Quotes about exception
page 15

“As far as women are concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than the men, except when men painted them in colors which men liked best. Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional in the renaissance.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Women, Men, Color, Painting

“Kuhn cannot take seriously that “there is some one full, objective, true account of nature.” Does this mean that he does not take truth seriously? Not at all. […]
Kuhn did reject a simple “correspondence theory” which says true statements correspond to facts about the world. […]
In the wave of skepticism that swept American scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, many influential intellectuals took Kuhn as an ally in their denials of truth as a virtue. I mean the thinkers of the sort that cannot write down or utter the word true except by literally or figuratively putting quotation marks around it—to indicate how they shudder at the very thought of so harmful a notion. Many reflective scientists, who admire much of what Kuhn says about the sciences, believe he encouraged deniers.
It is true that Structure gave enormous impetus to sociological studies of science. Some of that work, with its emphasis on the idea that facts are “socially constructed” and apparent participation in the denial of “truth,” is exactly what conservative scientists protest against. Kuhn made plain that he himself detested that development of his work…”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Truth, World, Idea, Nature

“Barriers of sea, or desert, or mountain, could never have been of the least avail, had the creative force acted independently of material laws, or had it not pleased the Author of Nature that the origin of new species should be governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very closely resembling them.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 423

Law, Mountain, Nature, Parent

“All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her sexuality, p. 309
Autobiography

Love, Sex, Disappointment, Feeling

““So what do you think will happen?” Sawyer asked the barman who was drawing his mid-morning pint.
“Dunno,” the man grunted. “Except one thing. I know we’ve been led by fools and rogues, but this is the first time we’ve ever been led by a criminal!””

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 23 (p. 177)

Fools, Thinking, Time, Drawing

“She was forcing it with her scorn, the kiss she gave me, the hard curl of her lips, the mockery of her eyes, until I was like a man made of wood and there was no feeling within me except terror and a fear of her, a sense that her beauty was too much, that she was so much more beautiful than I, deeper rooted than I. She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all of those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and all that piffle.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Money, Fear, Beauty, Feeling

“He fell behind his brothers two or three inches in height, and proportionally in bone and weight. His character and processes of mind seemed to share in this fining-down process of scale. He was not good in a fight, and his nerves were more delicate than boys' nerves ought to be. He exaggerated these weaknesses as he grew older. The habit of doubt; of distrusting his own judgment and of totally rejecting the judgment of the world; the tendency to regard every question as open; the hesitation to act except as a choice of evils; the shirking of responsibility; the love of line, form, quality; the horror of ennui; the passion for companionship and the antipathy to society — all these are well-known qualities of New England character in no way peculiar to individuals but in this instance they seemed to be stimulated by the fever, and Henry Adams could never make up his mind whether, on the whole, the change of character was morbid or healthy, good or bad for his purpose. His brothers were the type; he was the variation.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love, World, Way, Boy

“And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister's shame.”

George Gordon Byron The Giaour

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 418.

Sister, Tear

“It looks as if the war in Europe is rapidly moving towards a conclusion. Probably I am wrong about that but I can't see how it can be otherwise. It seems clear that the Allies are outclassed on mechanical equipment, and it is foolish to talk about modernizing their Armies in times like these, they ought to have thought of that five years ago. There is no excuse for them not thinking of that except for the unintelligent, in fact, stupid, narrow-minded and selfish leadership which the democracies of the world are cursed with.
It is all very well as everybody is in the same position, but when some other system develops stronger leadership, works hard and long, and intelligently and aggressively—which are good traits—and, superimposed upon that, develops the instinct of a racketeer, there is nothing for the democracies to do but fold up. And that is about what it looks as if they are going to do.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (June 1940) cited in: David Farber (2003). Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors. p. 225

