Quotes about evening
page 72

“The ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness represent attempts to interpret the process of development as a group of tendencies permanently directed towards certain permanent and universal ends. But human behaviour is not directed towards unchanging ends, not even towards those temporary ideals which each community sets up for itself. The formative tendency is displayed, not in any steady process of definite orientation, but in a rhythmic sequence of transformation which cannot be represented as tending towards any particular final condition.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 261-262

Truth, Beauty, Communication, Universe

“I would love to debate any politician in any western state on the question of whether the rule of law ought to be respected in a world where even the most "respectable" governments establish intelligence agencies that routinely violate those laws at taxpayer expense and at no real penalty to anyone involved.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

The Guardian, "Anonymous: a net gain for liberty" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/27/anonymous-internet, 27 January 2011.

Love, World, Law, Penalty

“Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile — family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head — all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer — not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of Western society.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)

Life, Men, Pain, Children

“By the time the Muslims established their rule in the country (circa 1200 A. D.) the old inhabitants of the country, i. e. the Hindus, had lost their vitality to such an extent that they became incapable of dealing with or even facing a situation if it was difficult or unpleasant. So they surrendered to any situation that was created for them by history and tried to be at peace with their conscience by banishing it from their mind with soothing words.”

Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999) Indian writer

Quoted from (1997). Time for stock taking, whither Sangh Parivar? Edited by Goel, S. R. [31, Baljit Rai]

Peace, History, Time, Country

“Perhaps there was too much of religion in one sense; the word is English, smacks too much of things external such as creeds, rites, an external piety; there is no one Indian equivalent. But if we give rather to religion the sense of the following of the spiritual impulse in its fullness and define spirituality as the attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, the all-embracing unity and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest possible values, then it is evident that there was not too much of religion, but rather too little of it — and in what there was, a too one-sided and therefore an insufficiently ample tendency. The right remedy is, not to belittle still farther the agelong ideal of India, but to return to its old amplitude and give it a still wider scope, to make in very truth all the life of the nation a religion in this high spiritual sense. This is the direction in which the philosophy, poetry, art of the West is, still more or less obscurely, but with an increasing light, beginning to turn, and even some faint glints of the truth are beginning now to fall across political and sociological ideals.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Life, Truth, Religion, Art

“Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Sermon on the Apostles' Creed, 13-14

God, World, Beauty, Feeling

“It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor.
He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, kindness, and charity. No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the reward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well meant shortcomings from heedless or stupid blunder.
In one word, every commander should keep constantly before him the great truth, that to be well obeyed, he must be perfectly esteemed.”

John Paul Jones (1747–1792) American naval officer

Statement long attributed to Jones, but now believed to have been written by Augustus C. Buell; Reef Points: 2003-2004, 98th Edition, U.S. Naval Academy (2003)
Misattributed

Truth, Stupidity, Education, Justice

“Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Blog comment, , to PZ Myers, " Always Name Names https://web.archive.org/web/20110706204901/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/always_name_names.php" (), Pharyngula, quoted in Rebecca Watson, " The Privilege Delusion http://skepchick.org/2011/07/the-privilege-delusion/", Skepchick. Regarding the Rebecca Watson elevator incident.

Death, Cars, Coffee, Thinking

“Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.”

Li Minqi (1969) Chinese economist

Source: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (2008), Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

People, Grass, Parting

“And if they legalize it, they're gonna have to regulate it and they're gonna have to put a warning on a box of joints. It's gonna have to say, "Surgeon General has determined this will make your music… awesome! Even Yanni. And if you think you liked cartoons before…"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Music, Thinking, Box

“It is not uncommon for intelligent adults to turn into passive observers of their own incompetence in anything but the most elementary mathematics. Individuals may see the direct consequences of this intellectual paralysis in terms of limiting job possibilities. But the indirect, secondary consequences are even more serious. One of the main lessons learned by most people in math class is a sense of having rigid limitations. They learn a balkanized image of human knowledge which they come to see as a patchwork of territories separated by impassable iron curtains.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

