Quotes about event
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“What is Gestalt theory and what does it intend? Gestalt theory was the outcome of concrete investigations in psychology, logic, and epistemology. The prevailing situation at the time of its origin may be briefly sketched as follows. We go from the world of everyday events to that of science, and not unnaturally assume that in making this transition we shall gain a deeper and more precise understanding of essentials.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

"Gestalt Theory," 1924

World, Understanding, Science, Time

“We are apprehensive that an ear turned to our inwardness will detect at most only meaningless murmurings, that a resort to the inner self will be a dizzying tumble into a bottomless pit. Fearing this, we anchor ourselves upon external things, we cast our lot with the fortunes of objects and events that appear to be untainted by the disease of selfhood.”

David L. Norton (1930–1995) American philosopher

Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 4

Fear, Disease, Appearance

“The result of this mental dullness is that inner vacuity and emptiness that is stamped on innumerable faces and also betrays itself in a constant and lively attention to all events in the external world, even the most trivial. This vacuity is the real source of boredom and always craves for external excitement in order to set the mind and spirits in motion through something. Therefore in the choice thereof it is not fastidious, as is testified by the miserable and wretched pastimes to which people have recourse. … The principal result of this inner vacuity is the craze for society, diversion, amusement, and luxury of every kind which lead many to extravagance and so to misery. Nothing protects us so surely from this wrong turning as inner wealth, the wealth of the mind, for the more eminent it becomes, the less room does it leave for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of ideas, their constantly renewed play with the manifold phenomena of the inner and outer worlds, the power and urge always to make different combinations of them, all these put the eminent mind, apart from moments of relaxation, quite beyond the reach of boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 329–330
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

People, World, Idea, Wealth

“I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.”

Maurice Ashley (1966) Chess Grandmaster

Chessville - Interviews - 20 Questions with GM Maurice Ashley http://www.chessville.com/editorials/Interviews/20Questions/Ashley.htm

People, Hope, Game, Future

“The slave who digs in the mine or labors at the oar can rejoice at the prospect of laying down his burden together with his life; but to the slave of guilt there arises no hope from death. On the contrary, he is obliged to look forward with constant terror to this most certain of all events, as the conclusion of all his hopes, and the commencement of his greatest miseries.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 550.

Life, Death, Hope

“I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

World, Birth, Forgetting

“As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Theory of Communicative Action

Source: The Theory of Communicative Action, 1987, p. 308

World, Understanding

“A distinguished writer (Siméon Denis Poisson) has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science:
:"The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place."
:"The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible" (equally like to happen).
From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary.”

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

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 243-4; As cited in: "George Boole (1815–64)" in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Edited by W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, January 2006

Mathematics, Knowledge, Thinking, Science

“Men possess virtues and We are ravished out of self by purified Love, even to the Face of God, freed and emptied of every event and illusion. This is the contemplative life of highest price. the Divine likeness in differing measure;
in greater or lesser degree have they found their own essence in the depth of themselves,
according to their dignity. But God fulfils all; and each, clearer or fainter, according to the measure of his love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

Love, Life, Men, God

“…the rapid march of scientific discovery…made me feel that it was quite within the realm of possibility that one day there might be an invention which would neutralise our [naval] superiority, and reduce us to equality with, if not inferiority to, our neighbours. … In such an event our position would be one of complete helplessness in the face of an invader with a powerful army. … We had two fundamental weaknesses in such a contingency. The first was that our army was too insignificant to stand up against the gigantic forces on the Continent. The second was that we were so overwhelmingly dependent upon overseas supplies for our food, that if these were cut off we should, within a few months, be brought to the very verge of starvation. It was this consideration amongst others that always led me to urge that we ought to devote more thought to the development of the resources of British soil.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 20.
War Memoirs

Food, Feeling, Dependency

“The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.”

