Quotes about essence
page 8

“In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.”

Douglas Hofstadter book Metamagical Themas

Metamagical Themas (1985)

“To investigate the essence of a natural phenomenon, three conditions are necessary: We must first study and know the phenomenon itself, from all sides; we must then determine in what relation it stands to other natural phenomena; and lastly, when we have ascertained all these relations, we have to solve the problem of measuring these relations and the laws of mutual dependence—that is, of expressing them in numbers. In the first period of chemistry, all the powers of men's minds were devoted to acquiring a knowledge of the properties of bodies; it was necessary to discover, observe, and ascertain their peculiarities. This is the alchemistical period. The second period embraces the determination of the mutual relations or connections of these properties; this is the period of phlogistic chemistry. In the third period, in which we now are, we ascertain by weight and measure and express in numbers the degree in which the properties of bodies are mutually dependent. The inductive sciences begin with the substance itself, then come just ideas, and lastly, mathematics are called in, and with the aid of numbers, complete the work.”

Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) German chemist

Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Tr. Blythe, 4th ed., London, 1859, p. 60 as quoted by John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903).

Men, Law, Mathematics, Idea

“Women-in-jeopardy movies are, in essence, the updated versions of men dying to save the princess from the dragon to earn her love. They are modern-day training films for teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 225.

Love, Women, Men, Princess

“In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was very common for boys and young men to read about the lives of the so-called great men for the purpose of extracting lessons in how to be great themselves in whatever field they chose. I see these books as reviving that tradition by distilling ideas to their essence and putting them in a readily digestible form.”

Alan Axelrod (1952) American historian

Alan Axelrod, Business Book Juggernaut – An interview with Mike Hofman, Jun 1, 2004 http://www.inc.com/magazine/20040601/qa.html.

Men, Books, Boy, Idea

“The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.
Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles — I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith — things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Men, Money, World, Faith

“We all know the extent of the hypocrisy which surrounds the War on Drugs; that it is, at essence, a Class War, or, if you will, a Race War, which criminalizes the undesirable elements of society – precisely the rationale behind the Marijuana Tax Act, which provided the legal ammunition to expel with those pesky Mexican immigrants in Texas and California back in the 1930s.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

Tales of Un-DARE-ing Do http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/undaringdo.html

War, Marijuana

“For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.”

Andrew Bacevich (1947) United States Army officer

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008).

Life, Happiness, Personality

“What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out—not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in "natural" accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U. S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism's comfort and expansiveness.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?", pp. 282–283
The Denial of Death (1973)

Hope, Nature, Tear, Bee

“It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkungen und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie (1925), as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Hermann Weyl" (2004)

Nature, Parting

“The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, Obamacare laid bare (2013)

“.. an original Jewish art can only come into existence when the Jews have own ground under their feet and live in freedom [Bainin asked him: 'is that not what Zionism wants to reach?'] Yes, Zionism is a noble thought, but who knows whether they will reach their goal? Herzl visited me [in The Hague, Oct. 1898], he is a noble man and believes in his idea. But who will know... Now it is our duty to fight against Antisemitism, to protest against the injustice and violence that is done to us.... what is the essence of Jewish art should be determined by writers and art critics: we painters must work and not philosophize.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..een oorspronkelijke joodse kunst [kan] alleen tot stand komen, wanneer de joden eigen grond onder de voeten hebben en een vrij leven leiden [Bainin vroeg hem dan: 'is dat niet wat het Zionisme wil?'] Ja, het nl:Zionisme is een edele gedachte, maar wie weet of ze hun doel bereiken? Herzl heeft mij bezocht [in Den Haag, Oct. 1898], hij is een nobel mens en gelooft in zijn idee. Maar wie weet.. .Nu is het onze plicht het antisemitisme te bestrijden, tegen het onrecht en het geweld dat ons wordt aangedaan te protesteren.. ..wat het wezen is van de joodse kunst moeten schrijvers en kunstcritici maar bepalen: wij schilders moeten werken en niet filosoferen.
Quote in an interview with interviewer Bainin, 27 April 1902; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 59
At the moment Jozef was working on his painting 'De joodse wetschrijver' or 'De Joodse Bruiloft'
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Art, Idea, Freedom, Fight

“I swear by the most holy Essence of God — exalted and glorified be He — that in the Day of the appearance of Him Whom God shall make manifest a thousand perusals of the Bayán cannot equal the perusal of a single verse to be revealed by Him Whom God shall make manifest.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

V, 8
The Persian Bayán

God, Appearance

“Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse" - Page 58 - by Stephen Kotkin - History - 2001

“We do not desire that the unanimity of a jury should be the result of anything but the unanimity of conviction. It is true that a single juryman, or two or three constituting a small minority, may, if their own convictions are not strong and deeply rooted, think themselves justified in giving way to the majority. If is very true, if jurymen have only doubts or weak convictions, they may yield to the stronger and more determined view of their fellows; but I hold it to be of the essence of a juryman's duty, if he has a firm and deeply rooted conviction, either in the affirmative or the negative of the issue he has to try, not to give up that conviction, although the majority may be against him, from any desire to purchase his freedom from confinement or constraint, or the various other inconveniences to which jurors are subject.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Winsor v. The Queen (1866), L. R. 1 Q. B. Ca. 305.

