Quotes about entertainment
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“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Idea

“I rather wonder what I am doing here. I enjoy city life, you know. The glittering lights, the constant companionship, the liquid entertainment. The lack of sudden monkeys.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life, Light

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

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

Age, Religion

“I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Hurt

“Entertain me, heroes of Olympus. Give me a reason to do more."

Bacchus to Percy and Jason”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“…good teachers are priceless. They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don't know it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

"Because they're passionate about their subjects."
Savannah Lynn Curtis and John Tyree, Chapter 4, p. 69-70
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Learning

“Well.. Is that all you've got?.. I hope not.. cuz you haven't finished entertaining me yet..
-Gaara to Rock Lee during the Chunin preliminary”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Hope

“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

Books

“Canada is a myth people made up to entertain children, like the Tooth Fairy. There’s no such place.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Children, People

“Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Feeling, Country

“I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Funny

“Happily ever after?"
"If justice doesn't triumph and love doesn't make the circle in entertainment fiction, what's the point? Real life sucks too often.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Angels Fall

Love, Life, Justice

“Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

“You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Life, God, Imagination

“People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do.
We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more
like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a
country without an army.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

People, Painting, Country

“Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

Joy

“May the IRS find that you deduct your pet sheep as an entertainment expense.”

Christopher Moore book Practical Demonkeeping

Author's Blessing
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (2002)
Source: Practical Demonkeeping
Context: If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name.

“You can not entertain weak, harmful, negative thoughts ten hours a day and expect to bring about beautiful, strong and harmonious conditions by ten minutes of strong, positive, creative thought.”

Charles F. Haanel book The Master Key System

Source: The Master Key System

Beauty, Strong

“What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

“If we would spend on education half the amount of money that we currently lavish on sports and entertainment, we could provide complete and free education for every student in this country.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Money, Education, Sport, Country

“Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

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

People, Time

“The best way to get your point across is to entertain.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Way

“Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Question, Past

“It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets, lies, stories. We all tell them. Sometimes, because we hope to entertain. Sometimes, because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Secret, Hope

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Art

“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”

Ayi Kwei Armah book The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Source: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

People, Justice

“HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Love

“I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy."
-white oleander”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Music, Despair

“Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment--the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

Reality

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Art

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Happiness, Nature, Dependency

“Whoa, what is this? Battle of the Sarcastic and Pissed? Should I make popcorn? Forget American Idol, man. This is much more entertaining. (Kish)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Forgetting

“Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic."
"I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Brothers in Arms

Variant: "Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking, I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining."
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“I do not feel obliged in my reading. I read to be entertained and to relax, and to go into another world, not because it's good for me.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

World, Feeling, Reading

“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“What’s a little calming distraction for your girlfriend in the midst of world entertainment domination?”
“I’d stop the world from spinning for you.”
That silly line oddly touched me. “I love you.”
“Liked that one, did you?”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, World

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

Death, Fools, Fight

“Maybe this is a characteristic of happy people. An ability to be entertained by the world.”

Clare Morrall (1952) British writer

Source: The Language Of Others

Happiness, People, World

“Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Books, Education, School, Reading

“Panem et Circenses" translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People

“I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Intelligence, Personality

“I am not here to entertain straight people.”

Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer

People

“Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well. When done well, it raises the quality of human life.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Life

“I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself

Life

“I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

People, Heart

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

People, Literature, Reading

“I briefly entertained the notion that I was insane and didn't know it. Then I considered the possibility that I had always been insane, acknowledged it as more likely than the former, then pushed both thoughts from my mind.”.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“I grew up in a family where no one was in the entertainment business. So stand-up and acting were seen as something unrealistic. I always thought it was just people in L. A. and New York that became actors or comedians.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Ed Will (April 28, 2006) "Your face sure is familiar. ...", The Denver Post, p. FF-09.

People, Family, Business

“In this assembly, every political school has its teachers — every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that this banquet is the tribute of United Ireland to the representative of American benevolence. Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. Strange scene! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous! Stranger still! The flag of the Victor decorates this hail — decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict the resurrection, of a fallen people! One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. Foreign power, sir! Why should I designate that country a "foreign power," which has proved itself our sister country? England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled here this night. Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene inquire of me, why it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst famine is in the land — whilst the hearse-plumes darken the summer scenery of the island, whilst death sows his harvest, and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, "Sir, the citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of America, which they would not pay — 'no, not for all the gold in Venice'”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

to the minister of England."
Ireland and America (1846)