People, Intelligence, Mathematics, Knowledge

“Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa from the one who left them on the moon. A mere blink in the eye of evolution. Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population. In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today. Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others. Perhaps the time has now come to put that process into reverse. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
The Life of Mammals (2002)

Food, Intelligence, Time, Success

“A large share of our art heritage is now derived from peoples whose idea of art was quite other than ours, and even from peoples to whom the very idea of art meant nothing.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part I, Chapter V
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

People, Art, Idea

“I'm on the Internet a lot more than I watch TV and most everybody I know is, and yet if you watch most late-night talk shows, it's as if it doesn't even exist. So the Internet, it's just something I wanted to make use of in some way. I was fascinated by what appeared to be a child singing this song. It just struck me as funny.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On his initial impression of Andy Milonakis — reported in Susan Carpenter, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (May 3, 2006) "Making a fool of himself for video - Andy Milonakis' success story", Chicago Tribune, p. 8A.

Way, Appearance, Singing, Night

“In his fawning hagiography of Teddy Kennedy, Clymer wrote that Kennedy's liberal voting record made up for his killing that girl at Chappaquiddick. I didn't believe it either, but Clymer actually wrote: Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne." (A review in The Washington Monthly said Clymer's Chappaquiddick section did "not sugarcoat his subject's flaws.")
This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2000

Way, Girl, Thinking, Change

“The sinners would have included those who did not pay their tithes (one tenth of their income) to the priests, and those who were negligent about the sabbath rest and about ritual cleanliness. The laws and customs on these matters were so complicated that the uneducated were quite incapable of understanding what was expected of them. Education in those days was a matter of knowing.. the law and all its ramifications. The illiterate and uneducated were inevitably lawless and immoral. The ‘am ha-arez, or uneducated peasants, ‘the rabble who know nothing of the law’ (John 7:49) were regarded by even the most enlightened Pharisees, like Hillel, as incapable of virtue and piety.”

Albert Nolan (1934) South African priest and activist

Source: Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 23.

Education, Law, Understanding

“Ramu is our youngest child. He does not know how to write. The only thing he knows is to scribble on the slate. When the slate is covered with lines, he asks me to look at what he has written. Writing for him is nothing but scribbling. If, with some luck, one of the lines turns out to be letter, it’s not his fault. w:Brahma}Brahma’s writing is no different. Unpredictability is its characteristic. Not even one ina thousand is good. If one turns out to be good it’s not my fault. My wife was convinced that all this was Vedanta. She did not pay any attention to it.”

Masti Venkatesha Iyengar (1891–1986) Indian writer

His narration at the end of his short story “Velurina Lakshamma” quoted here. [Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Masti, http://books.google.com/books?id=e6VqgWouUmUC, 2004, Katha, 978-81-87649-50-2, 24]
Quote

“Everything that we set up for legislation that will promote Christianity will only pave the way for Islam later on because it is the fastest growing religion while Christianity is in a state of decline. Demographics change; you can’t fight religion with religion. What will happen is Islam will eventually dominate Christianity; there won’t be any Christians left. Fortunately, secularists, atheists, and nonbelievers are on the rise faster than even the fastest growing religion. You can’t fight religion with religion, but you can fight it with reason. That’s what the atheist groups are really all about.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Religion, Way, Change, Fight

“As a little child, I remember having conflicts with other people over religion at 5-years-old, at 8-years-old, and without realising it. Certainly, not realising my whole life would be this whole argument. I would ask simple questions to my babysitter when I was a little boy, like, “How does Jesus turn water into wine? I know water is H2O. I know that wine is alcohol and fruit juice, and I don’t know what the chemical components of that are.” But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it. But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else. How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer. Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does… But they don’t come up with explanations like that, they didn’t want explanations. They didn’t even want to believe people had explanations. When I was growing up, I found believers not only hated accurate scientific answers, but they hated any answer that sounded scientific. It was a funny thing. I was told all of the time that “sceptics were cynics” because we miss out on the big picture that only the believers can see.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Life, Hate, People, Alcohol