Way, Thinking, Freedom, Strong

“Greek thought was essentially non-algebraic, because it was so concrete. The abstract operations of algebra, which deal with objects that have been purposely stripped of their physical content, could not occur to minds which were so intently interested in the objects themselves. The symbol is not a mere formality; it is the very essence of algebra. Without the symbol the object is a human perception and reflects all the phases under which the human senses grasp it; replaced by a symbol the object becomes a complete abstraction, a mere operand subject to certain indicated operations.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

p, 125
Number: The Language of Science (1930)

Sense

“Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)

God, Books, Painting

“To the virtue of temperance as the preserving and defending realization of man's inner order, the gift of beauty is particularly co-ordinated. Not only is temperance beautiful in itself, it also renders men beautiful. Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being, and not in the patent significance of immediate sensual appeal. The beauty of temperance has a more spiritual, more austere, more virile aspect. It is of the essence of this beauty that it does not conflict with true virility, but rather has an affinity to it. Temperance, as the wellspring and premise of fortitude, is the virtue of mature manliness.
The infantile disorder of intemperance, on the other hand, not only destroys beauty, it also makes man cowardly; intemperance more than any other thing renders man unable and unwilling to 'take heart' against the wounding power of evil in the world”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Men, World, Beauty, Evil

“The essence of the normal accident [is] the interaction of multiple failures that are not in a direct operational sequence.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 23

Failure

“[From Lee]: I believe that the mind may make its own immortality : thought is the spiritual part of existence; and so long as my mind influences others, so long as my thoughts remain behind, so long shall my spirit be conscious and immortal. The body may perish—not so the essence which survives in the living and lasting page.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Parting

“To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Proms 2013: Daniel Barenboim interview http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/02/daniel-barenboim-conductor-interview, 8 May 2013.

Understanding, Knowledge

“Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it.”

DJ Shadow (1972) American trip-hop musician

http://to-the-quick.binghamton.edu/issue%202/sampling.html
On Sampling

Past, Drawing

“The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical".””

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

History, Study, Past

“VI. We complain that the Confiscation Act which you approved is habitually disregarded by your Generals, and that no word of rebuke for them from you has yet reached the public ear. Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring Emancipation were promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's No. 3, forbidding fugitives from Slavery to Rebels to come within his lines-- an order as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation of every traitor in America-- with scores of like tendency, have never provoked even your own remonstrance. We complain that the officers of your Armies have habitually repelled rather than invited approach of slaves who would have gladly taken the risks of escaping from their Rebel masters to our camps, bringing intelligence often of inestimable value to the Union cause. We complain that those who have thus escaped to us, avowing a willingness to do for us whatever might be required, have been brutally and madly repulsed, and often surrendered to be scourged, maimed and tortured by the ruffian traitors, who pretend to own them. We complain that a large proportion of our regular Army Officers, with many of the Volunteers, evince far more solicitude to uphold Slavery than to put down the Rebellion. And finally, we complain that you, Mr. President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an abomination Slavery is, and how emphatically it is the core and essence of this atrocious Rebellion, seem never to interfere with these atrocities, and never give a direction to your Military subordinates, which does not appear to have been conceived in the interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Intelligence, Freedom, Appearance

“He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. "Balanchine, An Interview". Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M).

Music, Knowledge, Time, Dance

“What I admire in the ancient philosophers is their desire to make their lives conform to their writings, a trait which we notice in Plato, Theophrastus and many others. Practical morality was so truly their philosophy's essence that many, such as Xenocrates, Polemon, and Speusippus, were placed at the head of schools although they had written nothing at all. Socrates was none the less the foremost philosopher of his age, although he had not composed a single book or studied any other science than ethics.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Ce que j'admire dans les anciens philosophes, c'est le désir de conformer leurs mœurs à leurs écrits: c'est ce que l'on remarque dans Platon, Théophraste et plusieurs autres. La Morale pratique était si bien la partie essentielle de leur philosophie, que plusieurs furent mis à la tête des écoles, sans avoir rien écrit; tels que Xénocrate, Polémon, Heusippe, etc. Socrate, sans avoir donné un seul ouvrage et sans avoir étudié aucune autre science que la morale, n'en fut pas moins le premier philosophe de son siècle.
Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris : 1923), #448
Maxims and Considerations, #448