Ted Chiang book Stories of Your Life and Others

Story of Your Life; first appeared in Starlight 2, 1998.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

Way, Universe

“Better understanding of the Asian mind ‑ Indian and Chinese ‑ had one further consequence which needs emphasis. It had been almost a dogma of European thought that everything of value arose in the regions that touched the Aegean Sea. Religion, philosophy, art and even science, it was claimed, originated in this area. In fact, for all civilization a Greek origin was postulated. A persistence in this belief was responsible in the early years of Oriental research for the futile attempts made to date events in Asia, especially Indian history, to periods where they could be conveniently adjusted to developments in Greece. That belief in a monopoly of wisdom for the Greeks had to be reluctantly abandoned, as a result of increased knowledge of Asian civilizations. The liberalization of the Furopean mind consequent upon the recognition of the fact that all nations have contributed towards the growth of human civilization, is a gain of considerable significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Wisdom, Religion, Art, History

“Now with the big bang there is only one event that happened. So like the sun you can’t say that there are other big bangs going on that are what ours was like. The second problem is that at the big bang mathematics and physics break down. So there is no way of mathematically describing it. That is not a satisfactorily scientific approach, to ascribe something to speculations which you cannot justify using mathematics and physics.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

Way, Mathematics, Problem, Sun

“Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: "What a turn of events through God's dispensation!" All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of [the Battle of] Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang [in 1757]: Now thank we all our God!”

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

Telegram to Hitler (19 June 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1261
1940s

God, Victory, Heart

“There were mornings in the make-up trailer where I'd have fits of laughter because of the extraordinary daily events of the shoot. Sometimes, it was all too much to believe. But the wildest things happened. And Daniel was a wonderful and trustworthy partner. And a fine prankster as well.”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

Mohican Press interview (2005)

Laughter

“A reference framework is required in order to locate events in time and space. With some contractions and omissions, Figure 1.1 shows the conventional divisions for the classical and medieval periods. Even before the birth of the idea of nationality, it is quite acceptable to refer to specific countries, such as Greece and Italy, whose boundaries are well defined. It is also usual to refer to areas in which there is felt to have been some degree of cultural unity —— for example, the Roman Empire and Islam. Sometimes space and time are embraced by one image: the Roman Empire can mean either the first four centuries of our era or the area under Roman dominion. Used with care, these concepts have value for some historical purposes, but they can be very misleading. In the first place, we have to bear in mind the shifting of frontiers; in AD 750, for example, the Iberian peninsula was predominantly Muslim while Asia Minor was Christian — by 1450 the reverse was the case. Also, and this can be more serious, the conventional divisions are associated most closely with political and military realities, and often have little bearing on intellectual or social activities.”

Donald Hill (1922–1994) British historian and engineer

A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times, (1985), 1. Introduction.

Idea, Birth, Reality, Time

“Two days before Britney Spears' HBO concert from Las Vegas, someone broke into her dressing room and stole the white, Elvis-inspired jumpsuit that she wore to promote the event. And you know what, I'm not giving it back! I keep it now, it's mine!”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

“On speaking to Mr. Fox (who had just received the seals as Secretary of State) on the important event of the day, he said certainly things look very well, but he, meaning the K[ing], will dye soon, and that will be best of all.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Fox to Lord Carmarthen (27 March 1783), quoted in Oscar Browning (ed.), The Political Memoranda of Francis Fifth Duke of Leeds (Camden Society, 1884), pp. 65-66, n.
1780s

“Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Ch. 4 http://www.resologist.net/talent04.htm Wild Talents (1932)

Lie, Feeling, Time, Joy

“In response to the plummeting popularity of the Administration itself, revealed at Newbury and in the shire county elections, we have the Prime Minister's botched reshuffle. If we were to offer that tale of events to the BBC light entertainment department as a script for a programme, I think that the producers of "Yes, Minister" would have turned it down as hopelessly over the top. It might have even been too much for "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'em". The tragedy for us all is that it is really happening— it is fact, not fiction. The man with the non-Midas touch is in charge. It is no wonder that we live in a country where the Grand National does not start and hotels fall into the sea.”

John Smith (1938–1994) Labour Party leader from Scotland (1938-1994)

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-09/Debate-1.html, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 226, col. 292. House of Commons speech, 9 June 1993. That year's Grand National horse race had been declared void after a start-line mishap. The Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough began to fall into the sea on 3 June 1993 due to coastal erosion.

