Quotes about everything (7883 quotes, page 37)

“While we talk, the sun is getting older. It will explode in 4.5 billion years. … In comparison everything else seems insignificant. Wars, conflicts, political tension, shifts in opinion, philosophical debates, even passions—everything’s dead already if this infinite reserve from which you now draw energy to defer answers, if in short thought as a quest, dies out with the sun. … The inevitable explosion to come, the one that’s always forgotten in your intellectual ploys, can be seen in a certain way as coming before the fact to render these ploys … futile. … In 4.5 billions years there will arrive the demise of your phenomenology and your utopian politics, and there’ll be no one there to toll the death knell or hear it. It will be too late to understand that your passionate, endless questioning always depended on a “life of the mind.” … Thought borrows a horizon and orientation, the limitless limit and the end without end it assumes, from the corporeal, sensory, emotional and cognitive experience of a quite sophisticated but definitely earthly existence. With the disappearance of the earth, thought will have stopped—leaving that disappearance absolutely unthought of. … The death of the sun is a death of mind. … There’s no sublation or deferral if nothing survives. … The sun, our earth, and your thought will have been no more than a spasmodic state of energy, an instant of established order, a smile on the surface of matter in a remote corner of the cosmos. … Human death is included in the life of the mind. Solar death implies an irreparably exclusive disjunction between death and thought: if there’s death, then there’s no thought.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: Thought Without a Body? (1994), pp. 286-289

Life , Death , War , Smile

“Lord Peter Wimsey: Wait a second… I'm not sure that you haven't said something useful and important.
Lady Mary Wimsey: Everything I say is useful and important.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Murder Must Advertise

Murder Must Advertise (1933)

Waiting

“What appears to us solid is ultimately both a particle and a wavelength, and on that realm everything behaves as both a particle and a wave.”

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

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

Appearance

“$175,000 will get the bridge completely restored and will give us a place to put it,
That will get us at least a few of the computers going. And up until now, everybody’s been doing everything for free—I don't want people going broke on this. Fandom is fandom, but people have to eat and live.”

Huston Huddleston

August 2012 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/make-it-so-how-three-guys-got-most-of-the-enterprise-d-bridge/

People

“We expect to learn new tricks because one of our science based abilities is being able to predict. That after all is what science is about. Learning enough about how a thing works so you'll know what comes next. Because as we all know everything obeys the universal laws, all you need is to understand the laws.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

Law , Understanding , Learning , Universe

“…there is very little about self-publishing a comic book that can be taught, but everything about it can be learned.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

Source: Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (1997), p. 21

Books , Learning

“The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at the Juilliard School http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/nyregion/23juilliard.html (22 September 2005).
2000s

Business

“He had no special hobbies, but he needed luxury in general of a kind, and especially the luxury of getting things in a hurry, his theory being that everything comes to the man who won't wait.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Tenterhooks (1912), Chapter vii.

Waiting

“I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' – video interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview, published by The Guardian on 8 July 2013.
Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 2

Love , Friendship , World

“If you look at the American army’s counterinsurgency literature (a lot of which is now declassified), it begins with an analysis of the German experience in Europe, written with the cooperation of Nazi officers. Everything is described from the point of view of the Nazis-which techniques for controlling resistance worked, which ones didn’t. With barely a change, that was transmuted into American counterinsurgency literature.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"How the Nazis Won the War" in How the World Works, p. 192
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Secrets, Lies and Democracy, 1994

Literature , Change

“In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news – at least one day ahead… Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules.”

Matt Drudge (1966) American internet journalist and talk radio host

Matt Drudge, on reaching one billion page views http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/11/12/20021112_180331.htm (December 11, 2002)

World , Freedom

“My life hadn’t fallen apart. I kept my jobs going, I had girlfriends, I had money, I had a house, I had a car, I had all those things. But I got Hepatitis C from injecting government morphine. I started injecting in 1982, but it took 25 years for the symptoms to show. That was a complete wake-up call. As soon as I found out, I quit everything, including my job in New York, and came to India to be a writer. I started working on the book, and lived very cleanly. I even quit drinking for nine years. It wasn’t easy to do. But just knowing that my time was limited was enough. Hepatitis C will eventually turn into liver cancer. Everybody is dying, by the way. The difference is that I know it, and you don’t. We live in that kind of world. And knowing it has focused me and made me do things that I would probably have put off for another ten years.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Life , Money , Books , World