Books, Age, School, Study

“Both induction and deduction, reasoning from the particular and the general, and back again from the universal to the specific, form the essence to scientific thinking.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 16, Unpacking Information, The computer in the service of physics, p. 138

Thinking, Universe

“Two deep human desires were at war … the longing for stability, for form, for permanence, which in its essence is the desire for death, and the opposing hunger for movement, change, instability and risk, which are life. Men came from the east and built these American towns because they wished to go no farther, and the towns they built were shaped by the urge to go onward.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.

Life, Death, Men, Hunger

“If a concept lacks an essence, nothing will ever be found that completely fits that concept. If you are lacking in the concept of human being, it will immediately expose that you are something individual, something that cannot be expressed by the term human being, thus, in every instance, an individual human being.”

Max Stirner (1806–1856) German philosopher

Stirner's Critics (1845)

“The story of Ramachandra, as narrated in the Valmiki Ramayan and the Adhyatma Ramayan, after reinforcing and revitalizing it with the essence of whatever the Puranas, the Vedas, and other scriptures could give, I, Tulsidas, am writing for the delight of my own soul.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

In the invocation of his epic poetry of Ramacharitamanas. Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 91

Soul

“In its essence, technology is something that man does not control.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Der Spiegel Interview with Martin Heidegger, 1966

“To put it one way, a collection of Shakespeare's plays is richer than a phone book that uses the same number of letters; to put it another, the essence of information lies in the relationships among bits, not their sheer number.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 17, Bioinformatics, Biology meets information technology, p. 145

Books, Way

“What must be acknowledged, for example the prevalence of anxiety, is grafted onto man’s essence as if it grew there. Such is the tried and tested method of the apologist: what is social in origin is presented as natural.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 63

Nature

“The first remark we have to make, and which — though already presented more than once — cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, — is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle — Plan of Existence — Law — is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such — however true in itself — is not completely real.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Law, Idea, Nature

“Christ prayed that He should be in us, and we in Him. This we find in many passages in the Gospel. And this is the union that is without intermediary, for the love of God is not only out-flowing, but it is also drawing into unity. And those who feel and experience this become interior, enlightened men. There the faculties are raised above all practices to the bareness of their very essence. There the faculties become simplified above reason in their essence and because of this they are filled and overflowing. For in this simplicity the spirit finds itself united with God without intermediary. And this union, together with the exercise, which is proper to it, will endure eternally, as I have already said.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love, Men, God, Feeling

“Dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking, made possible by the conditions of the state of sleep. it is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming - the explanation of its peculiar nature.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

7
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Dreams, Nature, Thinking, Sleep

“I have something to offer, and through which you can realize something, realize the essence of this life. Even if you are a billionaire, you have to have one thing going for you, and that’s life. That is a key ingredient. You don’t have life going for you, you can have everything else going for you, and it won't make any difference.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Washington, DC, USA, November 24, 1981
1980s

Life

“Learning to see the world as it truly is - saturated with the presence and love of God - should be the essence of Christian discipleship, or what many call spiritual formation.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Love, God, World, Learning

“But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the opening of the Reading and Recreation Rooms erected by the Saltney Literary Institute at Saltney in Chesire (26 October 1889), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On The Working Classes" in The Times (28 October 1889), p. 8
1880s

People, Thinking, Learning, Time

“To be simple is to accept the essence of the message and not try to twist it or adapt it to our own ideas. To be simple we must desire to remain in the image of God. We must not be so complex that we make God into our image! Simplicity is dying to self, an emptying.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"For This I Have Laid Down My Life", p. 12
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

God, Idea

“Let a man get once fairly possessed of any peculiar notion, whether it be on religion, political economy, morals, politics, arts, or anything else, and he sees little beside his beloved principle, which he is at all times ready to advance, defend, demonstrate, or expatiate on. Nothing can be simpler than the two great dogmas of Christianity, which are so plain that all can both comprehend them and feel their truth. They teach us to love God, the surest way to obey him, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Any one can understand this; all can see how just it is, and how much of moral sublimity it contains. It is Godlike, and brings us near the very essence of the Divinity, which is love, mercy, and truth. Yet how few are content to accept the teachings of the Saviour in this respect, without embarrassing them with theories that have so much of their origin in human fancies.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XVI