Thinking, Light, Sea, Country

“The moral, again, is that some unlikely event is likely to occur, whereas it’s much less likely that a particular one will…The paradoxical conclusion is that it would be very unlikely for unlikely events not to occur. If you don’t specify a predicted event precisely, there are an indeterminate number of ways for an event of that general kind to take place.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (pp. 37-38; ellipsis represents elision of examples)

Way

“Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.”

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

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 244; Cited in: Michael J. Katz (1986) Templets and the Explanation of Complex Patterns, p. 123

Knowledge, Change, Perfection

“When an individual appears before others, he wittingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact.
First, the social interaction, treated here as a dialogue between two teams, may come to an embarrassed and confused halt; the situation may cease to be defined, previous positions may become no longer tenable, and participants may find themselves without a charted course of action…
Secondly, in addition to these disorganizing consequences for action at the moment, performance disruptions may have consequences of a more far-reaching kind. Audiences tend to accept the self projected by the individual performer during any current performance as a responsible representative of his colleague-grouping, of his team, and of his social establishment…
Finally, we often find that the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular role, establishment, and group and in his self-conception as someone who does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social units which depend upon that interaction.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 155-6

Reality, Appearance, Parting, Dependency

“We must note that speaking truth to power has rewards as well as costs. People who dare to speak out about major public events may not receive tangible benefits, but they receive the very considerable rewards of high moral reputation among fellow Chinese as well as in the international community.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

"Using Truths to Undermine a System Built of Lies"
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

People, Truth, Communication

“The Law of Accelerating Returns: As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes). The Law… applies specifically to evolutionary processes.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999)

Law, Time, Speed

“Although (the one reactor at Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant) is not considered part of the operating reserve, I would make a formal report to the Legislative Yuan to reactivate it as a last resort in the event of a predictable power shortage. The manufacturing industry should have confidence in the (Taiwan) power supply.”

Lin Chuan (1951) Taiwanese politician

Lin Chuan (2017) cited in " Nuclear power an emergency option: Lin http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2017/08/29/2003677359" on Taipei Times, 29 August 2017.

Confidence, Parting

“August olst. Camp Tiverton. I wrote the foregoing, and intended to have sent it by the express that went off in the morning, but while I was writing, I was informed the express was gone; and the change of situation and round of events that have since taken place, have prevented my forwarding what I had wrote, as matters seemed to be coming to a crisis.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Change

“In our first pilot study we talked with clerical and production workers as well as professional and managerial people. We discovered that the professional and managerial groups were more verbal, showed a quicker grasp of the technique, and gave more and better delineated sequences of events than the clerical and production groups.
The second pilot study was restricted to managerial and professional people. On the basis of our experiences in this work, we decided to concentrate in the major sample on engineers and accountants. It was apparent in the results of this second pilot that engineers were able to give exceptionally vivid accounts of their work experiences. Since our study was still in the nature of an exploratory project, it was vital to us that we mine where the metal was richest.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People, Nature, Study

“In hindsight, I have come to believe the discovery of the tapes may prove to be an historic event in more than one way. At a time when the United States government acknowledges that 2 million conversations were overheard by authorized eavesdroppers in a twelve month period, and at least an equal number were being recorded by private dectecies, suspicious spouses, corporate spies, special agents, and blackmailers; at a time when people like me conduct their lives under the assumption that their telephone lines are tapped; and at a time when devices such as the bug-in-the-martini-olive are proliferating, the disastrous consequences that flowed from Nixon’s fateful decision to record White House conversations may serve to awaken the nation to the threat posed to the little privacy that remains to us.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 92
At That Point in Time, Tapes and the threat of wiretapping

Fate, People, Way, Decision

“I express the very deepest condolences to the family of the deceased on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country and serious mistakes.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

On the death of Boris Yeltsin, in "Russia's former president Yeltsin dies: Kremlin" in Reuters (23 April 2007) http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2330837320070423?src=042307_1016_TOPSTORY_boris_yeltsin_dies 1990s

Family, Country

“The publication of the book, Corporate Strategy, by H. Igor Ansoff was a major event in the 1965 world of management. As early as it came in this literature, the book represented a kind of crescendo in the development of strategic planning theory, offering a degree of elaboration seldom attempted since.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Henry Mintzberg (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Prentice Hall, Hemel Hempstead. p. 43

Books, World, Literature

“Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.”