War, Stupidity, World, Democracy

“In spite of all the foregoing, there is a science of economics, a true, and even exact, science, which reaches laws as universal as those of mathematics and mechanics. The greatest need for the development of economics as a growing body of thought and practice is an adequate appreciation of the meaning, and the limitations, of this body of accurate premises and rigorously established conclusions. It comes about in the same general way as all science, except perhaps in a higher degree, i. e., through abstraction. There are no laws regarding the content of economic behavior, but there are laws universally valid as to its form. There is an abstract rationale of all conduct which is rational at alt, and a rationale of all social relations arising through the organization of rational activity.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)

Law, Way, Behavior, Mathematics

“Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer”

Bjarne Stroustrup book The C++ Programming Language

[Stroustrup, Bjarne, The C++ Programming Language, 467]

“On the whole, I do not like the French as well as the Germans; the French are extremely reserved toward strangers… Everybody works for himself without concern for others. All want to instruct, and nobody wants to learn. The most absolute egotism reigns everywhere. The only thing the French look for in strangers is the practical; no one can think except himself, he is the only one who can produce anything theoretical. This is the way he thinks and so you can understand it is really difficult to be noticed, particularly for a beginner.”

Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician

Letter to Bernt Michael Holmboe (ca. 1826) as quoted by Øystein Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: Mathematician Extraordinary (1957)

Way, Understanding, Thinking, Learning

“No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance — and a whole lot of luck.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

American Cinematographer (October 1971)

“In a vision I beheld the fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole creation, that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceive nothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totally indescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: "This world is pregnant with God!" Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation -- that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else -- but the power of God fills it all to overflowing.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 169-170

God, World, Soul, Sea

“The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#149
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Game, Passion

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Life, Men, Beauty, Way

“I do think my judgment is superior to (Juan Cole's) when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

which I can hardly spare right now February 8, 2005 http://web.archive.org/web/20050209/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502081153.asp 2000s, 2005

War, Idea, Thinking, Time

“I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Art, Home, Nature, Universe

“Do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 204.

Love, Beauty, Home, Communication

“I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.”

Daniel Handler book The Beatrice Letters

The Beatrice Letters (2006)

“As so often in Indo-Pakistani and Hindu-Muslim comparisons, the argument is reminiscent of the inequality between the contenders in the Cold War: you could demonstrate for disarmament in the West, but to demonstrate for this in the East Bloc (except if it were for unilateral disarmament by the Western “war-mongers”) would have put you in trouble.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

War

“I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Letter sent to the ECLC after Dylan received the Tom Paine Award at the Bill of Rights dinner on December 13, 1963, as reported in "Mr. Dylan Regrets" http://www.hotpress.com/Bob-Dylan/music/interviews/Mr-Dylan-Regrets/2836632.html by Niall Stokes, Hot Press (11 November 2005)

“Ibn Asir only says that Qutbuddin Aibak made ‘war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same author, “the slaughter of the Hindus was immense, none was spared except women and children,”16 who would have been enslaved as per practice.”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description …” Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Women, Children, War

“People are not aware how entirely, in former ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly — for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1

Life, People, Age, Law

“They would go off to college and when they come home they'd pick up their interest in me, like a parent … One of my sister had me in Eton collars and tunics; then she went off and another came home and disapproved of those dull clothes and put me in some fancy little things. Everyone was trying to do something to me, except my mother. She was indifferent.”

Isabel Bishop (1902–1988) American painter

As quoted in The "new Woman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street, p. 56, by Ellen Wiley Todd. Editorial University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 0520074718.

Home, Parent, Sister, Clothes

“They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight; and that she hardly cares for any thing, except to meditate on him— that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight for ever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Written in 1723; from The Works of President Edwards, vol. I, ed. Sereno B. Dwight, 1830.
The young woman described here was Sarah Pierrepont, who became Edwards' wife in 1727.

