Quotes about everything
page 67

“Everything is eternal
Nothingness does not exist
No thing has ever become nothing
And nothing has never become something
What is has always been and will always be”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

After the Ending
Lyrics, The Empyrean (2009)

“He has everything, he cannot sleep, he gives nice gifts, he is not happy, but he would not trade, even for happiness, what he is….”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Happiness, Sleep

“If there would not have been a Waco, I would have put down roots somewhere and not been so unsettled with the fact that my government … was a threat to me. Everything that Waco implies was on the forefront of my thoughts. That sort of guided my path for the next couple of years.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letters published in the Buffalo News (10 June 2001).
2000s

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

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

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, Age, World

“Serious drinkers are like serious eaters or serious noneaters. They are like serious drug-addicts. Their addiction holds a spell over them which acts as some powerful secret at the center of everything they do. The serious eater listens to others talking of diets, Weight Watchers, exercises; she hears them excitedly comparing pounds lost, pounds gained. She hears them encouraging each other, joking, consoling. She is not one of them. She knows the diets better than they do; she knows Weight Watchers is useless for her; she knows her life is on some Almighty Scale that she has to step on alone. She is in some covenant with food — a covenant which she probably does not understand, but which nevertheless exerts some magical, compelling power over her. She hates it; she loves it; she keeps her covenant silent.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 11

Love, Life, Hate, Secret

“As Justice Olive Wendell Holmes, Jr. put it, censorship rests on the idea that “every idea is an incitement.” Perhaps he should have specified “every interesting idea,” for a dull idea is not. By the same token, every interesting drug is an incitement. And so is everything else that people find interesting.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Our Right to Drugs (1992), p. 35.

People, Justice, Idea

“What is the deep background on the deep male? From 100,000 BC until, let's say, 1792 — Mary Wollstonecraft and her Vindication of the Rights of Women — there was simply the man, whose main characteristics was that he got away with everything. From 1792 until about 1970, there was, in theory anyway, the "enlightened" man, who, while continuing to get away with everything, agreed to meet women to talk about talks which would lead to political concessions. Post-1970, the enlightened man became the new man, who isn't interested in getting away with anything, who believes, indeed, that the female is not merely equal to the male but is his plain superior.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

Women

“The purpose of education, so one would think, is to introduce the young into life, and that means: into the society where they are born and into the physical universe that surrounds the society. The method of education often consists in the teaching of some basic myth. The myth is available in various versions. More advanced versions may be taught by initiation rites which firmly implant them into the mind. Knowing the myth, the grown-up can explain almost everything (or else he can turn to experts for more detailed information). He is the master of Nature and of Society. He understands them both and he knows how to interact with them. However, he is not the master of the myth that guides his understanding.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Life, Education, Understanding, Nature

“Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (January/February 1918), # 1104, The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918 (p. 387)
1916 - 1920

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love

Love, Wedding

“Debussy was behind me when we played L'après-midi d'un faune because he did not want anything in his score to be changed on account of the dancing. And when we came to a forte, he said 'Monteux, that is a forte, play forte'. He did not want anything shimmering. And he wanted everything exactly in time.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Quoted in Nichols, Roger (1992). Debussy Remembered. London: Faber. , p. 186

Change, Time, Dance

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Wisdom, Men, Truth, Angels

“I'm not - the terrific guy you keep telling me about. I'm not made of sugar and spice and everything nice. I'm made of rats and snails and puppy-dogs tails. I lie sometimes. I have broken people's hearts. I'm looking for love, I'll admit that, but now that it's here in abundance, I'm afraid of commitment and I want you, please, to leave me.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Collectively