“In the realm of physics it is perhaps only the theory of relativity which has made it quite clear that the two essences, space and time, entering into our intuition, have no place in the world constructed by mathematical physics. Colours are thus "really" not even æther-vibrations, but merely a series of values of mathematical functions in which occur four independent parameters corresponding to the three dimensions of space, and the one of time.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Introduction
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

World, Mathematics, Time

“I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I have learning disabilities. I don't even have a high school diploma. I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper. I do have a GED, and if you don't know what GED stands for…you probably got one, too.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

A Little Unprofessional

School, Learning

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Books, Way, Imagination, Mathematics

“The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

“Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Referring to title of an essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Quotes, Sense, Light, Reading

“The link between Communism and traditional Christianity is so close that when Communists lose their faith, they usually and naturally flop over into Roman Catholicism. Whittaker Chambers was only the best known of the Marxists who, when disillusioned, reverted to an earlier form of his ruling superstition. Would-be atheists who do not become converted to the Marxist cult often retain in their minds the Christian residue that makes them susceptible to drivel about "all mankind," "One World," and the "humanitarian" sentimentality of do-gooders and similar pests--all of which find no confirmation in the facts of nature and the real world. There are even self-styled atheists who evidently think that the god in whom they do not believe stopped the biological evolution of anthropoids a hundred thousand years ago to make all talking species equal in some mysterious way that transcends the obvious and great difference between extant races in intelligence, character, and instincts, perhaps because the non-existing god equipped the several species with exactly equal souls.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Bear in the Bush", Liberty Bell (September 1990)
1990s

God, World, Faith, Way

“[Boucher admits that the use of slavery in the British colonies is better regulated than in other countries, but notes that:] "it is surely worse in this, that here, in one sense, it never can end. An African slave, even when made free, supposing him to be possessed even of talents and of virtue, can never, in these colonies, be quite on terms of equality with a free white man."”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Sense, Country

“The goal of public policy is to make our lives better. Does that mean richer? Or healthier? No policy change is good for everyone, so we must weigh total gains against total losses. But even that task is more complicated than it first appears.”

Charles Wheelan (1966) American politician

Introduction to Public Policy (2011), Ch. 5 : Evaluating Social Welfare

Appearance, Change, Loss

“He was naming the groups that were pro-war. No one minds his naming the British or the Administration. But to name "Jew" is un-American — even if it is done without hate or even criticism. Why?”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

War Within and Without (1980)

Hate, War

“The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 52

People, Sense, Freedom

“Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 53, “The Recovery” (p. 677)

Confidence, Understanding

“Many of my Hamptstead friends may remember this 'young lady' [an ash tree] at the entrance to the village. Her fate was distressing, for it is scarcely too much to say that she died of a broken heart. I made this drawing [Study of Trees, pencil on paper, circa 1821] when she was in full health and beauty; on passing some times afterwards, I saw, to my grief, that a wretched board had been nailed to her side, on which was written in large letters: 'All vagrants and beggars will be dealt with according to law.' The tree seemed to have felt the disgrace, for even then some of the top branches had withered. Two long spike nails had been driven far into her side. In another year one half became paralysed, and not long after the other shared the same fate, and this beautiful creature was cut down to a stump, just high enough to hold the board.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Lecture, given at Hamptstead (July 1836), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, Tate Gallery Publications, London 1993, p. 391
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Fate, Health, Law, Beauty

“Of the splendid constellation of great names… we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"—so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,—so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

On the Theory of Light https://books.google.com/books?id=Lo4_AAAAcAAJ (1828) p.494