Euripidés Bellerophon

Bellerophon, Fragment 298; quoted in Plutarch's Morals : Ethical Essays (1888) edited and translated by Arthur Richard Shilleto, p. 293

“When seagull droppings landed on my head at a campaign event at Bowers Beach two days before Election Day, I chose to read it as a sign of a coming success.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 73
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Reading, Success

“The fundamental error of the theologians of the new faith of the present day consists in this, that they think one can without hesitation acknowledge the validity of the same scientific method in the realm of nature which they refuse to apply to that of history. … What consequence now will follow the application of the doctrine of evolution to the theological consideration of history? First of all, it is evident that it excludes miracles in every sense of the word—not merely the nature-miracle (this the men of the new faith drop without pain) but also just as much the spirit-miracle, i. e. the intervention of a foreign power in the human soul, whereby conditions are produced in it which do not result from the causal connection with antecedent conditions. If it is the methodic cardinal proposition of the science of today that we have to explain every condition as the causally determined development out of a preceding one, this excludes on principle the appearance of a condition, event, action, or personality which is not explicable out of the factors of the preceding conditions.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), pp. 8-9.

Men, Pain, Faith, Error

“Has our reader ever heard about the parallel strands of time, in two-track time? Yes, such branch stretches of time do exist, a little illegal, to be sure, and problematic, but when carrying such contraband as ours, such supernumerary, unclassifiable events, one cannot be too particular. And so, at some point in our story, we shall attempt to take such a branch turning, a siding, and shunt this illegal history into it.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Brilliant Epoch” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/epoch1.htm His father, Time

History, Time

“Historians whose profession is to study the past, are as wary as scientists of the idea that events unfold in a manner that can be predicted. In fact, in a study of history the illusion of inevitability has serious consequences that it is one of the few things that both conservative and socialist historians can agree on.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 10, The Drunkard's Walk, p. 201

History, Idea, Study, Past

“Events, time, forms, all propel the inner plot within each of us.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Time

“One of the thrills of playing at the top tennis centres of the world is to see the Indian flag go up whenever I`m participating in these events. That's enough motivation for any Indian who has the opportunity to perform at these tournaments.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

In Zee News: "Winning Grand Slams is Sania's motivation after London Games"

World, Motivation

“Chemical reasoning, as used both in applications and in basic research, resembles a detective story in which tangible clues lead to a mental picture of events never directly witnessed by the detective.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

“I strongly condemn this latest terrorist attack on the United States. It only deserves condemnation and contempt, and it must be condemned by every person in the world. I believe that before America’s leaders and people respond to this heinous assault, I would like to express that they surely understand why such a terrible event occurred and how similar tragedies can be avoided in the future.”

Fethullah Gülen (1941) Turkish preacher, former imam, writer, and political figure

"Gülen’s Condemnation Message of Terrorism", 2001

People, World, Understanding, Future

“In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category — rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality… Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1960s-1970s, "Rational decision making in business organizations", Nobel Memorial Lecture 1978, p. 502; As cited in Barros (2010, p. 464-5).

Behavior, Search, Failure

“Because the activists usually cash out their holdings shortly after their demands are accepted or rejected, the question remains whether most of them are committed to companies’ future success. The risk is significant that their initiatives can weaken a company’s competitive position, to the detriment of long-term shareholders, and the high-leverage financing structures they often propose may put companies in jeopardy in the event of an economic downturn.”

Jay W. Lorsch (1932) American organizational theorist

Bill George and Jay W. Lorsch, " How to Outsmart Activist Investors https://hbr.org/2014/05/how-to-outsmart-activist-investors," in: Harvard Business Review, May 2014.