Love, People, Lie, Dogs

“Now, everything Marx did was intentionally anti-Christian. If the Bible is for it, he's against it. See, the Bible makes private property a real serious issue. Ownership of private property is critical. You can't have freedom without property rights. What good does it do to say that you have all kinds of freedom if there's no place to exercise your freedom? […] You could not possibly lose your property permanently in the Biblical system. Since every man has his own vine and his own fig tree, drink waters out of your own cistern, waters out of your own well. Private property is essential. […] Karl Marx developed the idea of a graduated income tax. The more you make, the more they take. That's Karl Marx's idea. He's said, "You need to abolish rights of inheritance." The Bible says a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. Karl Marx was against that. Confiscate property rights. Evolution is a foundation of Communist philosophy behind the money powers. Karl Marx said, "We need a central bank." This was a Communist idea. The banking system we're using today in America, the Federal Reserve, is a direct result of Karl Marx's thinking. There is nothing Federal about it. It's private bankers that run our currency. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil". All evil.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Love, Money, Children, Exercises

“We treat sex so casually and use it for everything but what it is — which is ultimately making another human being with thoughts and feelings and rights who will grow up to be an adult.”

Lisa Kudrow (1963) American actress

Guardian interview (2006)

Sex, Feeling

“Sometimes I look at the battered exteriors of apartment buildings in New York and think how these sorry shells have housed such a long procession of styles. The money! The effort! One tenant mirrors everything, the next panels the walls, the third lines them with mylar, the fourth turns to toile de Jouy, the fifth to pegboard or handblocked rice paper. The expensive if often shoddy interiors installed only to be dismantled, the exterior left untouched as it turns yet another shade sootier — this transience seems a fitting emblem for the way we stay up-to-date without ever changing.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 260).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Money, Way, Thinking, Effort

“Creationists contend that they don’t believe in magic. But “speaking” anything into existence is an incantation, and the Bible is full of spells of one sort or another. Animating golems, or conjuring interdependent systems, and causing complex organisms to appear out of thin air -are each logically implausible and physically impossible according to everything we know about anything at all, yet this is exactly what religiously-motivated pseudoscientists actually promote! How do we test these ideas? How can we tell them apart from any of the thousands of fables men have concocted for the ghosts and gods of other religions? How can we tell whether any of this is even real, and not something someone just made up? Because despite anyone’s assertions of personal conviction, it is impossible to distinguish miracles from subjective impressions imagined out of nothing. In the realm of fantasy, it’s easy to demonstrate psionic talents, astral entities, and magical manifestations. Until they do that in reality too, then science has nothing but nature to work with.”

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

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, Religion, Imagination

“The meaning of relativity has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, World

“The world is not a box, there’s no lid, no doors, no cardboard flaps or locks, and everything in nature from the clouds to the rocks is a piece of the puzzle of the purpose of mankind, it's a piece of the peace that we’ll find.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The People of The Boxes"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

World, Peace, Nature, Box

“Roger: To some degree everyone is involved ya know what I mean. Chris doesn’t really do that much, he’s the lead singer he’s allowed to do whatever he wants. He’s that guy. I kind of deal with all the audio stuff and Buddy [Schaub, trombonist] deals with all the video stuff and [Peter] JR [Wasilewiski, saxophonist] deals with all the online stuff and Vinnie deals with everything else and we have a great publicist named Rey [Roldan] he totally does what we need him to do. It’s a different world but a lot of bands are doing it and you know it’s a way to stay on a smooth track not to have any kind of weird outside voices.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

World, Way, Guy

“As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest. That's been reported very widely. Despite that, I don't want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can't. And I understand why the president can't have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.”

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

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Law, Way, Understanding

“My grand total for the free film was $132,000, and that is a business model I am totally sticking to. And everything that I do now is totally free.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

46m02s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7mB_WlihQo#t=46m02s Nina Paley on: Sita Sings the Blues: The Ramayana and 'Free Culture' (2009)

Business

“Acting requires so much delving into yourself and exposing yourself, so it's sensible to be wondering, Do I still want to be doing this? But I enjoy the work, and everything is so solid at home. I don't care if they say I've had buttock implants. Or not. I don't care. Go ahead! That's the nice thing about getting to the age I am. I could have said I didn't care before -- but secretly I did. And now I really don't.”

