbid others to see farther!'."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Hate, War, Fear, Justice

“The truest lengthening of life is to live while we live, wasting no time but using every hour for the highest ends. So be it this day.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Faith's Checkbook entry for June 22.

Life, Time

“I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon…. O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing —
Not even I — would undo me so!”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" The Going http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Thomas_Hardy/2716" (1912), lines 38-42, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)

Soul, Dead

“For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Two Treatises of Government. The Second Treatise. Chapter 3: The State of War, §20 p. 281 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=gRNDLAK4kPUC&pg=PA281

War, Justice, Law, Suffering

“Whatever organisation we try to create, it always ends up looking like the Communist Party.”

Viktor Chernomyrdin (1938–2010) Russian diplomat

Obituary, The Economist, 6th November 2010 p. 107

“A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

John Kinsella’s Lament For Mrs. Mary Moore http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1520/', st. 1 Last Poems (1936-1939)

Death

“The air is bright with hues of light
And rich with laughter and with singing:
Young hearts beat high in ecstasy,
And banners wave, and bells are ringing:
But silence falls with fading day,
And there's an end to mirth and play.
Ah, well-a-day!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Four Riddles, no. III
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Laughter, Light, Silence, Singing

“Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips he said: "Comrade Brezhnev what are you going to do about Poland?" No reply. Some minutes later: "Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?" Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: "Comrade Brezhnev, you've got to do something about Poland." At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: "What's all this about Poland?" and the barber says: "It makes my job so much easier," and Brezhnev screams: "What do you mean?" and the barber says: "Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end."”

James A. Michener book Poland

page 567
Poland (1983)

Tear, Time, Clothes

“Dont get sentimental, It always ends up drivel.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"Let Down"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)

“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement, which is that I am absolutely committed to ending the war. I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything that I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago, or when I was a U. S. senator. If you look at our position, it's been very consistent. The notion that we have to get out carefully has been a consistent position. … I think what's happened is that the McCain campaign primed the pump with the press to suggest that somehow we were changing our policy when we hadn't and that just hasn't been the case. I've given no indication of a change in policy … I think John McCain's going to have a much harder time explaining how he is willing to perpetuate a presence in Iraq for 10, 20, 50 years.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama response to attack from McCain and his campaign on alleged Obama reversal on Iraq War; (5 July 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/06/campaign.wrap/index.html 2008

War, Guy, Thinking, Change

“Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends. Life is not all logic, and those ends will have to be varied from time to time to fit in with it, but some end must always be clearly envisaged.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

Life, Time

“The decline of narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of techniques and technologies since the Second World War, Which has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to this means; it can also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism during the period of 1930-1960, a renewal that has eliminated the communist alternative and valorized the individual enjoyment of goods and services.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.38

War, World

“Some sixty years ago, Pope Pius XII, in a memorable address to anaesthesiologists and intensive care specialists, stated that there is no obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to every possible remedy and that, in some specific cases, it is permissible to refrain from their use… The specific element of this criterion is that it considers “the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources”. It thus makes possible a decision that is morally qualified as withdrawal of “overzealous treatment”.
Such a decision responsibly acknowledges the limitations of our mortality, once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile. “Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2278). This difference of perspective restores humanity to the accompaniment of the dying, while not attempting to justify the suppression of the living. It is clear that not adopting, or else suspending, disproportionate measures, means avoiding overzealous treatment; from an ethical standpoint, it is completely different from euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death.
The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality, and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity.
Let each of us give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But give it!”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Participants in the European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association, From the Vatican, 7 November 2017 https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20171107_messaggio-monspaglia.html 2010s, 2017

Love, Life, Death, Way

“A lot of sophistication has been developed about the utilization of machines for complex purposes, and it doesn't make sense not to use it if you can think of a good question to ask. Playing chess is about the dumbest question you can ask. But, if you want, maybe can make money that way, or something. In fact, what's going on with the chess is about as interesting as the fact that a front-end loader can lift more than an Olympics champion, weight lifter, or something. Probably so, but, you know, these are just not serious questions.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Language & Mind", 1997.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Money, Way, Question, Thinking

“Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or a bad. …For wherever a man's place is, whether the place he has chosen or that where he has been placed by a commander. there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

28b–d
Plato, Apology

Life, Death, Thinking, Chance

“The painter goes through states of fullness and evacuation. That is the whole secret of art. I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau. I get 'green' indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions. People seize on painting to cover up their nakedness. They get what they can wherever they can. In the end I don't believe they get anything at all. They've simply cut a coat to the measure of their own ignorance. They make everything, from God to a picture, in their own image. That is why the picture-hook is the ruination of a painting.”