Love, God, Pain, Pleasure

“And comparing what happened in England—after all, in England the Parliament in Westminster was making laws for the West Indies. The West Indians didn't have any representation in the Parliament. The laws were made for them, and they had to go along with it. There was no such power within the Federal government to interfere with slavery, except by limiting the expansion of slavery. And it was Lincoln’s belief—and I think the best economic analysis that we have of the American economy in the antebellum United States indicates—that if the expansion of slavery had been ended, and if it was no longer possible for surplus slaves to be sold from the old states to new territories, that the pressure within the states to adopt programs of emancipation would become great enough to do that.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Law, Thinking

“It is perhaps worth while saying that semantics as conceived in this paper (and in former papers of the author) is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions to being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflicts. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense.”

Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) Polish-American logician

Source: The Semantic Conception of Truth (1952), p. 17; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 90.

Disease, Universe

“You can't give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“I'm also lumbered with the title of being a writer's writer, which is the worst possible reputation you can have, because, of course, other writers don't read other writers except to gain evidence against them. And it puts readers off.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

Reading

“For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay —
Except the dream that's almost dead today.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Let America Be America Again (1935)

Dreams, Hope, Dead

“No one ever squared the circle with so much genius, or, excepting his principal object, with so much success.”

Jean-Étienne Montucla (1725–1799) French mathematician

Attributed to Montucla in Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, (London, 1872), p. 96; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book, (1914) p. 366
About Gregory St. Vincent, described by De Morgan as "the greatest of circle-squarers, and his investigations led him into many truths: he found the property of the arc of the hyperbola which led to Napier's logarithms being called hyperbolic."

Success

“What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But… things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 56-57

Death, Men, People, Truth

“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday.In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires — this is a benevolent form. The ideal self expressed in letters is not a crudely sugary affair except in dreary personalities; in any case the ideal is very much a part of the character, having its twenty-four hours a day to get through, and being no less unique in its combinations than one's fingerprints.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Anderson, Millay and Crane in Their Letters" (p. 133)
American Fictions (1999)

Dreams, Hope, Art, Communication

“When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature. We no longer cure disease by casting out devils.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Books, Disease, Religion, Law

“Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

World, Freedom

“Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man — the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings. … The value of words help to define the feeling itself. … The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: The Cult of Sincerity (1969), p. 16

Feeling, Failure, Memory, Help

“Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

"Florence Green is 81".
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Girl, Intelligence, Light

“The victory… was complete except for one final indignity. That was to Americanize the Indian… to exterminate the cultures along with the Indians. …Orders went out from Washington that all male Indians must cut their hair short, even though many Indians believed that long hair had supernatural significance. …Army reinforcements were sent to the reservations to carry out the order, and in some cases Indians had to be shackled before they submitted. …attention of the Americanizers was concentrated on the Indian children, who were snatched from their families and shipped to boarding schools far from their homes… usually … for eight years, during which time they were not permitted to see their parents, relatives, or friends. Anything Indian—dress, language, religious practices, even outlook on life… was uncompromisingly prohibited. …They had suffered psychological death at an early age.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Life, Death, Children, Age

“Is it possible to understand what God's love means for the oppressed without making wrath an essential ingredient of that love? What could love possibly mean in a racist society except the righteous condemnation of everything racist? Most theological treatments of God's love fail to place the proper emphasis on God's wrath, suggesting that love is completely self-giving without any demand for obedience.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 73

Love, God, Understanding

“This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame… Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap -- far cheaper than in 1927-29 -- and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, "Vision and Boundless Hope and Optimism" p. 10

Men, Money, People, Time

“"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked.
"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

page 4-5
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Life, Flowers, Mathematics, Idea

“Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

People, Secret, World

“I reacted to Cézanne almost the same way as you [= Rosalyn Drexler ], the first time I saw him when I was 14... Then I saw my first Cezanne and it jolted me. It was a 'Bathers' [Cézanne painted several of them]. I didn't think he drew well at all. I thought the figures looked stiff and wooden, but I was enthralled by it. I knew there was something there that was going to take me a lifetime to understand. What I took to be the crudity of his technique — that opened a door for me. I began to look at everything differently. That was the year [1932] I discovered Matisse, Picasso, Degas, Soutine — I began to go to the Museum of Modern Art every week. At the same time, I loved New Yorker covers — and El Greco. I didn't mind mixing things up. Nobody was going to tell me what to like or what not to like. Until I was 17 I thought all real artists (I didn't count commercial artists) were dead or foreign with the exceptions of Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin, whose work I had seen at 'An American Place.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

n.p.
1950 - 1971, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists' - Rosalyn Drexler with Elaine de Kooning (1971)

