Quotes about everything
page 32

Max Beckmann photo

“Blaine sometimes wished he lived in a culture where everything wasn’t everybody’s business.”

Jamil Nasir (1955) American writer

Source: Tower of Dreams (1999), Chapter 6 (p. 71)

Van Morrison photo
Billy Joel photo
Gracie Allen photo
Angela of Foligno photo

“Why do I always bang my head against the wall
So sick and tired of doing, doing everything wrong”

Beef Bonanza punk rock musician in The Bones

Flatline Fever
Lyrics

Peter Tatchell photo
Hans Arp photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Penn Jillette photo
Ben Carson photo

“We need to be thinking about: How do we allow people to ascend the ladder of opportunity, rather than how do we give them everything and keep them dependent.”

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

Fourth Republican debate https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/10/well-be-annotating-the-gop-debate-here/ (10 November 2015).

John Updike photo
Anton Chekhov photo
Karin Housley photo

“You have to fight that much harder, and not in a whiny or combatant way,” she said. “You just have to be that much smarter, that much more organized, on your toes, always, and you have to dress that much more professionally. A lot more thought has to go into everything you do.”

Karin Housley (1964) American politician

The Thoroughly Modern Marriage of Phil and Karin Housley http://buffalonews.com/2017/11/23/the-thoroughly-modern-marriage-of-phil-and-karin-housley (November 23, 2017)

Pietro Badoglio photo
John Calvin photo

“If everything proceeded according to their wishes, they would not understand what it means to follow God.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 53.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“The Arab world has seen elections before. However, virtually all of them were artificial affairs, their outcomes never in doubt. They were in the end celebrations of one version or another of autocracy, never a repudiation of them. That kind of state-management is not what has just taken place in Iraq. Millions of people actually made choices, and placed claims on those who will lead them in the future. To act upon one's own world like this, and on such a scale, is what politics in the purest sense is all about. It is why we all, once upon a time, became activists. And it is infectious. The taste of freedom is a hard memory to rub out. No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. They had longed for failure. They trotted out the tired old formulas of anti-Americanism to impart legitimacy to the so-called Iraqi "resistance to American occupation." But the people of Iraq have put an end to all that. En masse, ordinary people took to the streets in the second great Iraqi revolt against the politics of barbarism exemplified by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's immortal words: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

Rickard Falkvinge photo
Lizzie Deignan photo
Leonard Peikoff photo

“A: "Your objection to the self-evident has no validity. There is no such thing as disagreement. People agree about everything."
B: "That’s absurd; people disagree constantly, and about all kinds of things."
A: "How can they? There’s nothing to disagree about; no subject matter. After all, nothing exists."
B: "Nonsense. All kinds of things exist, you know that as well as I do."
A: "That’s one. You must accept the existence axiom, even to utter the term “disagreement.” But to continue, I still maintain that disagreement is unreal. How can people disagree when they are unconscious beings who are unable to hold any ideas at all?"
B: "Of course people hold ideas. They are conscious beings. You know that."
A: "There’s another axiom, but even so, why is disagreement about axioms a problem? Why should it suggest that one or more of the parties is mistaken? Perhaps all of the people who disagree about the very same point are equally, objectively right."
B: "That’s impossible. If two ideas contradict each other, they can’t both be right. Contradictions can’t exist in reality. After all, A is A."
Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept, including that of "disagreement." … In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular content of this challenge. The axioms are invulnerable.
The opponents of these axioms pose as defenders of truth, but it is only a pose. Their attack on the self-evident amounts to the charge. "Your belief in an idea doesn't necessarily make it true; you must prove it, because facts are what they are independent of your beliefs." Every element of this charge relies on the very axioms that these people are questioning and supposedly setting aside.”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991) ; Dialogue used to show that existence, conciousness, identity, and non-contradiction are axioms, using A as a defender of the axioms, and B as an opponent of the axioms,
1990s