Star, Mathematics, Suffering, Dead

“O faithless brother what has happened that in vain you joined hands to violate my honour, and to stain your own hand with my blood. You gathered round yourself a band of persons addicted to vice … you excited this gang of villains to hate me … I appointed you to act for me. I ordered my friends to obey you … you are now out to destroy me. I was your guest you abused me. You swore at me in my face. That which you yourself deserved you ascribed to me. You inspired your servants with rancorous hatred of me. Even you taught your own barber your own falsehoods. He gave false evidence against the truth. You set in motion this great sedition …. Outwardly you pretended to be my friend. You attended my feast. You ate my meal of trust. Inwardly you manifested your falsehood until Shawal 23 [Presumably March 11, 1866] when I was keeping a fast you withheld bread and water from me. … By deceit you intercepted my epistles. Some of them which were to your advantage you paraded before the inhabitants of the city [i. e. Edirne]. At present am in straitened circumstances and you are in affluence. And yet you pretend the contrary.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Quoted in Mirza Mustafa Katib's Response to Zayn al-Muqarrabin on page 46
Open Letter to Bahá'u'lláh

Hate, Truth, Water, Personality

“I heard the sighing of the reeds
At noontide and at evening,
And some old dream I had forgotten
I seemed to be remembering.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

By the Pool of the Third Rosses, st. 4.

Dreams

“The id isn’t satisfied with “enough,” because enough is never enough. The id always needs more, or specifically, more than anybody else. So “enough” becomes “more than” which becomes “all.” And even then, the id fears that all can be taken away; therefore crushing the capacity of others to resist becomes paramount.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 3 “Clash of the Icons” (p. 75)

Fear

“The work of Renoir, after that of Cézanne whose great influence had been manifested among artists, save us from whatever drying effect there is in pure abstraction. The rules that one might deduce in considering the work of these two masters appear to be more difficult to discover in the work of Renoir, who hides his efforts better. Whereas the continuous tension of the mind of Cézanne, his lack of self-confidence, prevent him from giving himself to us entirely even though he shows the evidence of his corrections, from which are easily (too easily) deduced rules that have a mathematical precision.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

critical quote on Cubism
In a short text of Matisse, 1918, written for the catalogue of 'Den Franske Utstilling', 1918, Copenhagen; as quoted in Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 272, note 2
1910 - 1920

Quotes, Confidence, Mathematics, Effort

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Sleep

“The 'new theory of money and the cycle' which is spoken of in the opening paragraph is of course Hayek's. It was from Hayek that I began - where I got to will be seen. Even at the end, I was minimising my differences from Hayek. I could do so because, as I have elsewhere explained (Economic Perspectives, p. 141n), I still thought, like Pigou and Robertson, and Hayek, but by that time unlike Keynes, that 'we were talking about fluctuations, which, since they did not result in complete collapse or complete explosion, could not have engendered an expectation of going on forever. Booms could then be considered as times of high prices, slumps as times of low prices - with regard to some norm, which throughout the which throughout the fluctuations would not be changed, or not much changed'.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Source: Money, Interest and Wages, (1982), p. 28; on his "Equilibrium and the Cycle" (1933), an influential work on the topics of intertemporal equilibrium, monetary theory, and trade cycle phenomena.

Money, Change, Time

“Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Drink, Decision

“Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain't gonna be at the perfect time. You're married, they're single. That's right. You're Jewish, they're Palestinian. You're a Mexican, they're a raccoon. You're a black woman, he's a black man.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Time, Personality, Perfection

“If I did become Minister of Nudism, I'd be allowed to be on television every evening around nine thirty. I'd come on and say "Good evening. This is the Minister of Nudism. Take off your clothes and begin to dance about."”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"Peace Through Nudism" (1964)
E. L. Wisty

Dance, Clothes

“Aristocrats (among Hebrews and Greeks) often had harems that included women of common or even servile origin, as well as well-born aristocratic ladies. Normally, the successors would be chosen from the sons born by ladies; but on occasion those born by servile or common wives achieved the ascendency. In the latter case, tradition could dwell on the phenomenon as "worthy of saga."”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

Women

“Eugenics aims to arouse the enthusiasm or the interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty generations in the future. On its negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 8, "Dangers of Cradle Competition"

People, World, Future, Wealth

“Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.”

John Polanyi (1929) Hungarian-Canadian chemist

" Some Concepts In Reaction Dynamics http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1986/polanyi-lecture.pdf" (8 December 1986), as published in Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1986, p. 403.