Life, Death, People, Truth

“As to the notion that the Brazilian nation see the criminality of slave trade and have for ever abjured it such a notion is too childish for a grown man really to entertain, however it may suit the Brazilians to endeavour to make it accepted. The plain truth is that the Portuguese are of all European nations the lowest in the moral state and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting influences connected with both… I have laboured indefatigably all the time I was at the Foreign Office to put an end to the slave trade, and though not with entire at all events with some considerable success and nothing shall induce me to load my conscience with the guilt of having been a party to promoting its revival. I am afraid Bright has been at you upon these Brazilian matters. He has always professed great horror of slave trade and has invariably opposed the employment of any and every means by which it could be made to cease.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to John Russell (5 October 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 544.
1860s

Truth, Time, Success

“The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Religion, Law, Support, Personality

“Books give us the ability to see things from different perspectives. They educate us, entertain us, force us to think upon certain issues. And reading a book or reading, in general, is an excuse for those who are less sociable like me for not socialising much. And guess what, it works most of the times.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Book Lovers Day (2018)

Books, Education, Thinking, Time

“The marketing needs a better campaign based on the visitor's appetite and segment. If there are a lot of Middle East tourists traveling to Puncak to seek janda, I think that it's OK. The tourists would bring numerous benefits to the women and their offspring, as well as the country's entertainment community. If the janda get modest homes even if the tourists later leave them, then it's OK. The children resulting from these relationships will have good genes. There will be more television actors and actresses from these pretty boys and girls.”

Jusuf Kalla (1942) The tenth Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia

Quoted in "VP moots using women in Arab tourism push" http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20060629.@02, The Jakarta Post (2006-06-29).

Women, Children, Travel, Home

“I like the fact that I'm involved in a career that gives me so many different mediums to perform in. The entertainment industry in the last 10 years has been so fragmented, from scripted programming to reality. There's work not just on TV and in film, but you know, on your cell phone, on the Internet. There's so many [venues] now, and each of them looking for quality content, that, you know, I'm just going with the flow. And I'm having fun with every wave.”

Ian Ziering (1964) American actor

'Sharknado's' Ian Ziering: 'Maybe This Is My Pulp Fiction Moment' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sharknados-ian-ziering-maybe-is-my-pulp-fiction-moment-584659 (July 12, 2013)

Reality

“The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs... May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work – in spite of everything”

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

a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings
letter to de:Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 27 August 1945, as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, pp. 80 + 86
1940s

Hunger, War, World, Time

“And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice – based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom – how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

Love Over Scotland, chapter 68.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Wisdom, World, Parent, Sense

“Since the 1920s, grand illusion on stage has been synonymous with the restraint and mutilation of female assistants, as if the first act a lucky mortal, newly endowed with the ability to overturn the laws of the universe, would wish to carry out would be the casual torture of the fairer sex for our entertainment.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Law, Sex, Universe

“Your Majesty may entertain the idea of partitioning China, but let it not be forgotten that… it is still full of inexhaustible vitality. China has not completely lost its martial spirit, as may now be seen in the 'Boxer Movement'. Neither Japan nor any country in Europe or America is intellectually or militarily equipped to rule one quarter of mankind. Therefore it is actually an ill-advised policy to try dismemberment.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee to Kaiser Wilhelm II c. 1901, warning him againsgt partitioning China. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/patriotism.pdf

Idea, Country

“My early work in newspaper comics and comic books allowed me to entertain millions of readers weekly, but I always felt there was more to say. I pioneered the use of comics for instructional manuals for American soldiers, covering three major wars, and later used comics to educate grade school children. Both were heady responsibilities that I took very seriously. But I yearned to do still more with the medium. At an age when I could have "retired," I chose instead to create literary comics, than a decidedly oxymoronic term. Acceptance has not always been easy, but I have seen it arrive in my lifetime. It has been most gratifying to see the graphic novel and many of its exceptional creators gradually become an accepted part of the book world. I couldn't find a major publisher to take A Contract With God only a quarter century ago, and now graphic novels represent the book industry's fastest growing genre.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIX-XX, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

God, War, Children, Books

“But a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage— a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Effort, Passion

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 42

Death, Books, World, Communication

“I can be educational, but if I'm not funny and entertaining, too, who's going to come and listen to me or watch me on TV.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, D-01, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, brings humor to normally serious field, The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York, March 9, 2005, Bill Buell]

Education

“In the shift from direct democracy to representational democracy, the printed book became an embodiment of thought for the physically absent author; and so the popular art form of the popular book and the pamphlet re-presented ideas and contributed to the public space of political philosophies of the Enlightenment. Television, however, now brings forth this new kind of public space, and it calls into being this new world, not of the educated citizenry in a republic, but of the electropeasantry in the state of Entertainment. Recall how people stopped singing in pubs when they brought in the TV set, and you will appreciate the new passivity in which people stop voting for their representatives as TV takes over the electoral campaigns.”

William Irwin Thompson (1938) American writer

Thompson (1991) Play, from The American Replacement of Nature.