Love, Art, Way, Understanding

“We have received no single argument in favour of this document except political pressure. No link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. No other objective facts have been presented in recent time. The IPCC's reports in 1990 and 1995 show it clearly.”

Andrey Illarionov (1961) Russian politician

"Q&A: Putin's Critical Adviser," 2005

Change, Time

“American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts to discuss it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, Literature, Parting, Personality

“With the possible exception of sex, there is no more basic human activity than eating, rendering it an appropriate candidate for Jewish rituals designed to maintain our focus on Godliness. The table is seen as an altar, and the concern with Kashrut extends to removing knives, instruments of war, from the table during the Birkat HaMazon (blessing after the meal). Tsaar baalei khayim, the concern for the pain of all living things and the reverence for life, is another essential aspect of kashrut. Vegetarianism is clearly the Torah's ideal; the Garden of Eden is a vegetarian society.”

Bonnie Koppell American rabbi

Source: Vegetarianism, p. 37

Life, Pain, War, Sex

“I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire.
Book I, Ch. 26
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

“The issue of 'science' does not intrude itself directly upon the occasion of the performance of a musical work, at least a non-electronically produced work, since—as has been said—there is at least a question as to whether the question as to whether musical composition is to be regarded as a science or not is indeed really a question; but there is no doubt that the question as to whether musical discourse or—more precisely—the theory of music should be subject to the methodological criteria of scientific method and the attendant scientific language is a question, except that the question is really not the normative one of whether it 'should be' or 'must be,' but the factual one that it is, not because of the nature of musical theory, but because of the nature and scope of scientific method and language, whose domain of application is such that if it is not extensible to musical theory, then musical theory is not a theory in any sense in which the term ever has been employed. This should sound neither contentious nor portentous, rather it should be obvious to the point of virtual tautology.”

Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) American composer

From Milton Babbitt, "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory", College Music Symposium, Vol. 5 (Fall 1965), pp. 49-60; reprinted in Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 10-21, ISBN 0393005488, and in Milton Babbitt, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles, with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph N. Straus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 191-201, ISBN 0691089663.

Music, Question, Nature, Sense

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Men, Money, Books, World

“There's fence against all things except death.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

Death

“I think that everybody has a backhoe in his or her head, and at moments of stress or trouble you can fire it up and simply push everything into a great big slit-trench in the floor of your conscious mind. Get rid of it. Bury it. Except that that slit-trench goes down into the subconscious, and sometimes, in dreams, the bodies stir and walk.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 18
Christine (1983)

Dreams, Thinking

“The newly emerging dominant group is "knowledge workers." The very term was unknown forty years ago. (I coined it in a 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow.) By the end of this century knowledge workers will make up a third or more of the work force in the United States--as large a proportion as manufacturing workers ever made up, except in wartime. The majority of them will be paid at least as well as, or better than, manufacturing workers ever were. And the new jobs offer much greater opportunities.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise of the knowledge worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Books, Knowledge

“With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now be written thus:—

By the term God, is meant a Prime Mover which supplies all energy to the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, being specially provided with an organism more complex than the organisms of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex action,— a power of reflexion,— which enables him within certain limits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called free choice or free-will. Of course, the reflexion is not choice, and though a man's mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a lighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energy which impels it to act. [...]