World

“Cambodia is not a peaceful place for good people to live in. In this situation, there are only 3 available options for you. Firstly, live in fear which you try to hide, whereas possible, in order to live comfortably even when you’re aware that it is an injustice for you and other victims in the society. Secondly, learn to be an evil person and ignoring your conscious as a human for the survival of…”

Khem Veasna (1971) Cambodian politician

Quoted on his facebook profile (3 April 2015)

People, Fear, Peace, Learning

“The public has an unusual relationship to the poet: It doesn't even know that he is there.”

Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) Poet, essayist

"Poets, Critics, and Readers" (1959)

“There are many other evils in our country which are growing, whereas the practice of slavery is fast diminishing, and threaten to bring punishment on our land more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That sacred regard to truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, seems to be vanishing from among us. A general relaxation of education and government, a general debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential philosophical principles of Epicurus, infinitely more than by shows and theatrical entertainments; these are, in my opinion, more serious and threatening evils than even the slavery of the blacks, hateful as that is. I might even add that I have been informed that the condition of the common sort of white people in some of the Southern States, particularly Virginia, is more oppressed, degraded, and miserable, than that of the negroes. These vices and these miseries deserve the serious and compassionate consideration of friends, as well as the slave trade and the degraded state of the blacks. I wish you success in your benevolent endeavors to relieve the distresses of our fellow creatures, and shall always be ready to cooperate with you as far as my means and opportunities can reasonably be expected to extend.”

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

1800s, Letter to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley (1801)

Hate, People, Truth, Education

“Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 186
Faith and Politics (2006)

People, World, Heart

“Among the reforms necessary for the triumph of true refinement and true morality, which ought to be our earnest aim, is the Dietetic one, which, if not the weightiest of all (allerwichtigste), yet, undoubtedly, is one of the weightiest. Still is the ‘civilised’ world stained and defiled by the remains of a horrible barbarity; while the old-world revolting practice of slaughter of animals and feeding on their corpses still is in so universal vogue, that men have not the faculty even of recognising it as such, as otherwise they would recognise it; and aversion from this horror provokes censure of such eccentricity, and amazement at any manifestation of tendency to reform, as at something absurd and ridiculous — nay, arouses even bitterness and hate. To extirpate this barbarism is a task, the accomplishment of which lies in the closest relationship with the most important principles of humaneness, morality, æsthetics, and physiology. A foundation for real culture — a thorough civilising and refining of humanity — is clearly impossible so long as an organised system of murder and of corpse-eating (organiserten Mord-und-Leichenfratz System) prevails by recognised custom.”

Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800–1875) German philosopher and poet

Quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), p. 283.

Men, Hate, World, Universe

“It was only in the evenings that I played the violin [c. 1999-1901, to earn his money for living]. During the day I was free to spend my time as I wished. With a few colours in a box, a canvas and a cheap easel under my arm, I would make my way to the Banks of the Seine... I painted to restore my peace of mind, to calm my desires and, above all, to purify myself a little... Make a career of painting. How I would have laughed if someone had talked to me about that! To be a painter is not a profession, no more than being an anarchist or a lover, a race-track rider..”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 66

Money, Peace, Way, Lovers

“It is much easier to prejudge than to judge. It saves a lot of work to write about all the intellectual baggage one brings to the work. It is harder, even somewhat daunting, to start from scratch with what one is actually hearing. Actually it is not easy at all to make judgements in this field without falling back on preconceived categories. Comparisons often come to the rescue. Stokowski’s Scheherazade is without question an extremely effective, almost magical, performance. If I’m reviewing that work I must know outstanding performances like Stokowski’s. And I must know why it’s outstanding—I must know it by listening to it, not merely by reputation. I must compare the newcomer to it to see if he manages to make as much of the music.”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

Music, Question

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life, Women, Men, People

“The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden, even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle, and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 125

Truth, Art, Motivation, Understanding

“The key here are two little words: the word 'or' and the word 'and'. Nintendo is not an or company, with games devoted to just this group or that group. We're an and company, with games for this group and that group and for groups that don't even call themselves gamers yet.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