André Maurois photo

“Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

David Byrne photo
Frithjof Schuon photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Maureen O'Hara photo
African Spir photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Gay Talese photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“The artist make things move, and is moved. He is policeman, motor car, everything at once. He who makes things move also creates rest. That which aesthetically is brought to rest is art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In 'The Grand Boulevards' (of Paris), Piet Mondriaan, in 'De Groene Amsterdammer', 27 March 1920 pp. 4-5
1920's

Willem Roelofs photo

“Ships, houses, mills… in one word everything that is made by people must stand upright and be painted with care. This is actually a good presentation compared to other, less symmetrical things, like the trees, skies, etc. It doesn't create the painting, but it certainly strengthen the illusion. It's just like somebody who is neatly dressed, but whose tie is coming off. The windows of a house must be straight, a mill in a pure construction, the blades well-positioned in perspective.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Schepen, huizen, molens eb in één woord alles, wat door menschen gemaakt is, moet recht staan en met zorg geschilderd worden. Dit staat juist zeer goed tegenover andere, minder symmetrische dingen, als boomen, luchten enz. Het maakt het schilderij wel niet, maar draagt toch bij tot de illusie. 't Is er net mee, als met iemand, die keurig gekleed is, maar wiens das los zit. De ramen van een huis moeten recht, een molen zuiver van constructie zijn, de wieken in het perspectief staan.
Quote of Roelofs; as cited by H.F.W. Jeltes, in Willem Roelofs : bizonderheden betreffende zijn leven en zijn werk, met brieven en andere bijlagen, Van Kampen, Amsterdam, 1911, pp. 86-87
undated quotes

Bill Bryson photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; — all but the possibility of improvement.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

"The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), as translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
The Vocation of the Scholar (1794)

Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
Immanuel Jakobovits photo
Didier Sornette photo

“Perhaps the most profound synthesis of physical sciences came from the realization that everything could be understood from "conservation laws" and symmetry principals.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 5, Modeling Financial Bubbles And Market Crashes, p. 136

Stephen King photo
Scott Shaw photo
Elliott Smith photo
Karl Jaspers photo

“The mass-man has very little spare time, does not live a life that appertains to a whole, does not want to exert himself except for some concrete aim which can be expressed in terms of utility; he will not wait patiently while things ripen; everything for him must provide some immediate gratification; and even his mental life must minister to his fleeting pleasures. That is why the essay has become the customary form of literature, why newspapers are taking the place of books… People read quickly and cursorily.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Der Massenmensch hat wenig Zeit, lebt kein Leben aus einem Ganzen, will nicht mehr die Vorbereitung und Anstrengung ohne den konkreten Zweck, der sie in Nutzen umsetzt; er will nicht warten und reifen lassen; alles muß sogleich gegenwärtige Befriedigung sein; Geistiges ist zu den jeweils augenblicklichen Vergnügungen geworden. Daher ist der Essay die geeignete Literaturform für alles, tritt die Zeitung an die Stelle des Buches... Man liest schnell.
Man in the Modern Age (1933)

Halldór Laxness photo
Joey Comeau photo
Richard Bach photo

“Everything in this book may be wrong.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Halldór Laxness photo
Mark Satin photo

“These 100 books do not agree on everything – and that's OK too. You don't need total agreement when you're an open-hearted, decentralist, experimentalist New Ager. After the Prison and its institutions lose their hold over us, you won't even want such agreement. Within the parameters of certain life-affirming values, you'll want a hundred flowers to bloom. Synergy is all; cooperation and coordination is all.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 180. The phrase "100 books" refers to Satin's list of 100 great New Age political books published since 1976. The term "Prison" refers to the Prison of consciousness, the basal concept in Satin's book.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Jean-François Revel photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"The Tasks of the Revolution" (9 October 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/09.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 59 - 68.
1910s

Mahathir bin Mohamad photo

“We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Source: December 2005. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/12/11/nation/12838957&sec=nation

Richard Koch photo
Sigmund Freud photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Sarada Devi photo

“The mind is everything. It is in the mind alone that one feels pure and impure. A man, first of all, must make his own mind guilty and then alone can he see another man's guilt.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Women Saints of East and West

Jean Giraudoux photo

“You're an attorney! It's your duty to lie, conceal, and distort everything, and slander everybody.”