“I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964-65; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5
1960's

Parting , Perfection

“Uncertainty is he root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 6, “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)” (p. 135)

Learning

“Irish generosity extended not only to a variety of people but to a variety of ideas. …they brought into their libraries everything they could lay their hands on. …Not for them the scruples of Saint Jerome… they began to devour all of the old Greek and Latin pagan literature that came their way.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

People , Way , Literature , Idea

“Quentin Crisp said it to me; now I say it to you: say yes to everything.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts website (December 2009).

“My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me.
I'll ruin everything you are.
I'll give you television.
I'll give you eyes of blue.
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the world.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

China Girl, written with Iggy Pop — Video at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A34kCOtegQ
Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

World , Girl

“I think my basic viewpoint is that everything the left and right say about each other is true. And the reason it's true is because they have so much in common.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

As quoted in "Self-publisher takes sardonic aim at all views — including his", by Linda Barnas, in The Sunday Gazette (11 November 1990), p. H7 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1957&dat=19901111&id=K3YhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=O4kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1168,3286310&hl=en

Thinking

“What we've lost - 'I said in more or less these terms' - is the proper interest in and taste for detail. We've been noting that for a long time yet the loss is irremediable. In the old days man was everything. A human face was worth a poem. When nature appeared behind a human being it was a kind of backdrop taking the place of the dark background of portrait painters or the gold of the Italian primitives… The day when a separation took place art was diminished. It was transformed the day that the 'subject' and the 'genre' destroyed great painting, denaturing even landscapes.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote of Fromentin, as cited by Sarah Anderson in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, 'Chapter IV', Eugène Fromentin, (1859); transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Art , Nature , Appearance , Loss

“I don't like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible to get a pillar between me and the train. I don't like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second's action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Conversation with Lord Moran, August 14, 1944.
Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Constable & Company, 1966), p. 167.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Water , Training

“Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Letter (19 December 1935) as published in Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966) edited by Holly Stevens, (No. 336)

Life

“The issue of prisoner swap is highly emotional and delicate. We have to carefully tread within the ambit of a particular country’s laws, which we would also like other countries to respect ours. But as a government, it behooves us to do everything within our capacity to give our people what the government should – to protect its people in and out of the country.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Zamboanga Today http://www.zamboangatoday.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3233:dfa-sets-prisoner-swap-talks-with-china&catid=26:inside-stories&Itemid=182
2011

People , Law , Country

“Do you guys have to sell everything? I'd like to buy the Earth's core.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Amazon.com interview http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=542410, 2004

Guy

“In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Radio interview (November 2008)

War

“Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 14 (p. 155)

Communication , Idea

“.. everything has conspired to keep from me the leisure and quiet which I could wish in order to answer you. I have also made two journeys to Paris, the last one to attend the funeral of poor Emile Diaz [son of the Barbizon-painter Narcisse Virgilio Díaz, ] of whom you ask news. His poor father was almost mad with grief, which, however, we managed to calm. You were as if present, and our thoughts associated you with the sad scene. During the return my wife was taken ill, and day by day a neuralgic attack came on which has left her very feeble. I do not know what to do, my dear friend. At the commencement I had thought of leaving her at Martigues, but now her mental condition would not permit of my leaving her. She would be afraid of being ill without me there beside her. I think I had better wait until the result of this last attack shall have left her.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote from Rousseau's letter to Ziem, 1856; as cited in The Barbizon School of Painters: Corot, Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Daubigny, etc., by D. C. Thomson; Scribner and Welford, New York 1890 – (copy nr. 78), pp. 135-136
The quiet life at Barbizon was at this time broken by the death of the only son of Díaz, and by the mental distortion of Rousseau's own wife
1851 - 1867