Question, Success, Future

“Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. II

Life, Women, Justice, Sex

“Delivery: A postal or natal event.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“Isaac Newton’s Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica abstracted time from events, establishing its tractability to scientific calculation. Conceived as pure, absolute duration, without qualities, it conforms perfectly to its mathematical idealization (as the real number line). Since time is already pure, its reality indistinguishable from its formalization, a pure mathematics of change – the calculus – can be applied to physical reality without obstruction. The calculus can exactly describe things as they occur in themselves, without straying, even infinitesimally, from the rigorous dictates of formal intelligence. In this way natural philosophy becomes modern science.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Time in Transition" https://web.archive.org/web/20121113235339/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/777/time-in-transition (2011) (original emphasis)

Way, Intelligence, Mathematics, Nature

“In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

People

“This could be the most serious event in American political history. Because you're no longer dealing with a rural government where most of the the workers were postmen, like in the nineteenth century. You're dealing with an unstable personality who takes everything personally in terms of a bruised ego, has stated again and again that he'll lash back even if he has to get up at 3 A. M. and twitter about an overweight former Miss Universe … and he's got his finger on the nuclear trigger, or on drones, or on, you know, aircraft carriers.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Ralph Nader, "This Could Be the Most Serious Event in History", The Big Picture RT (7:02 of 12:57), Nov. 9, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRkqYuv3_8

History, Universe, Personality

“One of the important functions of prayer, I believe, is to act as a stimulus to creative ideas. Within the mind are all the resources required for successful living. Ideas are present in the consciousness, which when released and given scope to grow and take shape, can lead to successful events. God, our Creator, has stored within our minds and personalities, great potential strength and ability. Prayer helps to tap and develop these powers.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 32.

God, Idea, Success, Help

“If E1 is the cause of E2, then a small variation (a mark) in E1 is associated with a small variation in E2, whereas small variations in E2 are not associated with variations in E1. If we wish to express even more clearly that this concept does not contain the concept of temporal order, we can express it in the following form, where events that show a slight variation are designated E*: E1E2, E1*E2*, E1E2* and never the combination E1*E2.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Winston Churchill, Speech to House of Commons on 12th November 1940, 3 days after his death.
About

Love, World, Peace, Faith

“Let us summarize briefly our answer to the question, "What do people want from their jobs?" When our respondents reported feeling happy with their jobs, they most frequently described factors. related to their tasks, to events that indicated to them that they were successful in the performance of their work, and to the possibility of professional growth. Conversely, when feelings of unhappiness were reported, they were not associated with the job itself but with conditions that surround the doing of the job. These events suggest to the individual that the context in which he performs his work is unfair or disorganized and as such represents to him an unhealthy psychological work environment. Factors involved in these situations we call factors of hygiene, for they act in a manner analogous to the principles of medical hygiene.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 113

Happiness, People, Feeling, Question

“It was abundantly clear from his letters that, virtually to the end, he remained deeply interested in national and world events. Yet he never ceased to engage in self-deprecating humor. I have a file containing a decade of correspondence with my dear friend. It is a file that I will keep. Max's death on April 19 was not unexpected and I am sure he would have viewed it as merciful. At the moving funeral service at Fort Meyer, Ambassador Philip Bonsal, a respected diplomat and longtime friend of the Taylors', spoke eloquently of General Taylor's "example", and correctly said that his friendship would remain a constant treasure in the lives of all of us who knew him. His younger son Tom's superb tribute brought tears to the eyes of most of us. He emphasized the closeness of the Taylor family- a closeness not often found in the lives of the world's great leaders. It typifies the mind and spirit that I was privileged to know. Maxwell Taylor's place in history will be a large one.”

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907–1998) American judge

As quoted in General Maxwell Taylor: The Sword and the Pen (1989) by John Martin Taylor, p. xiv.
1980s

Death, Friendship, World, Family

“I was going to call it a mistake, but you could argue that there are no mistakes in war, only fortunate and less fortunate events.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 10 (p. 220).

War

“We define: any two events which are indeterminate as to their time order may be called simultaneous…. Simultaneity means the exclusion of causal connection…. Yet we must not commit the mistake of attempting to derive from it the conclusion that this definition coordinates to any given event at a given different place. This would be the case only for a special form of causal structure, a form that does not conform to physical reality.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Reality, Time

“[Footnote:]Each male has from 2 to 790 females with whom he discusses current events. Of these he marries from 3 to 17.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach.”