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

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

God, People, Secret, Art

“As we began with a general outline of the effects produced by the human beast of prey upon world-History, it now may be of service to return to the attempts to counteract them and find again the "long-lost Paradise"; attempts we meet in seemingly progressive impotence as History goes on, till finally their operation passes almost wholly out of ken.
Among these last attempts we find in our own day the societies of so-called Vegetarians: nevertheless from out these very unions, which seem to have aimed directly at the centre of the question of mankind's Regeneration, we hear certain prominent members complaining that their comrades for the most part practise abstinence from meat on purely personal dietetic grounds, but in nowise link their practice with the great regenerative thought which alone could make the unions powerful. Next to them we find a union with an already more practical and somewhat more extended scope, that of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: here again its members try to win the public's sympathy by mere utilitarian pleas, though a truly beneficial end could only be awaited from their pursuing their pity for animals to the point of an intelligent adoption of the deeper trend of Vegetarianism; founded on such a mutual understanding, an amalgamation of these two societies might gain a power by no means to be despised.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

World, History, Intelligence, Understanding

“"Put an end to war?" say the watchers. — "Forbid the Storm!"
Cleansed from the passions of party and faction, liberated from prejudice and infatuation and the tyranny of tradition, these watchers on the threshold of another world are vaguely conscious of the simplicity of the present and the yawning possibilities of the future.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 1 - The Vision

War, World, Passion, Future

“I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: "Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there," it says, "and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place…”

Tennessee Williams Camino Real

Sancho
Camino Real (1953)

Travel, Spring

“[The recovery] began, I said, when I decided that some experts don't really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being. And I said I hoped they would be careful about what they said to others; they might be believed and that could be the beginning of the end.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

http://books.google.com/books?id=XFmDIpxyI_sC&q=%22It+all+began+I+said+when+I+decided+that+some+experts+don't+really+know+enough+to+make+a+pronouncement+of+doom+on+a+human+being+And+I+said+I+hoped+they+would+be+careful+about+what+they+said+to+others+they+might+be+believed+and+that+could+be+the+beginning+of+the+end%22&pg=PA160#v=onepage Anatomy of an Illness (1979)

Hope

“The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" — that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Expeditions of an Untimely Man, §48 Progress in my sense (Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen §48 Fortschritt in meinem Sinne). Chapter title also translated as: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation, and Raids of an Untimely Man, Richard Polt translation
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Original: (de) Die Lehre von der Gleichheit! ... Aber es giebt gar kein giftigeres Gift: denn sie scheint von der Gerechtigkeit selbst gepredigt, während sie das Ende der Gerechtigkeit ist... "Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches - das wäre die wahre Rede der Gerechtigkeit: und, was daraus folgt, Ungleiches niemals gleich machen."

Justice, Appearance

“He got out of the van to see how many other suppliers were ahead of him and thus calculate, more or less accurately, how long he would have to wait. He was number thirteen, he counted again, no, there was no doubt about it. Although he was not a suspirations person, he knew about that number’s bad reputation, in any conversation about chance, fate or destiny, someone always chips in with some real-life experience of the negative, even fatal influence of the number thirteen. He tried to remember if he had ever been in this place in the queue before, but the long and the short of it was that either it had never happened or else he had simply forgotten. he got annoyed with himself, it was nonsense, utterly absurd to worry about something that has no real existence, yes, that was right, he had never thought of that before, numbers don’t really exist, things couldn’t care less what number we give them, its all the same to them if we say they’re number thirteen or number forty-four, we can conclude, at the very least, that they do not even notice the position they happen to end up in. people aren’t things, people always want to be in first place”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 9 (Vintage 2003)

Life, Fate, People, Chance

“America shall not lag a century behind Europe: it will stride as an equal first, and lead later; it will, in the end, be the most illuminated by the sciences just as it is most illuminated by the sun.”