Kate Beckinsale (1973) English actress

Allure magazine, March 2008.

Age, Home

“He was the outlier of a new type: the first twentieth-century personality to be famous for being famous. If he toured Africa with 17 pieces of matched luggage, or got hit by a car crossing Fifth Avenue in New York, he wrote about it. His life became a forerunner of reality TV; in today’s terms, he did everything to seek celebrity but release a sex tape. A great question of Churchill biography, therefore, is how this Paris Hilton of British politics became the second coming of King Arthur.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Churchill’s Finest Hour (2009)

Life, Sex, Cars, Question

“I have come one step away from everything and here I stay, far from everything, one step away.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

He llegado a un paso de todo. Y aquí me quedo, lejos de todo, un paso.
Voces (1943)

“You know, you put more value on every minute … I mean, I always thought I kind of did that. I really always enjoyed myself. But it's more valuable now. You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich, and every minute of playing with the guys, and being with the kids and everything.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

Remarks on his attitude after discovering he had terminal mesothelioma, on The Late Show with David Letterman (30 October 2002)

Guy

“You can take the darkness from the deep of the night
And turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright
I gotta follow it 'cause everything I know
Well, it's nothing 'till I give it to you.”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Making Love out of Nothing at All (1983)

Night

“For when a ship is floating calmly along, the sailors see its motion mirrored in everything outside, while on the other hand they suppose that they are stationary, together with everything on board. In the same way, the motion of the earth can unquestionably produce the impression that the entire universe is rotating.”

Nicolaus Copernicus book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

Book 1, Ch. 8
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)

Way, Universe

“Today I was on the Rue Laffette where the art dealers are. There is so much of interest to see here. You know the things that you call 'the artistic' in art. The French possess to a high degree this sense of not having to bring everything to a pitch of perfection. The mobility in their nature really comes to their aid there. We Germans always obediently paint our pictures from top till bottom, and are much to ponderous to do the little oil-sketches and improvisations which so often say more than a finished painting.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her husband Otto Modersohn, from Boulevard Raspail 203, Paris, 14 February 1903; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 292
1900 - 1905

Art, Nature, Sense, Painting

“I always feel ill-prepared for commentaries and it had been so long I was afraid I'd forget everything that happened on the film. But having everybody come together for it was really great. It was like a high school reunion. We all reminisced and just had a great time.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

A Talk With David Fincher (1999)

School, Feeling, Time, Forgetting

“You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

“Keep in mind that when the first A-bomb was developed as a defense against Nazism, moral objections and conscience of scientists and many others involved were lulled by assurances that everything would be over after production of a few bombs.”

Yevgeniy Chazov (1929) Russian physician

Tragedy and Triumph of Reason (1985)

“At first glance, My Super Sweet 16 appears to be a sugary bit of reality drizzle about some irritating American brats, but the more you watch it the more you realize it’s actually a stonehearted exposé of everything that’s wrong with our faltering so-called civilization.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe

Reality, Appearance

“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 3: The Yosemite National Park

Beauty, Nature

“Everything has a time; it’s not necessary that everyone gets a break at the age of 16. There are so many renowned actors and singers who have got their break much later in life. Don’t hurry and let the music remain pure.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

‘Don’t hurry’ http://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20140716/ARTICLE/307169979/1057