Vous êtes avocat! Vous avez le devoir au contraire de recourir à toutes les ruses pour défendre vos clients. Au mensonge. A la calomnie.
The Madwoman of Chaillot, Act II http://books.google.com/books?id=BGPPV09y26AC&q=%22Vous+%C3%AAtes+avocat+Vous+avez+le+devoir+au+contraire+de+recourir+%C3%A0+toutes+les+ruses+pour+d%C3%A9fendre+vos+clients+Au+mensonge+A+la+calomnie%22&pg=PA142#v=onepage

Daniel Pipes photo
Van Morrison photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Well I just want to say that we are, you know, very honored by the victory that we had, 306 electoral college votes, we were not supposed to crack 220, you [turning to the Israeli PM] know that right? There was no way to 221, but then they said there's no way to 270 [Netanyahu tries to respond, but Trump continues, so then mouths "I thought he was talking to me"] and there's tremendous enthusiasm out there. I will say that, um, we are going to have peace, in this country, we are going to stop crime, in this country, we are going to do everything within our power to stop long-simmering racism, and every other thing that's going on, because a lot of bad things have been taking place over a long period of time. I think one of the reasons I won the election is we have a very, very divided nation, very divided, and hopefully I'll be able to do something about that, and I, you know, it's something that was very important to me. As far as people, Jewish people, so many friends, a daughter who happens to be here right now, a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren, I think that you're going to see a lot different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years, er, I think a lot of good things are happening, and you're going to see a lot of love, you're going to see a lot of love.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump responding to a reporter's question about rising anti-Semitic incidents and a perception of xenophobia in his administration, during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmfseeZt5fA (15 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February

Charles Baudelaire photo

“Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Tout ce qui plaît a une raison de plaire, et mépriser les attroupements de ceux qui s'égarent n'est pas le moyen de les ramener où ils devraient être.
"Quelques mots d'introduction," Salon de 1845 (May 1845) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Salon_de_1845_%28Curiosit%C3%A9s_esth%C3%A9tiques%29#Quelques_mots_d.E2.80.99introduction

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Mel Gibson photo

“[T]he only mark-to-market thing in politics is Election Day; everything else is hot air.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

2010s, 2018, Interview with Bill Kristol (2018)

Richard Dawkins photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“If things got out of hand, it would mean six or seven million dead people and the end of everything Miller had ever known.
Odd that it should feel almost like relief.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 16 (p. 164)

Theodore Gray photo
Megan Mullally photo
Hakim Bey photo
Dennis Miller photo
GG Allin photo

“GG Allin: I might go and kick somebody in the head, I might grab a girl and force her to perform oral sex with me. I've had sex on stage with men, women and animals and everything in between.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Paul Gauguin photo

“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 22: quote in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, 1900

Jack Layton photo

““That’s been a hashtag fail." And on the temptations stemming from a life of crime: "With the bling and everything that comes with it."”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

2011 English Language Federal Election Debate http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/obituary-jack-layton-in-quotes/article2135661/?from=sec368

“A debut movie is something that you envision for many, many years. If you really want to make a movie, you constantly think about this first movie, so when you make it, you want to have everything in it.”

Christoffer Boe (1974) Danish filmmaker

Quoted in Fade to Black: Christoffer Boe http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_fade_black_31/, interview with Darroch Greer, Millimeter (September 1, 2004)

Carlos Zambrano photo

“This kid is electric. He overpowered us today. There's no doubt about that. He had everything and threw everything where he wanted to throw it with velocity, with tilt, with sharpness.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Clint Hurdle in Armour, Nancy, Chi Cubs 11, Colorado 0 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=240507116, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 14, 2007
2004

Cass Elliot photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Noam Chomsky photo
China Miéville photo
Thomas Jackson photo