Sadness , Thinking , Waiting , Madness

“Use your voice while you still have it. I tell you with everything in me, I think they are going to silence voices like mine, and Bill O'Reilly, and Rush, and everybody else. They will silence us. They cannot continue to let us speak out.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2009-05-06
Beck rants about "power grab," claims "they are going to silence voices like mine"
Media Matters for America
2009-05-06
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200905060038
2000s, 2009

Thinking , Silence

“Now to the great artist, everything in nature has character.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Nature

“If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Eden to Eisenhower (5 November 1956), quoted in Peter G. Boyle (ed.), The Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957 (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 183

Effort

“Mays always told me how hard it was to get a hit off me and every time I looked up, he was on second base. Yet, even with Mays, I had an idea what to do. When I pitched to Clemente and Aaron, I had no idea. They seemed to hit everything.”

Sandy Koufax (1935) American baseball player

As quoted in "Koufax Still a Champion" by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (May 8, 1967)

Idea , Time

“It doesn't matter," WisestFrog answered. "You knew that the thoughts were beneath you and you felt small. And here in the Land of the Gods, everything is so creative that your thoughts may give results you don't expect at all. But you really have no problem. Just think big yourself bigger. Go ahead, think a big thought.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 44-45

God , Problem , Thinking

“In Stage II guilt is first of all social, liberal, moral guilt—a guilt so general as to seem almost formal. It is we who are responsible, either by commission or—more generally—by omission, for everything from killing off the Tasmanians to burning the books at Alexandria. (You didn’t do it? Then you should have stopped them from doing it. You never heard of it? Ignorant as well as evil, eh? You weren’t born? You’re guilty, I tell you—guilty.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Freud to Paul: The Stages of Auden’s Ideology”, p. 169
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Books , Evil

“Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt … we are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

USA Today, 1991 September 3
1990s

“This idea that somebody put into our heads — that companies are somehow these kind of individuated units that are separate from society and don’t have to be paying attention to the communities they’re in — that is incorrect. We need to have a more enlightened view about the role of companies. This company is not somehow separate from everything else. Are we not all connected? Are we not all one? Isn’t that the point?”

Marc Benioff (1964) American businessman

The New York Times: "Marc Benioff of Salesforce: ‘Are We Not All Connected?’" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/marc-benioff-salesforce-corner-office.html (15 June 2018)

Communication , Idea

“I am struck by the curious reflection that if everything is inevitable, as our élites tell us, well then we don't really need them. After all, this is the biggest and most expensive élite in history. Either they should do their job or make way.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Way , History

“Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more character than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. II. To the artist, all in nature is beautiful, p. 46

Truth , Beauty , Search , Nature

“I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. … I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Life , World , Feeling , Understanding

“I'm not too interested in these swan songs I'm continuing to hear. I'm just Mike. I'm a peasant. I'm here to entertain the people. I'm no elite person. At one stage in my life, I had my little jewelry and all my little girlfriends and my big cars and things. At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. But as a I get older life is totally about losing everything. As life goes on, we lose more than we acquire. I don't want the finest girl in the world anymore. I'm just trying to stay balanced, basically.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As quoted in USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-12-tyson-retire-talk_x.htm (2005).
Reported in The New Yorker as: “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.” http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627ta_talk_remnick
On himself

Life , People , World , Cars

“Look who's laughing now that you've wasted
How many years and you've barely even tasted
Anything remotely close to
Everything you've boasted about
Look who's crying now.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

F-Stop Blues.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Cry

“Insight and drive are all you need. Everything else can be hired.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.109

“As everything in this world is but a sham, Death is the only sincerity.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

Death , World , Sincerity

“Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" — whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

"About Music Criticism" (1909), in Style and Idea (1985), p. 196
1900s

Hate , Way , Decision , Envy

“Now we have Peronism that is everything: it's the far right and its the center, it's left centrist and is also extreme leftist, it is democracy and is also terrorism, its demagogy is also insanity…Peronism is everything.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Ahora tenemos un peronismo que es todo: es la extrema derecha, es el centro, es el centro izquierda, es la extrema izquierda, es la democracia y es el terrorismo, es la demagogia y es la insensatez... Todo es el peronismo...
Mario Vargas Llosa compara al peronismo con los nazis y lo culpa de destruir Argentina http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1474566-mario-vargas-llosa-compara-al-peronismo-con-los-nazis-y-lo-culpa-de-destruir-argentina