The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of dynamics as modern as the dynamo.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God, Universe

“In no way was Hitler the tool of big business. He was its lenient master. So was Mussolini except that he was weaker.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

A Socialist’s Faith, W. W. Norton, 1951, p. 53. Former presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

Way, Business

“One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human—except for the assurance that you’ll find a life after death—without the superstitions of religion.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. xxi

Life, Death, Religion

“The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose. He does not play cricket because it is a good game, but because it creates good citizens. He does not love motor-races for their own sake, but for the advantages they bring to the engineering firms of his country. And it is common knowledge that the devoted persons who conduct and regularly attend horse-races do not do so because they like it, but for the benefit of the breed of the English horse.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"Is Fox-Hunting Fun?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Love, Game, Knowledge, Horse

“Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, — oh what have I
That I can give you in return —
Except my body after I die?”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"June Night"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Love

“Love has made me a fool;
It set me on fire and watched as I floundered,
Unable to speak
Except to cry out and wait for your answer.
But you come around in your time,
Speaking of fabulous places.
Create an oasis;
Dries up as soon as you're gone.
You leave me here burning
In this desert without you.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Stupid
Song lyrics, Afterglow (2003)

Love, Fools, Time, Waiting

“Such a Zionist scenario misses the fact that the majority of American Jews are so assimilated into "whiteness" that they are no longer Jews, religiously or culturally, except by name.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness", Journal of Palestine Studies, 2002
On American Jewry

“So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes - with the exception of their occupation.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

World

“What was time, after all, except a lead-footed march from the precincts of youth into the country of the grave? Time was the force that crumbled granite, devoured memory, and seduced infants into senility—as implacable as a hanging judge and as poetic as a tank.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 177)

Youth, Memory, Time, Country

“The astonishing cluster of them [geniuses] that appeared in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. …what changed was the culture, which allowed exceptional minds to flourish.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Appearance, Change

“It is not known whether Martin ever completely accepted as a gentleman-scholar the Clay Tredgold who was devoted to everything about astronomy except studying it.”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925), Ch. 22

Study

“When there's nothing you can do except worry, that's a good time to worry.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

Kiera the Thief, in Orca (1996), Ch. 14

Time

“Art is like sex: when you're doing it, nothing else matters. Away from his desk the novelist can care deeply about the social, political, moral aspects of what he is writing but when he sits down to write, all those concerns fall away and nothing matters except the putting down of one carefully chosen word after another carefully chosen word, until a sentence is finished, then a paragraph, then a page, then a chapter, then a book. When I'm working I don't care about anything, not even myself. All my concentration is directed towards the making of the thing on the page. The rest is just stuff — even though it is the stuff of life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Life, Books, Art, Sex

“Only geometry can hand us the thread [which will lead us through] the labyrinth of the continuum’s composition, the maximum and the minimum, the infinitesimal and the infinite; and no one will arrive at a truly solid metaphysic except he who has passed through this [labyrinth].”
Nam filum labyrintho de compositione continui deque maximo et minimo ac indesignabili at que infinito non nisi geometria praebere potest, ad metaphysicam vero solidam nemo veniet, nisi qui illac transiverit.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Dissertatio Exoterica De Statu Praesenti et Incrementis Novissimis Deque Usu Geometriae (Spring 1676) Source: Leibniz, Leibnizens Mathematische Schriften, Herausgegeben Von C.I. Gerhardt. Bd. 1-7. 1850-1863. Halle. The quotation is found in vol. 7. on page 326 in ”Dissertatio Exoterica De Statu Praesenti et Incrementis Novissimis Deque Usu Geometriae”. Link https://archive.org/stream/leibnizensmathe12leibgoog Source: Geometry and Monadology: Leibniz's Analysis Situs and Philosophy of Space by Vincenzo de Risi. Page 123. Link https://books.google.no/books?id=2ptGkzsKyOQC&lpg=PA123&ots=qz2aKxAYtp&dq=Dissertatio%20Exoterica%20De%20Statu%20Praesenti%20et%20Incrementis%20Novissimis%20Deque%20Usu%20Geometriae%E2%80%9D&hl=no&pg=PA123#v=onepage&q&f=false