People, Books, World, Education

“Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction.”

Richard Garriott (1961) video game developer, astronaut and entrepreneur

Press Statement for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame http://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/11/09/richard-garriott-joins-gaming-hall-of-fame, 9 November, 2005.

Game, Business, Time, Success

“It's rare that the sequel to a good movie lives up to expectations. Such is the case with Die Hard 2, the somewhat-muddled but still entertaining return of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Fortunately, the original Die Hard was good enough that there's room for the second installment to be enjoyable while still not matching the pace or possessing the flair of its predecessor.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/d/die_hard2.html of Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990). Three-and-a-half star reviews

“When the war kicks off in Iran, I will be there. People ask me "Whose side are you going to fight on?" To these people I say "Fight? I'm not going to fight! I'm going to entertain!" Because let's face it, when they see my comedy, they won't have the will to fight. When the American and Iranian troops see the comedy of Omid Djalili, they won't have the will to live! The Daily Mail.”

Omid Djalili (1965) Iranian-British stand-up comedian

No Agenda (2007)

War, People, Fight

“With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

World, Way, Communication, Problem

“The business of a boys' author is not to consider political issues, but to entertain the readers, make them as happy as possible.”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)

Happiness, Boy, Business

“[This book] is intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis. It also seeks to be a contribution to the development and systematization of the body of economic analysis itself. These purposes are not separate. The task of presenting a systematic, orderly, and accurate account of economic analysis is identical with the task of preparing the material for teaching. It must be emphasized, however, that the purpose of this work is not primarily to entertain the student, or to enable him to regurgitate appropriate material into examination books, or to learn a few pat phrases, or to indoctrinate him with an abstract discipline which he will never use. Economics is like photography in this respect, that under-exposure is less desirable than no exposure at all.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. xv

Books, Learning, Teachers

“I have seen the astrolabe called Zuraqi invented by Abu Sa'id Sijzi. I liked it very much and praised him a great deal, as it is based on the idea entertained by some to the effect that the motion we see is due to the Earth's movement and not to that of the sky. By my life, it is a problem difficult of solution and refutation. […] For it is the same whether you take it that the Earth is in motion or the sky. For, in both cases, it does not affect the Astronomical Science. It is just for the physicist to see if it is possible to refute it.”

Al-Biruni (973–1048) Persian scholar and polymath

[citation needed]

Life, Idea, Problem, Science

“Mr. Gregory: Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and author of the -well-known Examples. Few in so short a life have done so much for science. The high sense which I entertain of his merits as a mathematician, is mingled with feelings of gratitude for much valuable assistance rendered to me in my earlier essays.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole " Mr Boole on a General Method in Analysis http://books.google.com/books?id=aGwOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA279," Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 134 (1844), p. 279, Footnote 1840s

Life, Feeling, Sense, Science

“Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, "I just want to be entertained." This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn't go to movies together.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Prologue.
Straight Man (1997)

People, Truth, Idea, Question

“The government is already involved from an entertainment standpoint. I mean, they regulate a large part of our entertainment. What we're trying to do as an industry is be proactive and drive it much more positively, much more effectively, than the government can, and that's what the ESA is all about[…. ]We think we're doing a pretty effective job, and certainly from an Nintendo perspective, we think the ESA is the way to go.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Addressing regulation in the gaming industry as well as criticism of video game violence by Jack Thompson On violence in video games Source: YouTube http://youtube.com/watch?v=ax2HY3KxWxc&mode=related&search=

Way, Thinking, Parting

“It would be very convincing to say that there’s no hope for movies — that audiences have been so corrupted by television and have become so jaded that all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level. And there’s plenty of evidence, such as the success of Alien. This was a haunted-house-with-gorilla picture set in outer space. It reached out, grabbed you, and squeezed your stomach; it was more gripping than entertaining, but a lot of people didn’t mind. They thought it was terrific, because at least they’d felt something: they’d been brutalized. It was like an entertainment contrived in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World by the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Taking It All In (1983), Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers (1980-06-23)

People, World, Hope, Way

“[Conchita Wurst] She is an incredible singer and entertainer. But what made her win so meaningful was the way she turned her victory in the Song Contest into an electrifying moment of human rights education. Conchita is promoting respect for diversity. This is a core value of the United Nations Charter, along with our commitment to tolerance. She confounds people's preconceived ideas of gender and sexuality - and she appeals to them to accept her as she is. That is a powerful message. I am delighted she is using her talent and the Eurovision platform to take this message to a global audience.”