“Endeavor to do well with everything you undertake.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Misattributed, Jackson's personal book of maxims

Michael Moorcock photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“Actually I don't have any painting at home…. they take away everything from me, almost before it's finished… That Jewish scribe there, is sold to [Dutch art-seller] Buffa, and it isn't finished at all yet. And this 'Kolen lossen' is also sold… Then I have here 'The Mowers' - just set up… And that drawing here, will be a good piece too!.. That will become a large painting: a 'Jewish Wedding' - at the moment the groom puts the ring on the finger of his bride…. you can't see very much yet, do you? (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Ik heb eigenlijk niets in huis.. ..ze halen de boel bij me weg, haast nog voordat het àf is.. .Die Joodsche Wetschrijver daar, is aan Buffa verkocht, en hij is nog lang niet hàlf af. En die 'Kolen lossen' is ook al weg.. Dàn heb ik daar ' De Maaiers', pas opgezet.. .En die teekening hier, die zal óók wel goed worden!.. .Dat wordt een groot schilderij: een 'Joodsche Bruiloft', - het moment dat de bruidegom zijn bruid den ring aan den vinger steekt.. .Je ziet [er] nog niet veel àn, vin-je wel?.
Quote of Israëls, 1901-02; as cited by N.H. Wolf, in 'Bij onze Nederlandsche kunstenaars. IV. - Jozef Israëls, Grootmeester der Nederlandsche Schilders', in Wereldkroniek, 8 Feb. 1902
Wolf was visiting Israëls in his studio in The Hague as preparation for his coming article on the old artist
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

“Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 96

Adi Shankara photo
Ginger Rogers photo

“Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success.”

Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) American actress and dancer

Fred Astaire to Raymond Rohauser, Film Curator of the New York Gallery of Modern Art, at the San Francisco Film Festival, in 1966.
About

Jean Piaget photo

“The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

As quoted in Education for Democracy, Proceedings from the Cambridge School Conference on Progressive Education (1988) edited by Kathe Jervis and Arthur Tobier

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

Jozef Israëls photo

“You cannot know at all what will comes out of you because all your knowledge is running otherwise. What you do not know and what you thought that there would not come at all, that comes out and appears at once, sometimes with a curse and a sigh, and there you have it. - Everything ends well. I made things that I had forgotten for twenty five years. At first I knew them too well, but then I forgot them, I 'had to' forget them. And then I made them. - If some work does not becomes beautiful, well, then you go back to do something else. Worrying doesn't help at all. It will be better later? No, you should not say such things, because you don't know anything about 'becoming better'. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls in Nederlands): Je kunt er niets van weten wat er uit je komt: al je weten komt verkeerd uit: wat je niet weet en heelemaal niet dacht dat er komen zou, dat komt er in eenen, soms met een vloek en een zucht, en daar heb je 't. - Alles komt terecht. Ik heb dingen gemaakt, die ik vergeten had van voor vijf en twintig jaar. Eerst wist ik ze te goed, maar toen vergat ik ze, ik moest ze vergeten en toen maakte ik ze. - Als iets niet mooi wordt, dan ga je maar weer aan wat anders. Tobben geeft niet. Straks beter? Neen, straks beter, dat moet men ook niet meer zeggen. Je weet niet of het straks beter wordt. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
Quote of Israels, as cited in a letter of A. Verwey, The Hague 28 August 1888, to his wife K. van Vloten; as cited in Briefwisseling 1 juli 1885 tot 15 december 1888 (1995)–Albert Verwey http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/verw008brie01_01/verw008brie01_01_0580.php, pp. 497-98
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Bram van Velde photo

“Everything has to end before it can begin.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Lawrence Lessig photo
James Burke (science historian) photo
Edgar Degas photo

“He [ Corot ] is always the strongest, he has foreseen everything.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Degas in 1883, as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 2
Degas made this remark about Corot to Pissarro at the preview exhibition of the 'Jules Paton sale' in Paris, 24 April 1883 and overheard by Corot's biographer Alfred Robaut https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robaut.
1876 - 1895