Life, Age, Music, Time

“You see, some people have a talent for programming. At ten to thirteen years old, typically, they're fascinated, and if they use a program, they want to know: “How does it do this?” But when they ask the teacher, if it's proprietary, the teacher has to say: “I'm sorry, it's a secret, we can't find out.” Which means education is forbidden. A proprietary program is the enemy of the spirit of education. It's knowledge withheld, so it should not be tolerated in a school, even though there may be plenty of people in the school who don't care about programming, don't want to learn this. Still, because it's the enemy of the spirit of education, it shouldn't be there in the school.
But if the program is free, the teacher can explain what he knows, and then give out copies of the source code, saying: “Read it and you'll understand everything.” And those who are really fascinated, they will read it! And this gives them an opportunity to start to learn how to be good programmers.
To learn to be a good programmer, you'll need to recognize that certain ways of writing code, even if they make sense to you and they are correct, they're not good because other people will have trouble understanding them. Good code is clear code that others will have an easy time working on when they need to make further changes.
How do you learn to write good clear code? You do it by reading lots of code, and writing lots of code. Well, only free software offers the chance to read the code of large programs that we really use. And then you have to write lots of code, which means you have to write changes in large programs.
How do you learn to write good code for the large programs? You have to start small, which does not mean small program, oh no! The challenges of the code for large programs don't even begin to appear in small programs. So the way you start small at writing code for large programs is by writing small changes in large programs. And only free software gives you the chance to do that.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

A Free Digital Society - What Makes Digital Inclusion Good or Bad? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.html#education; Lecture at Sciences Po in Paris (19 October 2011)] 2010s

People, Secret, Education, School

“My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Bjartur talking with Asta Sollilja
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

Men, Night

“Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross

“Everything in nature completes its action through its own force and species alone… as, for example, fire by its own force dries and consumes and does many things. Therefore vision must perform the act of seeing by its own force. But the act of seeing is the perception of a visible object at a distance, and therefore vision perceives what is visible by its own force multiplied to the object. Moreover, the species of the things of world are not fitted by nature to effect the complete act of vision at once, because of its nobleness. Hence these must be aided by the species of the eye, which travels in the locality of the visual pyramid, and changes the medium and ennobles it, and renders it analogous to vision, and so prepares the passage of the species itself of the visible object… Concerning the multiplication of this species, moreover, we are to understand that it lies in the same place as the species of the thing seen, between the sight and the thing seen, and takes place along the pyramid whose vertex is in the eye and base in the thing seen. And as the species of an object in the same medium travels in a straight path and is refracted in different ways when it meets a medium of another transparency, and is reflected when it meets the obstacles of a dense body; so is it also true of the species of vision that it travels altogether along the path of the species itself of the visible object.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

Bacon, like Grosseteste, asserts that both the active extramitted species of vision from the eye, and the intramitted species of light from object seen, were necessary for sight.
v. i. vii. 4, ed. Briggs as quoted in A.C. Crombie, Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)
Opus Majus, c. 1267

World, Way, Travel, Understanding

“Everything is done for! All of humanity! The whole world!. … Look, look, streams of blood on every doorstep! Streams of blood from every house! Oh, God, God, who's responsible for this?”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

God, World, Housing

“I couldn't give a damn, [he said]. Writing is where I succeeded. I was a flop in everything else.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Khushwant Singh releases his last book

“When I was a small child, for some reason—and I don’t know if this was from cartoons or movies or what—I was very frightened of skeletons. I also was very afraid of the dark. I used to have incredibly terrible nightmares. I was afraid of everything as a child. Now look what I’m doing.”

Rich Koz (1952) American actor and comedian

Rich Koz http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2017/Rich-Koz/ (October 27, 2017)

“In the end, everything came down to money. It came down to what a person actually did, as opposed to who they thought they were,…”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Marilyn Bonner, Chapter 6, p. 94
2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Money, Personality

“Everything is in decline the moment you stop giving the artist freedom. That goes for everywhere, but it is happening in America right now. I think record companies are at great fault. In general, they don’t want to develop talent, but rather get the most out of them in the short term. They’re steering people to do things they perhaps wouldn’t do but have to do and not everyone has the integrity to say “No way.” People are hungry and they have to make money and take care of their families, so it’s a great pressure. Only when you can afford it from an artistic or financial point of view can you express what you want to express.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

On how the record industry in America represses artist freedom and talents from upcoming artists
Prasad interview (1997)