Democracy

“One day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you lived in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955)

God , Hate , People , World

“When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction…. On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil…. But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased. the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

About Shah’s sack of Delhi, Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis. A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tazrikha_frameset.htm

Pain , People , World , Family

“You too need the lecture on the childishness of coupling? Of course it's childish. Family life is, today more than ever, when the ethos is created substantially by the children. It's even worse when there are no children around. Because the childish adult replaces the child. Coupled life and family life bring out everything that's childish in everyone involved. Why do they have to sleep night after night in the same bed? Why must they be on the phone to each other five times a day? Why are they always with each other? The forced deference is certainly childish. The unnatural deference.”

Philip Roth book The Dying Animal

The Dying Animal (2001)

Life , Children , Family , Sleep

“My own conviction is that if the transfer cannot be made without civil war, it cannot be made at all, and that there is a reasonable probability that, if the government is supported by a considerable majority of citizens and if it is re-enforced by a powerful labor movement and cooperative movement, the change may be brought about without armed resistance from the owning class. The program that I have outlined is, of course, that of the Socialist Party of America, although not all Socialists will agree with everything that I have written.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

War , Support , Change

“Everything one sees is merely a projection of what one does not see, its true nature and substance. p315”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

Nature

“Our god is the wonderful law of creation, whose amazing unity of all things shows itself if wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is the joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive.”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Speech given on March 31, 1939. Quoted in Die Hoheitsträger and titled "Wir oder die Juden" - By Robert Ley - (May 1939), pages 4-6.

Life , God , Children , People

“Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One’s life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal.”

Douglas Coupland book Player One

Player One (2010)

Life , World , Feeling , Freedom

“A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight
Well mama said
It's just make believe
You can't believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

The News.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

People , Baby

“I would have to say myself, but it would not look good for me to say it. I just have confidence I am the best because I believe in myself. If I had to pick another player, it would be Hank Aaron. He does everything so well.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DsQbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pU8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5159%2C3057259&dq=roberto-clemente-recently-asked-best-hank-aaron-everything by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Tuesday, December 26, 1967), p. 40
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1967</big>

Confidence

“And the music came back with the carnival, the music you've heard as far back as you can remember, ever since you were little, that's always playing somewhere, in some corner of the city, in little country towns, wherever poor people go and sit at the end of the week to figure out what's become of them, sometimes here, sometimes there, from season to season, it tinkles and grinds out the tunes that rich people danced to the year before. It's the mechanical music that floats down from the wooden horses, from the cars that aren't cars anymore, from the railways that aren't at all scenic, from the platform under the wrestler who hasn't any muscles and doesn't come from Marseille, from the beardless lady, the magician who's a butter-fingered jerk, the organ that's not made of gold, the shooting gallery with the empty eggs. It's the carnival made to delude the weekend crowd. We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at the carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joy of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud…taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldier too, and the town hall with its flag. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

27
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Hunger , War , People , Music

“In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised… many acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals— that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production… [Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world— all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), pp. vii-viii.
1920s-1950s

Men , World , Problem , Thinking

“Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

The Door http://fiction.eserver.org/short/the_door.html (1939)

“See how involved it gets? Clover, bees, nitrogen, escape speed, power, plant-animal balance, gas laws, compound interest laws, meteorology—a mathematical ecologist has to think of everything and think of it ahead of time. Ecology is explosive; what seems like a minor and harmless invasion can change the whole balance.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 12, “Bees and Zeroes” (p. 125)

Law , Mathematics , Thinking , Bee

“Everything has its tax and the tax of knowledge is to teach its people.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Eighth Infallible Sayings: Golden sayings of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (AS) http://www.ezsoftech.com/islamic/infallible8.asp
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

People , Knowledge

“Everything that is possible demands to exist.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Omne possibile exigit existere.
De veritatibus primis (1686)