Ban Ki-moon (1944) 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations

3 November 2014; Remarks at Meeting with Conchita Wurst http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2014/unissgsm573.html

People, Education, Way, Idea

“You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Home Page

World, Change

“We have our own laws, rules and culture. That is why we don’t need to entertain and care about what those on the outside say, what else if coming from Arab countries which are in chaos themselves”

Ibrahim Ali (1957) Member of the Dewan Rakyat (parliament)

ibid http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/perkasa-on-allah-arabs-ignorant-westerners-have-vested-interests-and-some-i#sthash.oKV6D9cL.dpuf

Law, Country

“Narrater Abu Hurairah. Allah's Apostle said, "Anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should not harm his neighbor, and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should talk what is good or keep quiet.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

[8, 73, 47](Previous Reference for link only. Correct Ref: Bukhari Vol.8 Book78 Hadith6018)
Sunni Hadith

“I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”

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

I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; [...]. Letter to Henri Grégoire http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110052)) (25 February 1809), as quoted in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition. Collected and Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Also quoted in The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker (1994), p. 11 1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Men, Family, Hope, Color

“We're not trying to entertain the critics … I'll take my chances with the public.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in "Disneyland, 1955: Just Take the Santa Ana Freeway to the American Dream" by Karal Ann Marling, in American Art (Winter-Spring 1991)
Variant: We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public.

Chance

“My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.”

Helmut Newton (1920–2004) German-Australian photographer

As quoted in Newsmakers (2002) by Laura Avery

“A dissertation on the rights of man in a state of nature. He asserted that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law, but the law written on his heart, and revealed to him by his Maker in the constitution of his nature and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his property less incontestable. The club that he had snapped from a tree, for a staff or for defence, was his own. His bow and arrow were his own; if by a pebble he had killed a partridge or a squirrel, it was his own. No creature, man or beast, had a right to take it from him. If he had taken an eel, or a smelt, or a sculpion, it was his property. In short, he sported upon this topic with so much wit and humor, and at the same time so much indisputable truth and reason, that he was not less entertaining than instructive. He asserted that these rights were inherent and inalienable. That they never could be surrendered or alienated but by idiots or madmen, and all the acts of idiots and lunatics were void, and not obligatory by all the laws of God and man.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, Letter to William Tudor (1818)

Life, God, Truth, Law

“I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer.”

Christina Aguilera (1980) American singer

A Christina Aguilera interview to MSN Live Chat 2000 - Compiled by bignoise.com http://www.bignoisenow.com/christina/msn.html (2000)

Thinking, Dependency

“We shall now conclude our remarks on the opinions entertained before the Christian era… the observation of the present course of nature presented too many proofs of alterations continually in progress on the earth to allow philosophers to believe that nature was in a state of rest or that the surface had remained and would continue to remain unaltered.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 22
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Nature

“With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one’s logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

On why entertainment celebrities tend to favor the Democratic Party, as quoted in "Ted Nugent blasts Matt Damon on Palin" in The Christian Science Monitor (18 September 2008) http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/09/16/ted-nugent-blasts-matt-damon-on-palin/

Feeling

“We're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves
With forty hours, television and prescription pills
Well, I take two a day to help my brain behave
It never does, but who's to say? At least my doctor gets paid.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Loose Leaves
There Is No Beginning to the Story (2003)

Business, Help

“What happened to Ms. Fluke’s free speech? Since when has it been okay to target people who testify before policy makers with vicious, unwarranted and defamatory attacks? You may think that all of your misconduct disappears because you label yourself an entertainer. Well, we are not entertained – we are disgusted. You think that your non-apology apology coming on the heels of advertisers abandoning your show will make them come back? I guess even some of your advertisers do not find you all that entertaining. We hope that your advertisers continue to show the good sense and judgment that you lack by abandoning your show in droves.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

Discussing comments by Rush Limbaugh about Sandra Fluke — Gloria Allred (March 5, 2012): Attorney Gloria Allred's Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh. Posted by Gloria Allred's account to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukzzUV1FZC0. See also letter text here http://rumorfix.com/2012/03/gloria-allreds-open-letter-to-rush-limbaugh-read-it-here/.

People, Hope, Thinking, Sense

“The separation of men from women at the dinner was still in the mediaeval tradition. Another interesting feature of the evening is the relatively small number of people involved. Eighteen sat down to dinner, fifteen couples danced at the ball. The entertaining was ‘the finest that ever was seen’ because of the style and richness of the accompaniments, not because of its size. This was typical of the period. Feasts for several hundred people were still being given in the country, to prepare for an election or celebrate Christmas, births, weddings, and comings of age. They usually centred round dinner in the hall, and could involve all the neighbouring gentry and near-gentry, and even the tenants and local freeholders. But the entertainments which enjoyed the most prestige were small but elaborate ones for relatively few people – just as the prestigious part of the house was devoted to a few large apartments for great people coming on what amounted to a state visit. A hard line was still drawn between the inner ring of the great and smaller fry.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Women, Men, People, Age