Money, People, Family, Way

“To me, the circle and the square where the sky and the earth, as symbolized by the ancient Oriental religions; they formed a kind of rudimentary alphabet by means of which everything could be expressed with the most limited means. They evoked prehistoric runes and the early I-Ching, or Book of Changes.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 98

Books, Religion, Change

“"Grigory Petrovitch, let us weep, let us weep with joy!" he said in a thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw. "Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works well, lots of screws in it."”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 3, pp. 193-4

Law, Joy, Daughters

“There are two ways you can read the Bible. One is with the light off. By that I mean that you can read it with a proud heart, looking for mistakes, marking seeming contradictions, believing you are intellectually superior to what you are reading. The second way is with the light on. By that I mean with a humble heart, believing that you don't know everything, and that you could gain knowledge by studying the world's greatest-selling book of all time.”

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

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Books, World, Way, Knowledge

“So far you have been treated as an officer and a gentleman, but don't think that this will go on if you don't behave better than you have done. You have two hours left in which to confess everything. If you don't, I shall hand you over to the Gestapo, who are used to dealing with such gangsters and criminals — you won't enjoy their methods a bit.”

Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) German Nazi official during World War II

To Captain Sigismund Payne Best, as quoted in The Venlo Incident (1950) by Sigismund Payne Best, p. 41

Thinking

“Piet Mondrian realizes the importance of line. The line has almost become a work of art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important. The white canvas is almost solemn. Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything – that is, the spiritual.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from 'Eenheid' [Dutch art-magazine] no. 283, 6 November 1915; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, pp. 105–106
1912 – 1919

Art, Color

“We demand about everything of ourselves but discrimination in what we demand.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 82

“I found, once I passed the age of forty, that I have a good sense of humor. It’s only through that I can keep stuﬀ oﬀ and go through my life. If you sit and try to take on everything that is going on out there, you’re going to end up with problems. That’s where I feel music. And music becomes the way in which I express feelings. And, because it allows me to have contact with my emotions, it’s a constant catharsis, not just playing and writing. By doing that, you alleviate something inside of you. And who knows where that comes from?”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

Life, Age, Music, Way

“It was time, he thought, that tore everything to shreds.”

Harry Mulisch book The Discovery of Heaven

Source: The Discovery of Heaven (1992), Ch. 36

Time

“"Is that true," I asked, "that song?"
"It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth."
"And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?"
"The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not–a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

"At The End Of The Mechanical Age".
Sixty Stories (1981)

Truth, Age, Understanding, Water

“I just revelled in that High Mass at Beuron Abbey on All Saints' Day.. Of course it's a spectacle, but that's just what makes sense, the very same sense as monasticism in general…ritual as the reflection of glory. How marvellously impersonal it is - the strict anonymity of the monks, even more impressive when they raise their hoods. They are just figures and voices. What an achievement to divest oneself of everything private, individual, to enact this holy drama day after day, indifferent to one's personal mood, representing all of us simply as mouth of the Church.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Mood, Sense, Personality, Indifference

“Accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, 5 but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 15. Of the Education of Children
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“They pursued die enemy to the gates and set everything on fire. They burnt down all those gardens and groves. That paradise of idol-worshippers became like hell. The fire-worshippers of Bud were in alarm and flocked round their idols…”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan Mubarak Shah Khalji (AD 1316-1320) in Warrangal (Andhra Pradesh) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 559
Nuh Siphir

Hell

“There was a time in the middle of my depression when I basically stopped eating. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight or anything — I just forgot to eat. I got down to 145 pounds, which is pretty skinny. I'm 6'3". And then I read an article in a magazine by a doctor talking about his experiences with anorexia, and everything started to make sense — the aches in the joints, the headaches, the way my bones felt as if I could bend them with my hands. I started eating again. That was much better.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On depression and suicide