“Bishop Köyu said (it seems to me very admirably), 'It is only a person of poor understanding who wishes to arrange things in complete sets. It is incompleteness that is desirable.' In everything regularity is bad. To leave a thing unfinished gives interest, and makes for lengthened life. They say that even in building the [imperial] palace an unfinished place is always left. In the writings of the ancients, inner and outer [Buddhist and non-Buddhist], there are many missing chapters and parts.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Life , Understanding , Parting , Personality

“[…] ironically, the jihadis are just as opposed to the theory of evolution as creationists. So they have that in common […] This is an area in which Islamists agree 100% with the Discovery Institute and creationists. If that makes you uncomfortable … well, it should. […] I'm making a very narrowly defined point. The proponents of "intelligent design" are on the same page with radical Islamists, on that issue. And the devaluation of science by Islam, in favor of religion, is largely responsible for the appalling state of the Islamic world today. Western civilization has advanced to its current point because we DO have a strict division between these two disciplines. Science is not religion, and religion is not science. If we lose that clarity, we're in danger of losing everything. As I've tried to say at least 20 different ways, this is not a put down of religion. Religion is a civilizing force, as long it's not allowed to rule people's lives. The intelligent design movement is trying to erase these lines and bring us back into the Dark Ages. We should learn from the failure of Islam, but this is an issue that is obviously not going to rest easy.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

June 16, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30370_Video-_Bobby_Jindal_Supports_Teaching_Intelligent_Design/comments/

People , Age , World , Religion

“After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go back to Natal.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 1, "I Meet Sir Henry Curtis"

Housing , Country

“The government that's strong enough to give you what you want by taking it from someone else is strong enough to take everything you have and give it to someone else.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

Part One, chapter 5, page 27
Why Government Doesn't Work (1995)

Strong

“Not everything that is big and dead is a dinosaur.”

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

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Dead

“We know by actual observation only a comparatively small part of the whole universe. I will call this "our neighborhood." Even within the confines of this province our knowledge decreases very rapidly as we get away from our own particular position in space and time. It is only within the solar system that our empirical knowledge extends to the second order of small quantities (and that only for g44 and not for the other gαβ), the first order corresponding to about 10-8. How the gαβ outside our neighborhood are, we do not know, and how they are at infinity of space or time we shall never know. Infinity is not a physical but a mathematical concept, introduced to make our equations more symmetrical and elegant. From the physical point of view everything that is outside our neighborhood is pure extrapolation, and we are entirely free to make this extrapolation as we please to suit our philosophical or aesthetical predilections—or prejudices. It is true that some of these prejudices are so deeply rooted that we can hardly avoid believing them to be above any possible suspicion of doubt, but this belief is not founded on any physical basis. One of these convictions, on which extrapolation is naturally based, is that the particular part of the universe where we happen to be, is in no way exceptional or privileged; in other words, that the universe, when considered on a large enough scale, is isotropic and homogeneous.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)

Way , Mathematics , Nature , Knowledge

“Everything turns only to memory.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

Memory

“How then, can you love a bird and kill it and still feel decent? I think the answer is, to be worthy of your game. Which boils down to a gentleman's agreement between you and the bird, never forgetting that it is the bird that has everything to lose. It consists of things you feel and do, not because someone is looking or because the law says you may or must not, but because you feel that this is the honorable way to do it.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

The Upland Shooting Life (1971)

Love , Law , Way , Feeling

“I’m giving up everything I can’t stand for Lent.”

T. A. Waters (1938–1998) American magician

Source: The Probability Pad (1970), Chapter 1 (p. 8)

“To arrive at such a discovery, fruit of a log and precious education, involves a whole field of precise technique. The artist must immerse himself in his own anxiety, dredging up everything that is alien, imposed or personal in the derogatory sense, in order to arrive at the authentic zone of values.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 18-19