Love, God, Truth, Religion

“Anarchy can no longer be defined as freedom from oppression or lack of government control. It has gone further than that. It has become, especially in the young people today, a state of mind, an essence of being. It can be expressed as "doing their own thing", or maybe just having the freedom to do or not to do.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Foreword", p. 29.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

People, Freedom

“If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Preface
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Truth, Secret, Religion, Nature

“Now understand the deepest essence of your soul, what 'soul' is. Soul is a being that can be beheld by God and by which, again, God can be beheld. Soul is also a being that wishes to content God … The soul is a bottomless abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own self-sufficiency ever finds fruition to the full in this soul, as the soul, for its part, ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of God from his depths to his liberty; and God is a way for the passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths, which cannot be touched except by the soul's abyss.”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Letter XVIII.
Letters

God, Way, Soul, Understanding

“Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

interview with Miles O'Brien, CNN, 1996-03-30
Gabriella
Schwarz
O'Donnell questioned evolution
Political Ticker
CNN
2010-09-16
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/16/odonnell-questioned-evolution/
2010-10-24
GOP's Delaware Senate Nominee Christine O'Donnell Not a Big Fan of Evolution
New York Magazine
2010-09-15
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/09/the_gops_delaware_senate_nomin.html
2010-10-24
Posed question: There's a lot of people who would suggest that creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. That the big bang— after all, something had to create the big bangs, perhaps some higher being, and there's a tremendous amount of scientific evidence that there was a big bang which started this whole process underway. You can't go along with that?

God, World, Support

“This is probably the fundamental dimension of 'ideology': ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological' - 'ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence -that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing'. 'Ideological is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by "false consciousness"'. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be 'a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject': the subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as its logic escapes him - the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Support, Knowledge, Reality, Success

“The essential of a real picture is that the things which occur in it occur to him in his peculiarly personal fashion.... the idea of modernity is but a new attachment of things universal – a fresh relationship to the courses of the sun and to the living swing of the earth – a new fire of affection for the living essence present everywhere.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

statement for catalogue of 1914 exhibition at 291, reprinted in On art, p. 62; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 49
1908 - 1920

Idea, Fashion, Universe, Sun

“When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.”

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

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 January 1820). Often misquoted as "God is an essence that we know nothing of" and attached to a part of his 22 January 1825 letter to Thomas Jefferson.
1820s

Wisdom, God

“We have been keeping the peace in the Asia-Pacific theater for decades now, and the essence of the rebalance is to keep that peace and stability going, of which we have been a pivotal part. You ask about India, yes it is difficult. We are two technical and military cultures that grew up on opposite sides of the fence during the Cold War.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

archive.defensenews.com interview http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20131119/DEFREG02/311190032/Interview-Ashton-Carter-US-Deputy-Defense-Secretary

War, Peace, Parting

“I hail you, old ocean! Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never change, and if somewhere your waves are enraged, farther off in some other zone they are in the most complete calm. You are not like man — who stops in the street to see two bulldogs seize each other by the scruff of the neck, but does not stop when a funeral passes. Man who in the morning is affable and in the evening ill-humoured. Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow. I hail you, old ocean!”

Comte de Lautréamont book Les Chants de Maldoror

Vieil océan, tu es le symbole de l'identité: toujours égal à toi-même. Tu ne varies pas d'une manière essentielle, et, si tes vagues sont quelque part en furie, plus loin, dans quelque autre zone, elles sont dans le calme le plus complet. Tu n'es pas comme l'homme, qui s'arrête dans la rue, pour voir deux boule-dogues s'empoigner au cou, mais, qui ne s'arrête pas, quand un enterrement passe; qui est ce matin accessible et ce soir de mauvaise humeur; qui rit aujourd'hui et pleure demain. Je te salue, vieil océan!
Les Chants de Maldoror (1972 ed.), p. 13.

Change

“One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.”

Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose

Lenz (1835).

Love

“As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound.”

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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Way, Star, Animals

“"The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the, "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today."”

Aaron Fuchs

Aaron Fuchs quoted by David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2, p. 120. New York: Serpent's Tail. .