Way, Sense, Time, Reading

“And I stare at the phone, he still hasn't called.
And then you feel so low you can't feel nothing at all.
And you flash back to when he said forever and always.
Oh, and it rains in your bedroom,
Everything is wrong.
It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone.
'Cause I was there when you said forever and always.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Forever & Always.
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)

Feeling

“I'm only warming up. I had a fantastic season, I proved age is just a number, Everything is in your head. Whatever you want to do you will do it. It's a master mind game. If I want to make it I'll make it. If I want to do it I'll do it.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

Talking about his age doesn't affect his game http://www.espn.in/football/soccer-transfers/story/2880702/zlatan-ibrahimovic-has-made-choice-amid-manchester-united-talk Attributed

Age, Game, Season

“Gentlemen, I speak for myself as well as for you: I never read anything about what may come before me in a Court of Justice; I keep my mind free from everything of the kind. There is often a necessity for me to look into the law: but I never suffer my mind to be biassed by reports, or such papers or pamphlets as are written with a view to pervert justice.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Wilkes' Case (1763), 19 How. St. Tr. 1410.

Justice, Law, Suffering, Reading

“Yes perhaps, as the Sage says, "nothing worthy of proving can be proven, nor yet disproven"; but can we restrain that instinct which urges man to wish to know, and above all to wish to know the things which conduce to life, to eternal life? Eternal life, not eternal knowledge as the Alexandrian gnostic said. For living is one thing and knowing is another; and… perhaps there is an opposition between the two that we may say that everything vital is anti-rational, not merely irrational, and that everything rational is anti-vital. And this is the basis of the tragic sense of life.”

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

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

Life, Knowledge, Sense

“Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand; the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote of Breton, from the Introduction of his 'Manifesto du Surréalisme', Andre Breton, 1924
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Children, World, Sleep

“I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Interview with Anna Tilroe, 1987; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Abstract paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/abstract-paintings-7 1980's

Nature, Reality, Painting, Falseness

“Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"LOOK Magazine Article 'The Arts in America' (552)" (18 December 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1962

Life, Art, Lovers, Success

“[Everything] ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

Nature

“I am a diehard romantic. My all time favorite romantic movie would be Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa. Waheeda Rehmanji’s role in the movie is something I would love to do in my career. My role in Aashiqui 2 had shades that came close to it. Also, Titanic and The Notebook are on my favourite films list. My idea of romance revolves around everything I’ve grown up watching in our Bollywood movies. Our romances are like fairy tales, something that every romantic freak, especially girls would love to experience.”

Shraddha Kapoor (1987) Indian film actress & Singer

I’m a diehard romantic - Shraddha Kapoor via Filmfare (April 30, 2013) http://www.filmfare.com/interviews/im-a-diehard-romantic-shraddha-kapoor-3014.html

Love, Girl, Idea, Time

“You think that you exist because you’re unhappy. Other people exist merely as a function of their problems and spend all their time talking compulsively about their children, their wives and husbands, school, work, friends. They never stop to think: I’m here. I am the result of everything that happened and will happen, but I’m here. If I did something wrong, I can put it right or at least ask forgiveness. If I did something right, that leaves me happier and more connected with the now.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Children, People, School, Forgiveness

“For the amoral herd that fears boredom above all else, everything becomes entertainment. Sex and sport, politics and the arts are transformed into entertainment. … Nothing is immune from the demand that boredom be relieved (but without personal involvement, for mass society is a spectator society).”