Orson Scott Card book Saints

Saints (1983)

People, Truth, Understanding, Past

“I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream http://twitter.com/neilhimself, Tweet ID # 1178514410, (5 February 2009) http://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1178514410

Life, Wisdom

“Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as you'd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 4, Tracking The Pathways To Success, p. 65

Question, Thinking, Chance, Time

“Because wisdom in action in our Western democracies rests squarely upon public understanding, I have long believed that our schools have a key role to play. Peace could, I believe, be advanced through careful study of all the factors which have gone into the various incidents now historical that have marked the breakdown of peace in the past. As an initial procedure our schools, at least our colleges but preferably our senior high schools, as we call them, should have courses which not merely instruct our budding citizens in the historical sequence of events of the past, but which treat with almost scientific accuracy the circumstances which have marked the breakdown of peace and have led to the disruption of life and the horrors of war.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Essentials to Peace (1953)

Life, Wisdom, War, School

“In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future…. And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I — I also — am an American!"”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 107

God, Youth, Age, Future

“As graduation neared, neither my classmates nor I could know, of course, that World War II was in the offing. It was destined to expose us to trying and often tragic events. My roommate, Billy Hulse, a flier, disappeared on a training mission over the Great Lakes, his body never recovered. A close friend, Frank Oliver, died in the fighting in Normandy soon after the invasion. Buist Dowling killed in Normandy while leading a patrol. One of the better football players, Jock Clifford, killed as a regimental commander on Okinawa. Bill Priestly, aide to the high commissioner of the Philippines, electing to stay when the fighting started on the islands, also killed. Those and more.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 13.

War, World, Fight, Football

“A sad event and worthy of Memory,
Who draws forth men from their (closed) sepulchres,
Befell that piteous maid, and pitiful
Who, after she was dead was (crowned) queen.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

O caso triste, e dino da memória,
Que do sepulcro os homens desenterra,
Aconteceu da mísera e mesquinha
Que depois de ser morta foi Rainha.

Stanza 118, lines 5–8 (tr. Ezra Pound); of Inês de Castro.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III

Men, Sadness, Memory, Drawing

“The deceit of the Allies would have fateful consequences. Germany, even under Hitler, would never have risked invading France again if her rulers and her generals had known in advance that Britain and America would oppose it by military force. The U. S. Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Guarantee brought a certain responsibility on the United States for the subsequent course of events which pushed western Europe to the brink of destruction by Germany, though this was scarcely recognized in America. The Senate's action did not spare the American republic in the end. It only made the reconquest of western Europe from the Germans, when the Second World War came, infinitely more costly in American lives and treasure than it would have been had a President's word been honored in the first place by the Senate. The United States, supremely complacent in its shortsighted isolation, was lost as a factor in guarding the peace of Europe it had helped to win, and in which its fate would always be intertwined.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Fate, War, World, Peace

“Had we seen an earthquake, or the results of a powerful storm, the devastation and loss would have been awful — but our country has seen terrible tragedies before: fires, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. We prayed for the lost, rebuilt for the survivors, and strengthened our laws, dikes, weather warnings and earthquake predictors. We prepare for an eventual recurrence of acts of nature…
But 9-11 was not a natural catastrophe: these events were deliberate, conceived, organized and ruthlessly executed by human beings. And so, their significance must be assessed differently — and the actions to prepare for “next time” must be different, also.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Seton Hall Address (2002)

Law, Nature, Loss, Time

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Life, People, Understanding, Knowledge

“In the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Water

“You've got the Bush Administration using that event in such a disrespectful and immoral way — using the deaths of those people to try and shred our civil liberties, change our Constitution, round people up. That's not how you honor them, by using them to change our way of life as a free country.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the use of the September 11th attacks to expand governmental powers and diminish civil liberties, through "The Patriot Act". — CBS interview (June 2004) http://news4colorado.com/topstories/topstories_story_179195105.html 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Life, Death, People, Way

“To every event defined for the original random walk there corresponds an event of equal probability in the dual random walk, and in this way almost every probability relation has its dual.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter III, Fluctuations In Coin Tossing And Random Walks, p. 92.