People, Music, Quotes, Baby

“Only in movement do we find the true essence of things. Today we can no longer believe in permanent laws, defined religions, durable architecture or eternal kingdoms. Immutability does not exist. All is movement. All is static.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Quotes, 1950's, Static static, static !, 1959

Religion, Law

“I made the flames lick the surface of the painting in such a way that is recorded the spontaneous traces of the fire. But what is it that provokes in me this pursuit of the impression of fire? Why must I search for its traces? Because every work of creation, quite apart from its cosmic position, is the representation of pure phenomenology – every phenomenon manifests itself of its own accord. This manifestation is always distinct from form, and is the essence of the immediate, the trace of the immediate.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1961; p. 67
Klein's quote on making paintings with a flame-thrower
1960 -1964, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Way, Search, Painting

“we can never show solidarity with ideologies, peoples and ethnic groups which are committed to the goal of changing the very European culture which forms the essence, meaning and purpose of the European way of life. We must not show solidarity with groups and ideologies which oppose to the aims of European existence and culture, because that would lead to surrender.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Life, People, Way, Change

“Mere numbers cannot bring out… the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work … What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas!… The experimenter judges what may be going on in (the subject’s) mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1900), La suggestibilite, Paris: Schleicher. p. 119–120); As cited in: Carson (1999, 363-4)

Feeling, Idea, Nature

“By This experience… melts the man utterly; he is no longer master of his joy. Such possession produces intoxication, the state of the spirit in which its bliss transcends the uttermost boundsIf every earthly pleasure were melted into a single experience and bestowed upon one man, it would be as nothing when measured by the joy of which I writeSometimes the ecstasy pours forth in song, sometimes in tears: at one moment it finds expression in movement, at others in the intense stillness of burning, voiceless feeling By the way of perfect likeness and fullest union.
Every good deed, however small, if it be directed to God by simplicity of intention, increases in us the Divine likeness,
and deepens in us the flow of eternal life…
Entering into and transcending itself, traversing all worlds of being, surpassing all creatures, the soul meets God in its own depths…
The whole life of the spirit and its activity consists solely in the Divine likeness and this simplicity of intention;
and the final peace abides on the heights in simplicity also, in simplicity All the divine means and all conditions, and all living images which are reflected in the mirror of truth, lapse in the onefold and ineffable waylessness beyond reason of essence.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

Life, God, Pleasure, Truth

“Now, we are agreed,
I and my destinies. The total world, —
Above, below, whate'er is seen or known,
And all that men, and all that gods enact,
Hopes, fears, imaginations, purposes;
With joy, and pain, and every pulse that beats
In the great body of the universe,
I give to the eternal sisterhood,
To make my peace withal! And cast this husk,
This hated, mangled, and dishonour'd carcase
Into the balance; so have I redeem'd
My proper birthright, even the changeless mind,
The imperishable essence uncontroll'd.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Men, God, Pain, Hate

“Everything you wanted to know about a person was written in the face, she believed. It’s not that she believed that the shape of the head was what counted– even if there were many who still clung to that belief; it was more a question of taking care to scrutinise the lines and the general look. And the eyes, of course; they were very important. The eyes allowed you to see right into a person, to penetrate their very essence, and that was why people with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

People, Question, Personality

“In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. … What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. … the opposition to man's true nature as man.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)

Art, Music, Nature

“The Christ Spirit is really the aura of Christ Jesus extending to and including every portion of the earth. Whatever is Christ-like in essence, quality, mentality and conduct adds to the content of the ever-expanding Christ Spirit. We might also consider it as a tremendous reservoir of Light, which encircles the earth, whose function is to bless, to redeem, to spiritualize, to love and to heal all who make prayerful requests in the name of the Christ Spirit.”

Flower A. Newhouse (1909–1994) American mystic

Here Are Your Answers, Vol. II
Christ

Love, Light, Christ

“Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with its essence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Most Unfashionable Poet Now Alive: Charles Causley," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecausley.htm published in The Dark Horse (Summer 1997 and Spring 1998) <br class="br">Essays

“In the early 1990s, I came to suspect that the quest for a unified theory is religious rather than scientific. Physicists want to show that all things came from one thing: a force, or essence, or membrane wriggling in eleven dimensions, or something that manifests perfect mathematical symmetry. In their search for this primordial symmetry, however, physicists have gone off the deep end, postulating particles and energies and dimensions whose existence can never be experimentally verified.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

(2002 wager, 18 year duration) [Bet 12 (John Horgan vs. Michio Kaku), longbets.org, http://longbets.org/12/]

Search, Mathematics, Perfection

“The 2008 financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world. The financial world is, in essence, a set of markers for goods, services, and risks in the real world and when those markers are allowed to deviate too far from reality, “adjustments” must ultimately follow and crisis and panic can ensue. To solve this and future financial crisis requires that we reconnect the markers with reality. What are our real assets and how valuable are they? To do this requires both a new vision of what the economy is and what it is for, proper and comprehensive accounting of real assets, and new institutions that use the market in its proper role of servant rather than master.”