Jose Cecilio del Valle (1777–1996) Honduran politician-

El Amigo de la Patria, 1821

Science, Sun

“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”

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

Source: Reply to Missouri Committee of Seventy (30 September 1864)

“The same King [Greek Empire] placed holiness in abstinence from marriage. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical history tells us, that Musanus wrote a tract against those who fell away to the heresy of the Encratites, which was then newly risen, and had introduced pernicious errors; and that Tatian, the disciple of Justin, was the author thereof; and that Irenæus in his first book against heresies teaches this… But although the followers of Tatian were at first condemned as heretics by the name of Encratites, or Continentes; their principles could not be yet quite exploded: for Montanus refined upon them, and made only second marriages unlawful; he also introduced frequent fastings, and annual, fasting days, the keeping of Lent, and feeding upon dried meats. The Apostolici, about the middle of the third century, condemned marriage, and were a branch of the disciples of Tatian. The Hierocitæ in Egypt, in the latter end of the third century, also condemned marriage. Paul the Eremite [Hermit] fled into the wilderness from the persecution of Decius, and lived there a solitary life till the reign of Constantine the great, but made no disciples. Antony did the like in the persecution of Dioclesian, or a little before, and made disciples; and many others soon followed his example.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 13: Of the King who did according to his will, and magnified himself above every God, and honored Mahuzzims, and regarded not the desire of women
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

Life, Marriage, Books, Error

“A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know.”

Bolesław Prus book The Doll

The Doll

Life

“My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches [things] I had done…and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

World, Understanding

“Block the passages, shut the doors,
And till the end your strength shall not fail.
Open up the passages, increase your doings,
And till your last day no help shall come to you.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 52 as translated by Arthur Waley (1934)

Help

“Her Majesty's new Ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some deleterious drug. Not satiated with the spoilation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country…As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Attacking William Gladstone's Liberal Government
Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), pp. 530-531.

Men, Time, Sea, Country

“The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), pp. 27-28

Life, Motivation

“A shadow may be infinitely dark, and also of infinite degrees of absence of darkness. The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade

Lie, Light

“I'd like to imagine I won't end up in hell, but I think I've done too much acid and listened to too much death metal to sit on a cloud next to God with angels floating above my head.”

Dave Grohl (1969) American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter

Maxim Magazine (January 2008)

Death, God, Angels, Imagination

“We most earnestly hope and believe that the chance of our having any hostile military complication with any foreign power is very small. But that there will come a strain, a jar, here and there, from commercial and agricultural—that is, from industrial—competition is almost inevitable. Here again we have got to remember that our first duty is to our own people, and yet that we can best get justice by doing justice. We must continue the policy that has been so brilliantly successful in the past, and so shape our economic system as to give every advantage to the skill, energy, and intelligence of our farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and wage-workers; and yet we must also remember, in dealing with other nations, that benefits must be given where benefits are sought. It is not possible to dogmatize as to the exact way of attaining this end, for the exact conditions cannot be foretold. In the long run, one of our prime needs is stability and continuity of economic policy; and yet, through treaty or by direct legislation, it may, at least in certain cases, become advantageous to supplement our present policy by a system of reciprocal benefit and obligation.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Hostility, People, Justice, Hope

“Everything ends with songs.”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

Tout finit par des chansons.
Mariage de Figaro, End. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 732-33.
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“"How to do Everything in Just One Lifetime" is a Statement, not a question. I don't understand why people keeping imagining a question mark at the end.”

Joseph Pisani (1971) American artist and photographer

People, Imagination, Understanding, Question

“It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as just another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy.”

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)

Boy, Happiness

“And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Life, Women, People, World

“Any road', said Carlyle, 'even this road to Entepfuhl, will take you to the end of the world'. But the Entepfuhl road, if taken in its entirety, and to the end, goes back to Entepfuhl; so Entepfuhl, where we already were, is that very end of the world we were seeking.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

The Book of Disquiet
Original: "Qualquer estrada", disse Carlyle, "até esta estrada de Entepfuhl, te leva até ao fim do mundo". Mas a estrada de Entepfuhl, se for seguida toda, e até ao fim, volta a Entepfuhl; de modo que o Entepfuhl, onde já estávamo, é aquele mesmo fim do mundo que íamos buscar.
Ibid., p. 142

World

“One of the funniest examples of these kinds of statistics comes from Evolution: Possible or Impossible by James F. Coppedge [who] cites an article by Ulric Jelinek … which claims that the odds are 1 in 10^243 against "two thousand atoms" (the size of one particular protein molecule) ending up in precisely that particular order "by accident." Where did Jelenik get that figure? From Pierre Lecompte du Nouy… who in turn got it from Charles-Eugene Guye, a physicist who died in 1942. Guye had merely calculated the odds of these atoms lining up by accident if "a volume" of atoms the size of the Earth were "shaken at the speed of light." In other words, ignoring all the laws of chemistry, which create preferences for the formation and behavior of molecules, and ignoring that there are millions if not billions of different possible proteins--and of course the result has no bearing on the origin of life, which may have begun from an even simpler protein. This calculation is thus useless for all these reasons, and is typical in that it comes to Coppedge third-hand (and thus to us fourth-hand), and is hugely outdated (it was calculated before 1942, even before the discovery of DNA), and thus fails to account for over half a century of scientific progress.”