Way

“It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 73

Time

“Parallelism' can be pointed out in the different parts of a single object, looked at alone; it is even more obvious when one puts several objects of the same kind next to each other. Now if we compare our own lives and customs with these appearances in nature, we shall be astonished to find the same principle repeated... When an important event is being celebrated, the people face and move in the same direction. These are parallels following each other..”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

People, Nature, Appearance, Parting

“An alert and learned man will take advice from any event.”

Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol. 1, p. 160
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Learning

“…one day there came a great strike in the coalfields. It was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike. We tried to carry on as long as we could, but of course it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down; the chimneys erased to smoke, and about 1,000 men who had no interest in the dispute that was going on were thrown out of work through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit. I confess that that event set me thinking very hard. It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt that they were being so unfairly treated. But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment, of these men by the miners. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry, when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out. Business was all tending towards great amalgamations on the one side of employers and on the other side of the men…We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution, until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925). 1925

Men, Family, Business, Thinking

“But what is the use of this history, what the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of pepper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of this kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent upon one another's extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.”

Jean Henri Fabre (1823–1915) French entomologist and author

In 'Minotaurus typhoeus'

Life, People, Books, History

“Soldiers! I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we have cherished of a free and independent country, has vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. After association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride, in the fame of your achievements, and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final adieu accept the assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell. John S. Mosby, Col.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to the Mosby's Rangers (April 1865), as quoted in Mosby's Rangers, Simon and Schuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671747452 (1991), Jeffry D. Wert, p. 289 Letter (1865)

Confidence, Time, Parting, Country

“I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

DK Smithsonian, Journey: An Illustrated History of Travel, ISBN 978-1-4654-6414-9 (Page 343).

Life, Thinking, Strong

“I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Diary (14 March 1881)
1880s

Love, Men

“I loved the way Judaism does life cycle events. I loved the idea of having one day of the week off. (Even though, if I don’t believe, there’s no reason why it would be Saturday and not Tuesday). I related to Jewish music, to the food, and even the spirituality part, I’ll admit it.”

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

2016

Love, Life, Food, Music

“What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Bertalanffy (1929, p. 306) cited in: Cliff Hooker ed. (2011) Philosophy of Complex Systems. p. 190
1920s

Appearance, Parting

“Our planet… consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb…Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)

Star

“At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, films, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of w:Charles Olson and M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David Tudor, together with my 'Juilliard lecture', which ends: 'A piece of string, a sunset, each acts.' The audience was seated in the center of all this activity. Later that summer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote in: 'Silence: lectures and writings by John Cage'; publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, Foreword/ix
1960s

Way, Mountain, Dance, Summer

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Sections I–II, p. 11–12
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

Men, Pleasure, World, Justice

“We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality. The belief in the utility of sin: etiam peccata. The belief in the providential ordering of events — in short the "consolations" which are ordinarily sought in religion.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 258

Religion

“By reason of Arthur's position as its climax as well as of the long line of other traditional heroes, events and associations, and of its breadth of treatment, simplicity, intensity, enthusiasm, accord with the supernatural, vitality of imagination, elevation and sometimes nobility and religious feeling, the poem is the nearest thing we have to a traditional racial epic.”

Layamon (1200) English poet

J. S. P. Tatlock The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950) p. 485.
Criticism

Feeling, Imagination

“When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937

[Szent-Györgyi, Albert, The Crazy Ape: Written by a Biologist for the Young, 1970, 20-21, The Universal Library Crosset & Dunlap, A National General Company, New York, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0448002566, July 24, 2017, Internet Archive]

Money, War, World, Way

“On the 2004 Summer Olympics: "Nobody proposed me anything to do with the Olympics. Nothing. Maybe the Olympics have become too much of a supermarket now. The other athletics events have more of the spirit of the Olympics."”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2005