Robert Costanza (1950) American economist

Source: Toward a New Sustainable Economy, 2008, p. 40

World, Problem, Reality, Future

“It's because I wait, I wait until it's there again. Whatever is there [in the eye of the camera] is a truth, but a truth you have to believe in. What you see in front of you is a fact. You click when you believe it's the truth. The information is waiting to become in essence a concentration, concentrated so clearly that it can be projected back into real life, into your recognition. It could be any size.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1980's, I don't necessarily desire a perfect photography,' 1981

Life, Truth, Waiting

“This is an absolute deep contrast to Chopin, who found himself favoring a classical form of musical essence. He needs to bring nothing in from outside, the music is nearly ‘absolute.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Music

“…In essence, the A. R. F.'s present strategy does not differ from the strategy it pursued at the turn of the [20th] century. The A. R. F. viewed its armed propaganda as a means of introducing the "Armenian Cause" (Hai Tad) into the arena of international politics. In fact, almost all of the A. R. F.'s tactics, armed or not, are still aimed at somehow convincing "Western" governments and diplomatic circles to sponsor the party's demands… This strategy is very dependent on foreign initiatives, and it implies a belief that the Armenian people's future cannot be determined primarily by the Armenian people themselves.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 55-56.

People, Future, Dependency

“While autism is a developmental disorder, sometimes a devastating one, there is always within the autism a unique and sometimes strangely gifted individual. The great psychoanalyst Winicott used to feel that there was something like a tulip in every person and this was their essence and that this internal part of them was inaccessible to the person themselves and should not be meddled with or touched by psychoanalysis or anything else and one wonders if there is not some autistic essence like this tulip which needs to be respected and not meddled with.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

Rage For Order episode of Oliver Sacks: The Mind Traveller

Feeling, Parting, Personality

“The church and the world alike demand that those who profess to love the Lord should be careful to love their brethren also. It is for them to have in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity. Only so can the church realize the ideal of its Divine Founder, and foreshadow its future excellence and beauty. Only so can this spiritual structure be celestial and glorious, revealing in all its fair proportions from dome and turret, from glittering spires and airy traceries, its marvelous symmetry and oneness, while at the same time it swells from every organ pipe, and chants in every choral anthem the praises of Him whose essence is love, and whose being is characterized by unity.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 112.

Love, World, Beauty, Time

“Mark at present so much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies,—as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,—the first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

God, Truth, Home, Nature

“Oh special day, unveil your essence which redeems –
newness of peace
you are beyond utility.
To love from the root,
all united for ever, beyond the appearance of the transient forms.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Chorus

Love, Peace, Appearance

“The violence of the state, to be justified, must be transubstantiated in its essence into peaceful incantation, yet at the same time, to be effective, it must retain the external accidents of violence.”

Roderick Long (1964) American philosopher

"Equality: the Unknown Ideal" (2001)

Peace, Time

“If we recognize, following the materialist theories, that only the physical nature exist, and that man contain ("renferme", Fr.) no higher essence, divine, which, by one side of his being, raise (promote or improve…) him above his animal nature, it would be a question ("il ne saurait être question", Fr.) neither of obligation, nor of moral responsability; then the supreme good would consist for him, indeed, to satisfy his appetites and his natural inclinations (fondness or partiality, -"penchant", Fr.), to look for the pleasure and flee from (scud, shun, avoid, -"fuir", Fr.) pain. In this case, there could be neither religion nor moral, since religion is precisely what raise man above vulgar (or common, - "vulgaire", Fr.) reality, and that moral is the very negation of selfishness.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 41.

Pain, Pleasure, Religion, Question

“And for this reason all creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, one essence and one life with God. But in the bursting-out of the Persons with distinction, so the Son is from the Father and the Holy Spirit from them both. There God has created and ordered all creatures in their own essence.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Life, God, Personality

“When we approach the study of business cycle with the intention of carrying through an analysis that is truly dynamic and determinate in the above sense, we are naturally led to distinguish between two types of analyses: the micro-dynamic and the macro-dynamic types. The micro-dynamic analysis is an analysis by which we try to explain in some detail the behaviour of a certain section of the huge economic mechanism, taking for granted that certain general parameters are given. Obviously it may well be that we obtain more or less cyclical fluctuations in such sub-systems, even though the general parameters are given. The essence of this type of analysis is to show the details of the evolution of a given specific market, the behaviour of a given type of consumers, and so on.”