Education , Sense , Personality

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Life , Death , God , Age

“Your predator is close behind you and will infallibly be your death.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Carmody said, in a moment of strange calm.” But in terms of long-range planning, I never did expect to get out of this Universe alive.”
“That is meaningless,” the Prize said. “The fact is, you have lost everything.”
“I don’t agree,” Carmody said. “Permit me to point out that I am presently still alive.”
“Agreed. But only for the moment.”
“I have always been alive only for the moment,” Carmody said. “I could never count on more. It was my error to expect more. That holds true, I believe, for all of my possible and potential circumstances.”
“Then what do you hope to achieve with your moment?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said. “Everything.”
“I don’t understand you any longer,” the Prize said. “Something about you has changed, Carmody. What is it?”
“A minor thing,” Carmody told him. “I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the Gods run in their heavenly sideshow. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don’t need it. I have my moment, which is quite enough.”
“Saint Carmody,” the Prize said, in tones of deepest sarcasm. “No more than a shadow’s breadth separates you and death! What will you do now with your pitiable moment?”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

“I shall continue to live it,” Carmody said. “That is what moments are for.”
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (pp. 189-190; closing words)

Death , God , Hope , Error

“I guess the other thing I find a little bit on the downside is that all the papers can now be downloaded off the web. That bothers me a little because I think in the old days, when you picked up the journal, you kind of looked at everything on the back of it, the titles, and there were things you didn’t know that much about or that you had a faint connection with, and maybe you looked at the paper; maybe you read the abstract at least. Nowadays, you just dial up what you’re interested in; you don’t see any of the rest of the literature. I do worry over this kind of compartmentalization of astronomy, which I think has gotten to be a bit out of hand…”

Robert Kraft (astronomer) (1927–2015) American astronomer

Interview of Robert Kraft by Patrick McCray on August 1-2, 2002, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Literature , Thinking , Reading

“Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov; this was used as an epigraph in The Blood of Others, and is sometimes attributed to de Beauvoir
Misattributed

“Maybe the times we had, they weren't that bad

And everything else was part of the plan

We sang: "I don't know where we go from here"

This is the alpha, omega, beginning and the end

And we all just idolize the dead

So you were born (So you were born!), and that was a good day

Someday you'll die (Someday you'll die!), and that is a shame

But somewhere in the between was a life of which we all dream

And nothing and no one will ever take that away

You had a love and that love had you

And nothing mattered, you were fine

And some will complain, they're just bitter, what a shame

They know that loving and losing is better than nothing at all

Maybe the times we had, they weren't that bad

And everything else was part of our path

We sang: "I don't know where we go from here"

This is the anthem, the slogan, the summary of events

And we all just idealize the past”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"Somewhere In The Between" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/06/

Love , Life , Dreams , Time

“Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!”

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

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

Change , Time , Future

“We [at the Bauhaus, in Dessau - where Klee was art teacher with Kandinsky ] construct and construct, and yet intuition still has its uses. Without it we can do a lot, but not everything... When intuition is joined to exact research it speeds the progress of exact research..”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

1921 - 1930
Source: 'Bauhaus prospectus 1929'; as quoted in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444

Art , Teachers , Speed

“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

The Curious Case of David Fincher (2007)

People , Lie

“These days everything went through the filter of knowing that she might be dying. And not a lot made it through.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 62

“I have been pretty lucky since I left the big leagues. No man who has done the things they accuse me of doing could have been as successful. Everything I touched seemed to turn to money, and I've made my share down through the years. I've been blessed with a good banker, too — my wife. Handing the money to her was just like putting it in the bank. We were married in 1908 when I was just 19 and she was 15, and she has stood by me through everything. We never had any children of our own, but we raised one of my brother's boys from babyhood.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)

Money , Children , Boy , Success

“Robert Siegel: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.Robert Siegel: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going to vote for the Civil Rights Act.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Rand Paul Says He Has A Tea Party 'Mandate'
All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-05-19
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985068

Truth , Hope , Courage , Business

“Gentlemen, we have a master; this young man does everything, can do everything and will do everything.”

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) French ''abbé'' ad statesman

Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout.
Speaking of Napoleon I of France, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), "Character", p. 105.