Merold Westphal (1940)

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 50

Fear, Art, Sex, Sport

“I must treat with reverence everything which Lord Kenyon has said: but not everything which text writers have represented him to have said, which he did not say.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Lefroy, C.J., Persse v. Kinneen (1859), (Lr. Rep.) L. T. Vol. 1 (N. S.), 78.
About

“Poor man want to be rich
Rich man want to be king
And a king ain't satisfied
Till he rules everything.
I want to go out tonight
I want to find out what I got.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Badlands"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

“First there was space—endless, limitless space, so far from everything, so brutal, so frigid, so uncaring that it numbed the mind, not so much from fear or loneliness as from the realization that in this eternity of space the thing that was himself was dwarfed to an insignificance no yardstick could measure.”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

“The Thing in the Stone” (p. 220)
Short Fiction, Skirmish (1977)

Fear, Loneliness

“And so it went on, day after day. This was not the first time that those who had at first smiled at him turned their backs on him and began to think of themselves isntead of thinking of him. Sometimes it was as if you understood people's souls; a few days later, you understood nothing. One day you were kissed, and it meant everything; next day, you were not kissed.... He consoled himself by looking at his exercise books with the poems approaching the thousand total soon, and more. Perhaps the world would some day understand that the heart existed. Some day.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

People, Books, World, Smile

“When everything hurries everywhere, nothing goes anywhere.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Sign and Its Children

"Sign and Speed," p. 19
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “The Sign and Nothing”

“A true aphorism legitimates itself; whoever feels the need to legitimate an aphorism, admits that it is illegal. The surface of an aphorism should conceal profound truth. The claim that everybody can learn everything is superficial, but is as wrong as it can be. As a matter of fact, it is no aphorism but an advertising slogan, and the excuse that it is an aphorism, is a mere wink: in advertising you cannot do without exaggerating. But even as a wink it does not become more true.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Hans Freudenthal (1977), Weeding and Sowing: Preface to a Science of Mathematical Education, p. 56

Truth, Feeling, Learning

“What is reality? What is space? And what is time? These are the three questions that we want to investigate taking into account the knowledge that we have gained by modern physics. Our intuitive prescientific conception of the world in relation with these three concepts is not very precise but could be summarised as follows.
- Reality is everything that exists now in the present. The past has been real but is not anymore and the future is what shall become real but is not yet.
- Space is the theatre where reality is in. It englobes all of reality.
Till the birth of relativity theory all physical theories where compatible with this intuitive scheme. But when relativity theory entered the scene, these intuitive conceptions of space and time, and what is less recognised even till today, also the conception of reality, has got into problems.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Diederik Aerts (2001) " Time, space and reality : an analysis from physics. http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/publications/2001TimeSpaceReality.pdf"

World, Birth, Question, Knowledge

“There can be help. There's always God," said Amy. "I'm ashamed. I'd forgotten about Him.” She was quiet for a time. When she lifted her head she looked older and resolute. “Don’t blame yourself too much, Cousin Caroline,” she said. “That’s as bad as taking no blame at all. I’m not going to blame everything on Ames; I was a little fool myself. I was old enough to know that things aren’t simple.”

Taylor Caldwell book A Prologue to Love

A Prologue to Love (1961)
1960s

God, Fools, Time, Help

“Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life, Health, Hope

“When, in the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to free art from the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a white field. The critics and, along with them, the public sighed, 'Everything which we loved was lost. We are in a desert... Before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

But the desert is filled with the spirit of non-objective feeling.. ..which penetrates everything.
In 'The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism', 1926; trans. Howard Dearstyne [Dover, 2003, ISBN 0-486-42974-1], 'part II: Suprematism', p. 68
1921 - 1930

Love, Art, Feeling

“My wife [Barbra] and I were walking with a friend, and we walked over to Jerry [Rubin] and his buddy… my wife said to him… ‘Hey, Jerry, I really dug your speech.’… ‘I did like the part about private property being pure s_.’ And Jerry got into it and said: ‘Yea, well property is s_ and after the revolution we will divide everything up. Like there won’t be anything private. My shirt will be your shirt and my car will be your car. And it will be one big commune.’…Barbra went on. ‘That’s a fantastic Indian head band you have on Jerry.’
Retort: ‘Yea. It was given to me by a friend.’
Barbra: ‘Why don’t you give it to me?’
Jerry: ‘Huh?’
Barbra: ‘You said that private property was s_ so why won’t you give me your head band.’
Well, Rubin looked astonished and blurted out: ‘But it’s my head band.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left Today: American Trojan Horse (1971), p. 127