Ragnar Frisch Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics

Source: 1930s, Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics, 1933, p. 2

Business, Nature, Sense, Study

“Usually, when I’ve met the people who are meant to be in a position of power, I’ve always made sure to give them a damn good soul stare—y’know, look right in their eyes, through the blackness of the pupils and into whatever conscious field exists within. Then lock the eyes on, but let them gently defocus so that the defined parameters of the visual physical go blurry and you can feel the energy behind it, the unseeable energy that isn’t made of photons. Then, if your mind is quiet, you will be informed of the quality of their essence, or at least of the manifest persona that they believe themselves to be.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, Feeling, Soul

“In a previous paper (Gaines, 1978) on progress in general systems research… I avoided the issue of defining a system. I noted that no definitions are satisfactory, and it seemed to me the essence of the subject area that none can be so. I went on to say that it is the systems approach—emphasizing lack of disciplinary boundaries, the freedom to apply knowledge, and techniques gathered in one field to problems in another, or to suggest that two distinct fields are in fact one, the disciplined freedom of the unconstrained intellect—that has been the source of dynamism and progress. I noted that perhaps the most telling progress of all is that we can so confidently speak of a common field of interest knowing that we could not, and would not wish to, agree on a definition of what a system is.”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Gaines is refering here to his 1978 article "Progress in general systems research". In Klir, G. J. (ed.), Applied General Systems Research, New York: Plenum Press, 1978, pp. 3-28.
General systems research: quo vadis? (1979)

Confidence, Knowledge, Problem, Freedom

“The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Freedom
Source: I am That, P.189.

Imagination, History, Past, Future

“Little droplets of poetic essence.”

George Bailey Sansom (1883–1965) japanologist

Description of the haiku poetic form
Unsourced

“In this embrace, in the essential unity of God, are all inner spirits one with God in loving transport, and they are the selfsame one that the essence itself is in itself. And in this sublime unity of the divine nature, the heavenly Father is the origin and the beginning of every work that is done in heaven and on earth”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, God, Nature

“Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven!”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 777
Endymion (1818)

Happiness, Religion

“A fashion always has some meaning. The fashion, or style, of renunciation really meant something then. It was inspired by the war, or it ran parallel to the war, and could not have been conceived without the war… It stood for the will to sacrifice — if the unlimited will to throw away can be called the will to sacrifice. It was arrogant and elegantly cynical — because it is arrogant and elegantly cynical when the symbol of the élite becomes hunger. The superfluous here threw away the necessary quite simply. In its inner essence it was the disdain of death.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (1979) This has also been abbreviated and quoted as "The will to sacrifice . . . was the disdain of death."

Death, Hunger, War, Fashion

“What the sorrowful Jew of Amsterdam called the essence of a thing, the effort that it makes to persist indefinitely in its own being, self-love, the longing for immortality, is it not perhaps the primal and fundamental condition of all reflective or human knowledge? And is it not therefore the true base, the real starting-point, of all philosophy, although the philosophers, perverted by intellectualism, do not recognize it?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point

Love, Knowledge, Effort

“Human history is in essence a history of ideas.”

H. G. Wells book The Outline of History

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 40

History, Idea

“The essence of Jewish faith is consistent with no embodiment other than the system of halakhic praxis.”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

"Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State" (1995)

Faith

“The convict system in essence was a form of compulsory, assisted migration. It eased the problems created by Australia's distance from Britain. Without it relatively few people from the British Isles would have made the costly journey across the world in Australia's first half century.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

People, World, Problem

“"Nothingness" is generally forced into a relationship with "being" and made to serve as its negation, leading to its conception as something that "is" nothingness because it "is not" being. This seems to be especially evident in Western thought, even in the "nihility" of nihilism. But insofar as one stops here, nothingness remains a mere concept, a nothingness only in thought. Absolute nothingness, wherein even that "is" is negated, is not possible as a nothingness that is thought but only as a nothingness that is lived. It was remarked above that behind person there is nothing at all, that is, that "nothing at all" is what stands behind person. But this assertion does not come about as a conceptual conversion, but only as an existential conversion away from the mode of being of person-centered person. Granted what we have said about the person-centered self-prehension of person as being intertwined with the very essence and realization of the personal, the negation of person-centeredness must amount to an existential self-negation of man as person. The shift of man as person from person-centered self-prehension to self-revelation as the manifestation of absolute nothingness - of which I shall speak next - requires an existential conversion, a change of heart within man himself.”