Summer

“If time is an illusion, then all movement and change are also illusions. So the only thing that gives us the illusion of movement and change and events and time is the fact that our consciousness is moving through this mass along the time axis. If you imagine it as a strip of celluloid, each of those individual cells is motionless. If they each represent a moment, they’re unchanging. They’re not going anywhere, but as the projector beam of our consciousness passes across them, it provides the illusion of movement, and narrative and cause and effect and circumstances.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

Imagination, Change, Time

“The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

K 68
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

World, Chance, Parting

“But by and by the time came when the Christian Church apostatized and turned away, and began to follow after their own wisdom, and the Prophets and Apostles ceased, so far as the affairs of the Christian Church on the earth were concerned. Revelations, and visions, and the various gifts of the spirit were also taken away, according to their unbelief and apostacy; but in the latter days God intends to again raise up a Christian Church upon the earth. Do not be startled, you who think that God will no more have a Church on the earth, for he has promised that he would again have one, and that he would set up his kingdom, and when he does you may look out for a great many Prophets and inspired men; and if you ever see a Church arise, calling itself a Christian Church, and it has not inspired Apostles like those in ancient times, you may know that it is a spurious church, and that it makes pretensions to something that it does not enjoy. If you ever find a church called a Christian Church that has no men to foretell future events, you may know, at once, that it is not a Christian Church. If you find a Christian Church that has not the ancient gifts, for instance the gift of healing, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, causing the tongue of the dumb to speak and the lame to walk; if you ever find a people calling themselves a Christian Church and they have not these gifts among them, you may know with a perfect knowledge that they do not agree with the pattern given in the New Testament. The Christian Church is always characterized with inspired men, whose revelations are just as sacred as any contained in the Bible; and, if written and published, just as binding upon the human family. The Christian Church will always lay hands upon the sick in the name of Jesus, in order that the sick may be healed. The Christian Church will always have those among its members who have heavenly visions, the ministration of angels, and the various gifts that are promised according to the Gospel.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 18:171-172 (March 26, 1876).
Apostacy

Wisdom, Men, God, People

“This is Harvey Milk speaking from the camera store on the evening of Friday, November 18. This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes a target or the potential target for somebody who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, any time, I feel it's important that some people know my thoughts. And so the following are my thoughts, my wishes, and my desires, whatever, and I'd like to pass them on and have them played for the appropriate people.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

From a tape recording (1977-11-18) to be played in the event of his assassination, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982, ISBN 0-31256-085-0), p. 275

Death, People, Feeling, Time

“Staying away from Hollywood didn't take much of an effort, there is a whole world in Los Angeles that's based on maneuvering. You say the right thing in interviews, you say yes to the right events and charities, and if you do it correctly you become someone they talk about. You become a player in the system and you're looked at as a professional, or dedicated, or whatever. You become a part of their thing, and they become part of yours… It's a wild web that can be weaved and there are people who love, love, love to play that game. And I'm not putting it down. But for me, it's just like pulling teeth. I just could never do it.”

Kurt Russell (1951) American actor

Kurt Russell on 'Deepwater Horizon,' Hollywood and more http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/kurt_russell_on_deepwater_horizon_hollywood_and_mo.html (September 23, 2016)

Love, People, World, Angels

“"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.”

Alfred Jules Ayer book Language, Truth, and Logic

Source: Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), p. 47.

Failure, Help

“This thing came within a few hundred feet of us and only 10 feet above the ground. It signaled to us for about 10 or 15 minutes. It was an extraordinary event.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Greer describing his UFO encounter in July of 1992 in southern England.
Undated
Source: [A. Bahls, Roy, Researcher's Close Encounters Convince Him Of Extraterrestrials, The Virginian-Pilot, March 22, 1995, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=VP&p_theme=vp&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAFF84CB5EACDC1&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM, 2007-05-12, http://nbgoku23.googlepages.com/RESEARCHERSCLOSEENCOUNTERSCONVINCEHI.htm, 2007-05-12]

“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Preface to The Great Crusade (1940) by Gustav Regler

“The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

On the American Civil War (1861); as quoted in Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=qPW8i99nuvEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Richard A. Long. 1860s

War, People, Time