On market expansion
Source: E3 2005

Game

“Gandhi remained committed to nonviolence; I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone. We founded Umkhonto we Sizwe and added a military dimension to our struggle. Even then, we chose sabotage because it did not involve the loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Militant action became part of the African agenda officially supported by the Organization of African Unity (O. A. U.) following my address to the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in 1962, in which I stated, "Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence."”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

Life, Hope, Support, Freedom

“We accept that there are legitimate casus belli: acts or situations "provoking or justifying war". The present debate feels off-centre, and faintly unreal, because the US and the UK are going to war for a new set of reasons (partly undisclosed) while continuing to adduce the old set of reasons (which in this case do not cohere or even overlap).”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"The Palace of the End" (2003)

War, Feeling

“The subject of a science is never well circumscribed and there is little use sharpening its definition. However, nobody will deny that physics deals with nature and sociology with human society in some of their aspects. With logic, it is another matter. Logic is usually understood nowadays as a study of certain formal systems, though in former times there were philosophers who held that the subject matter of logic was the formal rules of human thought. In the latter sense it would be an empirical rather than a formal science, though its empirical subject matter would still be fundamentally different from that of psychology of thinking. One interpretation of logic does not exclude the other. Formal approaches are often easier than empirical ones, and for this reason one can understand why logic as a study of formal systems has till now made more progress than logic as a study of the formal rules of thought, even if restricted to scientific thought.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Realistic models in probability (1968), p. 1

Understanding, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“Take a look at the simplest of objects. Let's take, for example, an old chair. It seems like nothing. But think of the universe comprised within it: the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains. The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighbourhood. Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chair carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

describing a children's game in his essay, Tàpies suggests looking at a chair
1945 - 1970
Source: 'El joc de saber mirar' ('The Game of Knowing How to Look'), Antoni Tàpies, Cavall Fort, núm 82, Barcelona, gener de 1967 - translated from Catalan; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC )p. 16, note 9

Love, Life, Pain, Mountain

“A black hole is the ultimate manifestation of a region of strong gravity. The pull of gravity in a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape from it and time stands still.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant Narlikar Black Holes http://books.google.com/books?id=8qi55iSSeiwC, National Book Trust, India, 1 January 2006

Light, Strong, Time

“You don't observe the past directly, even when you think about the creation account. We can't observe God creating, we can't observe Adam and Eve: we admit that. We're willing to admit our beliefs about the past. But see, what you observe in the present is very different. Even some public school textbooks sort of acknowledge the difference between historical and observational science.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

God, School, Thinking, Science

“I can't do it, and as for you
Can you in good conscience even ask me to? 'Cause what do you care about the great divide
As long as you come down on the winner's side?”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"How Am I Different"
Song lyrics, Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo (2000)

“Hope knows no fear. Hope dares to blossom even inside the abysmal abyss. Hope secretly feeds and strengthens promise.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

My Christmas-New Year-Vacation-Aspiration-Prayers Part 26 (2003)

Fear, Hope

“The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief — either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

"Fundamentals of critical argumentation" (2005) by Douglas Walton, p. 243
Undated

World, Democracy, Idea

“The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

"Words of a Rebel"; as quoted in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 26

Men, Law

“This passion for form is a way of trying to find and constitute meaning in life. And this is what genuine creativity is. Imagination, broadly defined, seems to me to be a principle in human life underlying even reason, for the rational functions, according to our definitions, can lead to understanding — can participate in the constituting of reality — only as they are creative. Creativity is thus involved in our every experience as we try to make meaning in our self-world relationship.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 7 : Passion for Form, p. 134

Life, World, Way, Imagination

“Right now, at this very moment, on American highways, there are no less than 5,000 concentration camp trucks. Trucks that we have constructed. Inside these trucks, there are living, terrified innocent beings. Cows and pigs and chickens. These trucks are being driven to concentration camp's slaughterhouses that we carefully constructed all across America. When the trucks arrive, the animals are so frightened that they won't even get off the truck. They're not stupid, they know what's next. So people go on the trucks with electric prods and force them to walk down the chutes to their own deaths. Or if the animals are small enough to man handle, like chickens, we'll just grab them off the trucks and toss them inside. Inside, these innocent, living beings are hanged upside down, fully conscious. In other words, they go in alive, against their will, and come out chopped up, into hundreds of pieces.”