Keiji Nishitani book Religion and Nothingness

Source: Religion and Nothingness (1983), p. 70

Change, Heart, Personality

“Thy letter hath been perused. Were the truth of this Revelation to be fully demonstrated with elaborate proofs, all the scrolls that exist in the heaven and on the earth would be insufficient to contain them.
However, the substance and essence of the subject is this, that there can be no doubt that from everlasting God hath been invested with the independent sovereignty of His exalted Being, and unto everlasting He will remain inaccessible in the transcendent majesty of His holy Essence. No creature hath ever recognized Him as befitteth His recognition, nor hath any created being ever praised Him as is worthy of His praise. He is exalted above every name, and is sanctified from every comparison. Through Him all things are made known, while too lofty is His reality to be known through anyone but Him. The process of His creation hath had no beginning and can have no end, otherwise it would necessitate the cessation of His celestial grace. God hath raised up Prophets and revealed Books as numerous as the creatures of the world, and will continue to do so to everlasting.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

God, Truth, Books, World

“We begin with the number one in counting all things. It is impossible that this one can ever be reduced to zero. Because just as something cannot be made of nothing, one cannot be made from zero. Ki is like the number one. Ki is formed from infinitely small particles, smaller than an atom. The universal ki condensed becomes an individual, which further condensed becomes the one point in the lower abdomen, which in turn infinitely condensed never becomes zero, but becomes one with the universe. Thus we understand the essence of ki.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

11 : The definition of ki
Ki Sayings (2003)

Understanding, Universe

“But so long as human nature is what it is, so long as we are by essence prepossessed in favour of our freedom and yearn for a life that may put death itself beneath our feet, and with death imperfection and wrong, so long will our nature reluctate, so long will it even revolt, at the prospect of having to accept the doctrine of pantheism; so long shall we instinctively draw back from that vast and shadowy Being which, be it conscious or unconscious or simply the Unknowable, must for us and our highest hopes be verily the Shadow of Death”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.77-8

Life, Death, Hope, Nature

“We will liquidate the kulak, but not because he is a kulak but because he is a fifth columnist … The present struggle is national liberation in form, but class war in essence.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 188.
Other

War

“Techniques are performed upon raw materials. The state of art of analyzing the characteristics of the raw materials is likely to determine what kind of technology will be used. (Tools are also necessary, of course, but by and large, the construction of tools is a simpler problem than the analysis of the nature of the material and generally follows the analysis.) To understand the nature of the material means to be able to control it better and achieve predictability and efficiency in transformation. We are not referring here to the 'essence of the material, only the way the organization perceives it to be … The other relevant characteristic of the raw material, besides the understandability of Its nature, is Its stability and variability; that is, whether the material can be treated in a standardized fashion or whether continual adjustment to it is necessary. Organizations uniformly seek to standardize their raw material In order to minimize exceptional situations. This is the point of de-individualizing processes found in military academies, monasteries and prisons, and the superiority of the synthetic shoe material Corfam over leather.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1960s, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations", 1967, p. 195

Art, Shoe, Way, Fashion

“[That] is the essence of poker: making tricky decisions based on incomplete information.”

John Vorhaus

Introduction
Poker Night (2004)

Decision

“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 13
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

Loyalty

“Many solutions are offered as to how to gain the something more in life. …Wealth, strength, and keenness of intellect, taken separately of together, do not constitute the essence of real life. …At its best, life consists of these things, plus something more. …In Jesus Christ we see perfection in life. …From an imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ, it would appear that real life depends upon the fulfilling of three conditions—the dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, with ourselves, and with our fellowmen. …If we fulfill to any degree these three conditions of being in friendly relations with God, ourselves, and our fellows, we shall discover something more of the meaning of life.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 63-67

Life, God, Understanding, Appearance

“Under such lights as these, which are shed from what the vast majority of thinking men agree is the profoundest and best that is in us, all such systems as we have described display their final moral incompetency. Let us turn now to the new view, the view that abandons both monism and monarchotheism, that abandons creationism in both its forms, takes resort to Final Cause as the primary and only explanatory principle, and holds to an Eternal Pluralism of causal minds, each self-active, though all recognisant of all others, and thus all in their central essence possessed of moral autonomy, the very soul of all really moral being.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix B: The System in its Ethical Necessity and its Practical Bearings, p.399

Men, Soul, Thinking, Light

“You may have heard of a character from the batman movies, called the Joker. The joker just lives a normal life like you or me, going to the grocery store, and the office or what have you. But WHen the joker puts his mask on, he becomes the joker, and he mercilessly goes out there and gets Paid. Thats what I try to do in my life and the way I live life, and I do do it every day, and it is the essence of understanding my pain.”

Dril Twitter user

[ "We Interviewed the Guy Behind @dril, the Undisputed King of Twitter", Caffier, Justin, August 24, 2018, Vice, August 25, 2018, http://archive.today/2018.08.26-011141/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kymv8/we-interviewed-the-guy-behind-dril-the-undisputed-king-of-twitter, August 25, 2018, no https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kymv8/we-interviewed-the-guy-behind-dril-the-undisputed-king-of-twitter,] <br class="br">dril in interviews

Life, Pain, Way, Understanding