Cars, Communication, Parting

“.. as I met with Mr. (Dunning there. There is something exclusive of the clear and deep understanding of that gentleman most exceedingly pleasing to me. He seems the only man who talks as Giardini plays, if you know what I mean; he puts no more motion than what goes to the real performance, which constitutes that ease and gentility peculiar to damned clever fellows... He is an amazing compact man in every respect.... and besides this neatness in outward appearance, his storeroom seems cleared of all French ornaments and gingerbread work, everything is simplicity and elegance and in its proper place, no disorder or confusion in the furniture.... Sober sense and great acuteness are marked very strong in his face.... but there is genius (in our sense of the word). (It) shines in all he says. In short, Mr. Jackson of Exeter [his friend], I begin to think there is something in the air of Devonshire that grows clever fellows. I could name four or five of you, superior to the product of any other county in England.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept. 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 384 (Appendix A - Letter VII) 1755 - 1769

Understanding, Thinking, Sense, Strong

“What was most odd was that teachers would tell you what to do and what to think and they would write everything on a blackboard and you would copy it all down.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Evening Standard - 04/07/2002
Childhood

Thinking, Teachers

“We live in a liberal democracy…. That’s what we created in this country. I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment… It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We've got to get it back.”

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

Interview with Bill Maher, on Real Time with Bill Maher (5 September 2003) http://www.safesearching.com/billmaher/print/t_hbo_realtime_090503.htm

People, Religion, Democracy, Idea

“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39 https://books.google.de/books?id=dwDWCAhP5EMC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=character. 1830s

Money, World, Question

“Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Introduction
The Echo of Greece (1957)

Men, Art, Thinking, Freedom

“Every department was trying to squeeze everything possible out of the Jews, to winkle it out by threatening them with the big bad Eichmann.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

“The less the expertise, the more direct the surveillance, and the more obtrusive the controls. The more the expertise, the more unobtrusive the controls. The best situation of all, though they do not come cheap, is to hire professionals, for someone else has socialized them and even unobtrusive controls are hardly needed. The professional, the prima donna of organizational theory, is really the ultimate eunuch - capable of doing everything well in that harem except that which he should not do, and in this case that is to mess around with the goals of the organization, or the assumptions that determine to what ends he will use his professional skills.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, "Is business really changing?." Organizational Dynamics 3.1 (1974): 31-44.
1970s

“We don't want teenagers to write violent poems, horrifying stories, explicit lyrics and rhymes; they're ugly, in precisely the way that we are ugly, and out of protectiveness and hypocrisy, even out of pity and love and tenderness, we try to force young people to be innocent of everything but the effects of that ugliness.So we censor the art they consume and produce, and prosecute and suspend and expel them, and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it.Let teenagers languish, therefore, in their sense of isolation, without outlet or nourishment, bereft of the only thing that makes it all bearable: knowing that somebody else has felt the way that you feel, has faced it, run from it, rued it, lamented it and transformed it into art; has been there, and returned, and lived, for the only good reason we have: to tell the tale.How confident we shall be, once we have done this, of never encountering the ugliness again! How happy our children will be, and how brave, and how safe!”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Nanny Nation

Love, Happiness, Children, People

“I am here to warn Australia about the true nature of Islam. It is not just a religion as many people mistakenly think; it is primarily a dangerous totalitarian ideology. If we do not oppose Islam, we will lose everything: our freedom, our identity, our democracy, our rule of law, and all our liberties.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"Who’s afraid of Geert Wilders? Populism and the politics of hate", The Conversation (20 February 2013) http://theconversation.com/whos-afraid-of-geert-wilders-populism-and-the-politics-of-hate-12326 2010s

People, Religion, Law, Democracy