Gary Yourofsky (1970) animal rights activist

Part of the speech to the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Summer 2010)

Death, People, Stupidity, Animals

“Even if I were to kiss and hug Anwar Ibrahim in public, they will say there is a rift because this is what they want to see.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

Kiss

“Our people say "Death to America," and this is like saying "I seek God's refuge from the accursed Satan," which is recited before any chapter of the Koran, even before "In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful." Why is this? So the believer will never forget, even for a moment, the presence of Satan. So he will never forget, even for a moment, that Satan is ready to attack him and to destroy his spiritual shield and is faith… The saying "Death to America" is for this purpose.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

March 14, 2005 speech http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/606.htm 2005

Death, God, People, Faith

“The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

How to Make Guys Like You http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFiApf_m4H0 YouTube

Way, Boy, Idea

“Then, as always, I felt morally obligated to advocate our official position, even when it conflicted with my personal views.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 177
2000s, (2008)

Personality

“For, whenever the world is somewhat oriented toward the truth, God would not delegate sovereignty to a tyrant. If such a delegation occurs as a result of his foreordaining it, it is not by an irrevocable decree. For, such a situation has been foreordained, but sometimes such tyrants do not exist. Consider how the Jews were destroyed at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Even though the temple was destroyed, God aided it, as a way of awakening the Jews, just as it is recorded in the words of Jeremiah. This was also for a solid reason and for the good. Seventy years after the destruction, by the help of Cyrus the Persian (Kaykhusraw, the descendant of the aforementioned Kayqubad), the temple was rebuilt. In the course of several reigns, it was completed. Naturally, every [divine] action has some benefit, and every occurrence is for some improvement. These souls were sitting, secluded, in a corner. Whatever God desired, took place. He knows the tyranny of the tyrant and sees human beings. It is not that he does not know—even though some might deny God and others affirm his existence.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Treatise on Kingship

God, Truth, World, Way

“Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie.”

Anton Chekhov book The Letter

The Letter (1887)

Lie, Feeling, Business, Effort

“One of the greatest powers in the world is the ability to define reality and cause others to accept it. This power is even increased although negatively when one can define reality and make others accept it even when it is to their disadvantage.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle (2008)

World, Reality

“Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these animals to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn't gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected. The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B. C., and even before that, in Alexander's time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants. Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

War, History, Learning, Time

“Any change in routine was terrifying, even if it involved less violence rather than more.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 30

Change

“Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Nietzsche (1946)

Truth, World

“The writer, and co-laborers, proclaimed the fact of the Lord's presence, demonstrating it from prophecy, and on charts or tables, such as are used in this book, until the fall of 1878, when arrangements were made for starting our present publication, ZION'S WATCH TOWER, and Herald of Christ's Presence. By the Lord's blessing, millions of copies of this publication have carried abroad the tidings that the time is fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of Christ is even now being set up, while the kingdoms and systems of men are crumbling to their utter destruction.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 93.

Men, Books, Time, Christ

“Central to the Smithian approach is our willingness to see critically what we observe around us. The sense of comfort that is often associated with being content with the world as it is can seriously hamper the pursuit of justice. This understanding goes strongly against a line of thought that was powerfully presented by Friedrich Nietzshe. ‘The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad’, said Nietzshe. I think I can, with some effort, understand what Nietzsche meant, but it is hard for me, even with a lot of effort, to see that Nietzshe’s hypothesis helps us to understand the causation or resilience of the nastiness of the world in which we live. Nor, I must insist (this I do as a thoroughly unreligious person), does it offer any obvious insight into the lives and achievements of Martin Luther King, or Mother Theresa, or Desmond Tutu, who have tried to reduce injustice in the world and have done so with non-negligible success.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

“Values and justice”, Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2012, 101–108
2010s, “Values and Justice”, 2012

World, Justice, Understanding, Thinking

“While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 10, "Contraceptives or Abortion?"