“Everything that's in [my] books comes out of what I've seen, or touched, or felt, or smelt, and if I had one wish it would be that the books were fiction.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Dave Thompson interview

Books

“Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why again in my book Winter is Coming, I emphasize why Vladimir Putin and enemies of the free world must be stopped. Because Putin, you may call him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi, he’s like a spider in the center of this web. Because Putin helps other bad guys, other thugs, dictators, and terrorists to sort of feel free to attack the free world. Because they all know that unless they attack the free world, unless they attack the United States as the leader of the free world, they will have no credibility with their own people because neither Putin nor Iranian mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or other dictators around the globe, they have nothing to offer but confrontation. They have to present themselves of the protectors of their own people against the world evil. And of course, they have to attack the free world that produces everything that, by the way, they use quite effectively against us. They cannot compete in innovations, they cannot compete in ideas, in productivity. But they can compete in something quite different because for us, each human life is unique. *For them, killing a thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people, a million is a demonstration of strengths. So we should realize that they have no allergy for blood. And they will keep pressing their advantage, and it’s not that we have grown – that our enemies have grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has grown weaker.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Life , People , Books , World

“In 1978 I was on a parliamentary delegation to Japan and returned via China during the Cultural Revolution, a choice also made by young Winston Churchill, then the Conservative MP for Stretford. I was debriefed by the Minister for Information who asked if there was anything at all I would like to ask. I said: "Yes. Everything you do, you do with extreme care and precision. When I ask questions that your government does not like, my driver calls for me five minutes later than arranged. When I ask if there are any blind or handicapped children in China, I get cabbage soup for dinner."Now I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying at the Peking Palace Hotel and his suite is bigger than mine. Why?"The Minister, very embarrassed, finally said: "It is because Mr Churchill had a famous grandfather."It is the only time that I have been out-grandfathered.”

Clement Freud (1924–2009) English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef

Some questions of interpretation

Children , Question , Time , Country

“I am most astonished by what has been written about the [painting] 'Alexander', which is so well done that I must suppose there are not many lovers of art [amatori] at Messina. I am also surprised that Your Lordship [Don Antonio Ruffo] should complain as much about the price as about the canvas, but if Your Lordship wishes to return it as he did the sketch [schizzo] of Homer, I will do another Alexander... If Your Lordship likes the Alexander as is, very well. If he does not want to keep it, six hundred florins remain outstanding. And for the Homer [painting] five hundred florins plus the expenses of canvas, it being understood that everything is at Your Lordship's expense. Having agreed to it, would he kindly send me his desired measurements. Awaiting the response to settle the matter.”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

Quote of Rembrandt's letter, Nov/Dec. 1662, to buyer Don Antonio Ruffo from Messina, Sicily (location: RD, 1662/12, 509); as quoted in Rembrandt's Eyes, Simon Schama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, NEW YORK 1999, p. 591, & notes 32-36
Rembrant's reaction after complaints of Don Antonio Ruffo, dispatched through the Dutch consul in Messina, Jan van den Broeck, who was on his way to Amsterdam. Once there he was to inform Isaac Just (presumably the intermediary between Rembrandt and the Messina patrician), of the intense dissatisfaction at the work, which Don Ruffo had received. 'The Alexander', he complained, being unacceptably stitched together from four separate pieces, showed seams which were 'too horrible for words.'..g with so many defects.. (Don Ruffo already bought Rembrandt's painting Aristotle with a Bust of Homer c. 1655 and still existing: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_-_Aristotle_with_a_Bust_of_Homer_-_WGA19232.jpg, but 'The Alexander' of Rembrandt is lost).
1640 - 1670

Art , Lovers , Painting

“The original idea, the sketch, which is so to speak the egg or embryo of the idea, is usually far from being complete; it contains everything, which is simply a mixing together of all parts. Just the thing that makes of this sketch the essential expression of the idea is not the suppression of details, but their complete subordination to the big lines, which are, before all else, to create the impression. The greatest difficulty therefore is that of returning in the picture to that effacing of the details which, however, make up the composition, the web and the woof of the picture.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote in 1854, in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 234 – 235
1831 - 1863

Idea , Parting

“Then [speaking of his loosely figurative work of the 1930's, in Germany] I was still under nature, not that I was imitating it; now [1957] I am above nature. But everything comes from nature, I too am part of nature; my memory comes from nature, too.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann', Elizabeth Pollet, (interview of his 1957 Whitney Museum exhibition), Arts Magazine, May 1957 (article: 30-33)
1950s

Nature , Memory , Parting

“My idea of paradise is that period just before the sun rises and I’m at home painting or writing songs and everything is flowing. I pray that the sun won’t rise so I can paint and write for ever. That’s my ideal time.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Mail On Sunday, September 2008
Miscellaneous

Home , Idea , Time , Sun

“(…) everything is inter-linked. And therefore everything has numberless causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is because the world is as it is. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Inter-connectedness
Source: "I am That." P.40.