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1883–1947) French philosopher

Richard Carrier, "Bad Science, Worse Philosophy", Addendum B, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#et_al at The Secular Web (Internet Infidels: 2000) About

Life, Law, Behavior, Light

“The ego … reduces the present to a means to an end.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

“Even if a person lived enjoying many things in the world, if their spirit fails to be saved, they will come to an end in the ‘world of the body.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from Proverbs Blog https://providencepath.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/jung-myung-seok-saving-your-spirit/

World, Personality

“John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich: "Foote, I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the pox, or the halter."
Samuel Foote: "My lord, that will depend upon one of two contingencies; -- whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles.””

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Misattributed to Gladstone to Disraeli.
Misattributed

Thinking, Dependency

“In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Post to mlist.linux.kernel newsgroup, 2001-10-04, Torvalds, Linus, 2016-05-01 https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mlist.linux.kernel/6Yj1ipr6nEc/dbhIEkhm4LgJ, 2000s, 2000-04

People

“So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 261
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

World, Justice, Law, Business

“Life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this - in truth, in goodness, and in beauty - that we find happiness and joy.”

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

2008, Papal Welcome (17 July 2008)

Life, God, Truth, Beauty

“If one is to take Lulu's twelve-tone chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony, then Berg's allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of fulfillment — twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance. Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time according to Expressionistic extremes.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Philosophy of Modern Music (1973) as translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster

World, Law, Music, Time

“At the end of the day, if you are in Aljunied, ask yourself: Do you want one MP, one Non-Constituency MP, one celebrity who has been away 30 years, and two unknowns to look after you? Or would you prefer me and my hand-picked colleagues?”

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

assessment on the alternative Workers' Party candidates contesting in the Aljunied GRC for General Elections 2011 (Yahoo News, April 30, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/aljunied-voters-will-regret-choosing-wp--mm-lee.html) 2010s

“Voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex, it is to you only that I offer this work; nourish yourselves upon its principles: they favor your passions, and these passions, whereof coldly insipid moralists put you in fear, are naught but the means Nature employs to bring man to the ends she prescribes to him; harken only to these delicious promptings, for no voice save that of the passions can conduct you to happiness.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

To Libertines
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Age, Fear, Sex, Nature

“Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of the free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, … but only for the dead God?”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Wer will es schließlich selbst den allerfreiesten Geistern verübeln, wenn sie nicht mehr für eine imaginäre Nachwelt schreiben, deren Zutraulichkeit die der Zeitgenossen womöglich noch überbietet, sondern einzig für den toten Gott?
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 133
Minima Moralia (1951)

God, Dead

“So we can all appreciate our own identities, our bloodlines, our beliefs, our backgrounds -- that tapestry is what makes us who we are. But the history of Africa -- which is both the cradle of human progress and a crucible of conflict -- shows us that when define ourselves narrowly, in opposition to somebody just because they’re of a different tribe, or race, or religion -- and we ignore who is a good person or a bad person, are they working hard or not, are they honest or not, are they peaceful or violent -- when we start making distinctions solely based on status and not what people do, then we're taking the wrong path and we inevitably suffer in the end. This is why Martin Luther King called on people to be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. And in the same way, people should not be judged by their last name, or their religious faith, but by their content of their character and how they behave. Are they good citizens? Are they good people?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

People, Peace, Faith, Religion

“Here lies, on the small farthest beach,
the Captain of the End.”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "Bartolomeu Dias", verses 1-2
Message
Original: Jaz aqui, na pequena praia extrema,
o Capitão do Fim.

“And at last we've got to the end of this ideal racecourse! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."
"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"
"Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you, 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."
"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your notebook, please. We will call it
(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true.
Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?”

Lewis Carroll book What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.
"What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Mind, n.s., 4 (1895), pp. 278–80

Sadness, Help