Law

“Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 41

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love, War, World, Hope

“Dr. R. C. Majumdar has summed up the situation so far in the following words: “India south of the Vindhyas was under Hindu rule in the 13th century. Even in North India during the same century, there were powerful kingdoms not yet subjected to Muslim rule, or still fighting for their independence… Even in that part of India which acknowledged the Muslim rule, there was continual defiance and heroic resistance by large or small bands of Hindus in many quarters, so that successive Muslim rulers had to send well-equipped military expeditions, again and again, against the same region… As a matter of fact, the Muslim authority in Northern India, throughout the 13th century, was tantamount to a military occupation of a large number of important centres without any effective occupation, far less a systematic administration of the country at large.” …. The situation during the 14th and the 15th centuries has been summed up by Dr. R. C. Majumdar in the following words: “The Khalji empire rose and fell during the brief period of twenty years (A. D 1300-1320). The empire of Muhammed bin Tughlaq… broke up within a decade of his accession (A. D. 1325), and before another decade was over, the Turkish empire passed away for ever… Thus barring two every short-lived empires under the Khaljis and Muhammad bin Tughlaq… there was no Turkish empire in India. This state of things continued for nearly two centuries and a half till the Mughals established a stable and durable empire in the second half of the sixteenth century A. D.””

R. C. Majumdar (1888–1980) Indian historian

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990231

Success, Fight, Parting, Country

“But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?…Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God is not enough" (23 May 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=1czXvHSjDac&feature=related) 2008

People, Alcohol, Religion, Drink

“His [ Edouard Manet's] paintings, as they always do, produce the impression of a wild or even a somewhat unripe fruit. I do not in the least dislike them.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote of Berthe 1864-65 in a letter to her sister Edma Morisot; as cited in Berthe Morisot, the first lady of Impressionism, Margaret Sehnan; Sutton Publishing (ISBN 0 7509 2339 3) 1996, p. 50
1860 - 1870

Painting

“Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

The Art of Loving (1956)
Context: The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard — every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.

World

“Talk can be cheap, very cheap. It can also be costly. “Speak out!” we say. “Why are you afraid to speak out?” we say. In dictatorships, it can be very, very hard to speak out. Many people have been imprisoned or worse for talk. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, Some Talk about Talk (2018)

People, School, Family, Communication

“It (i. e., agriculture) was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future—even genetic engineering—were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 14 “The Swarming People” section II (p. 456)

Change, Future

“The pilots I worked with in the aerospace industry were willing to put on almost anything to keep them safe in case of a crash, but regular people in cars don't want to be uncomfortable even for a minute.”

Nils Bohlin (1920–2002) Swedish inventor

Deathwatch mailarchive http://slick.org/deathwatch/mailarchive/msg00869.html

People, Cars

“The impregnability of his stonewall defense rested on his ability to reach the ball, and then throw it. Now he could move less well; now he was not coming up with the ball with that "perfect technique" Eddie Brannick had once admired, his body beautifully balanced, the ball directly in front of him. Now it was a movement full of desperate lunges. Fortunately he had his great arm, so even off-balance, he was throwing out runners, and each time he'd throw—though it had happened hundreds of prior times—the fans at the Polo Grounds, or elsewhere around the league, would gasp at the low blur that streaked across the diamond, dead on target. But he had more than a powerful arm. He had courage. And on he played, in pain and out.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Travis "Stonewall" Jackson, from "Stonewall," in Greatest Giants of Them All (1967), p. 172
Sports-related

Pain, Courage, Time, Perfection

“I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again.”

Robert Mueller (1944) Sixth director of the FBI; American attorney

[Mueller, Robert S., III, RSA Cyber Security Conference San Francisco, CA, https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/speeches/combating-threats-in-the-cyber-world-outsmarting-terrorists-hackers-and-spies, archives.fbi.gov, 12 September 2018, March 01, 2012]
RSA Cyber Security Conference (2012)