World , Universe

“Tonight at noon
Supermarkets will advertise 3d EXTRA on everything”

Adrian Henri (1932–2000) British poet

"Tonight at Noon", from The Mersey Sound (1967).

“Should I tear my eyes out now?
Everything I see returns to you somehow
Should I tear my heart out now?
Everything I feel returns to you somehow”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"The Only Thing"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Feeling , Tear , Heart

“We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn't affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made — everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we've effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Love , World , Personality

“This confirms the RFMF view that the Bill has nothing to do with Reconciliation and everything to do with the selfish agenda that George Speight brought into Parliament in 2000 to gather support and ensure his leadership. We better stop lying to ourselves, we better stop these people lying to us.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

2000, Reaction to statements in Parliament from Senator Apisai Tora, 23-24 August 2005

People , Lying , Support , Selfishness

“.. A market, a quay, a river. a gang of soldiers.... is just as good and more history than 'The cousins of Spinoza are visiting him accompanied by their mamma'. O! if I could say some time as Munkaczy: 'I painted almost everything I dreamed when I was 12 years old'. He can tell this, the man which I love as the greatest painter, whatever they may say here [in The Hague]. I hope that you once may see a true painting of me, not one of the many I shall have to make and which are [only] something, but a truly grandiose thing. All wasted fire.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..Een markt een kaai een rivier. een bende soldaten.. ..is net zoo goed en meer geschiedenis dan 'De nichtjes van Spinoza komen hem bezoeken vergezeld door hunne mamma'. O! dat ik nog eens kon zeggen als Munkaczy: ik heb bijna alles geschilderd wat ik droomde toen ik 12 jaar was. dat kan hij zeggen hem die ik voor de grootste schilder hou wat ze hier ook mogen zeggen. Ik hoop dat U nog eens een waar schilderij van me moogt zien, niet een van de velen die ik zal moeten maken en ook wel iets is, maar iets waarachtigsch grootsch. Allemaal verspild vuur.
quote of Breitner in a letter to his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk, 28 March 1882; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/597
before 1890

Love , Dreams , Hope , History

“Everything was twice repeated,
Sometimes more than twice repeated,
As they worked through the agenda
(It seemed elastic, that agenda,
Becoming longer, never shorter),
Their utterances grew long, not shorter,
It was just like spreading butter.”

Gavin Ewart (1916–1995) English poet

"The Meeting", line 11, from The New Ewart (1982)

“Where does one start with a theory of man if the theory of man as an organism in an environment doesn't work and all the attributes of man which were accepted in the old modern age are now called into question: his soul, mind, freedom, will, Godlikeness?
There is only one place to start: the place where man's singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute.
That singularity is language…”

Walker Percy book The Message in the Bottle

The Message in the Bottle (1975)

Age , Soul , Question , Freedom

“I was just a youngster and believed everything everybody told me. The Dodgers told me a big bonus was no good and they said other players would resent it. Better for me to take small amount and work my way use [sic]. So my father signed for me. Next day, the Braves offer me $27, 500 and I say, "Where were you yesterday?" In the workout with the Dodgers, I hit 10 balls over the fence and I go back to 400-foot mark and throw to the plate. The Dodgers hid me as Montreal in 1954 and I seldom played. Maybe the late innings. Once I started and before I could bat in first inning they take me out for pinch-hitter.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard: Hitting in Daylight" (.411 Vs. .302) Best For Clemente; Roberto 'Feels Good' In Sunshine; Chicago's Wrigley Field His Favorite; Clemente Can Hit to All Field; Pirates Paid Only $4,000 For Him" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YGscAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t04EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4128%2C3280138 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Sunday, March 11, 1962), Sec. 4. p. 3
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1962</big>

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