“Addition is the combination of any arbitrary repetitions of the above-mentioned simplest act into a single act; from it in a similar way arises multiplication. While the performance of these two operations is always possible, that of the inverse operations, subtraction and division, proves to be limited. Whatever the immediate occasion may have been, whatever comparisons or analogies with experience, or intuition, may have led thereto; it is certainly true that just this limitation in performing the indirect operations has in each case been the real motive for a new creative act; thus negative and fractional numbers have been created by the human mind; and in the system of all rational numbers there has been gained an instrument of infinitely greater perfection. This system, which I shall denote by R, possesses first of all a completeness and self-containedness which I have designated… as characteristic of a body of numbers [Zahlkőrper] and which consists in this, that the four fundamental operations are always performable with any two individuals in R, i. e., the result is always an individual of R, the single case of division by the number zero being excepted.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Way, Motivation, Perfection

“I was going to write about how I was going to take away women's right to vote, but that one is pretty obvious since nobody wants women to vote, except for women, and they don't count.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Looking for a safe stance on abortion? Me neither. http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=regressive The Best Page in the Universe

Women

“(…) There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. (…) What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Present moment
Source: "I am That." P.7.

Reality

“As the year draws to a close, the Congress of the Philippines is once more mandated by the Constitution to enact a national budget for the ensuing year. Section 29(1), Article VI of the Constitution provides that “No money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation by law.” And so today, Mr. President, I rise to sponsor, as Chairman of your Committee on Finance, the General Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2015.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Money, Law, Drawing

“We have no idea where the world is going, except that it's going there very fast.”

Jonathan Sacks (1948) British rabbi

Speech to Kenan Ethics department, 2009.
Universal, 2009

World, Idea

“And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

27 November 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Religion, Business, Parting

“4th. Savings in labor: (a) By the lowness of the walls… (b) in the use of unskilled labor in building walls, by backing the face stones with concrete, and placing the face stones in the forms dry without the use of mortar, except for pointing… (c) in the simplification of woodwork, especially in the hanging of windows and doors, and in the setting of trim… (d) in the application of hardware, chiefly on account of the kind of hinges used… (e) in the standardization of parts and the use of similar members… (f) by cutting about one-half the labor in the installation of plumbing drainage… and (g) by the greater use of machine and shop work, which the exposed structural members permit of.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Parting

“They rightly adminish us that Christ taught that our speech should be Yea, Yea, and Nay, Nayl yet they do not seem to me to understand it clearly, or if they do understand it to obeu it. For though in many places they should often have said Yea, it has never been Yea. When those leaders were banished, against whom we wrote as best we could, and asked for an oath they would not reply except to the effect that through the faith which they had in God they knew they would never return, and yet they soon returned. 'The Father,' each said, 'led me back through His will.' I know very well that it was the father - of lies who led them back; but they pretend to know it was the Heavenly Father. Here is something worth telling: when that George (whom they call a second Paul) of the House of Jacob [Blaurock], was cudgelled with rods among us even to the infernal gate and was asked by an officer of the Council to take oath and lift up his hands [in affirmation], he at first refused, as he had often done before and had persisted in doing. Indeed he had always said that he would rather die than take an oath. The officer of the Council then ordered him forthwith to lift his hands and make oath at once, 'or do you, policemen,' he said, 'lead him to prison.' But now persuaded by rods this George of the House of Jacob raised his hand to heven and followed the magistrate in the recitation of the aoth. So here you have the question confronting you, Catabaptists, whether that Pail of yours did or did not transgress the law. The law forbids to sweat about the least thing: he swore, so he transgressed the law. Hence this knot is knit: You would be speerated from the world, from lies, from those who walk not according to the resurection of Christ but in dead works? How then is it that you have not excommunicated that Apostate? Your Yea is not Yea with you nor your Nay, Nay, but the contrary; your Yea is Nay and your Nay, Yea. You follow neither Christ nor your own constitution.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

As quoted in ibid, p. 263-264

God, World, Faith, Law

“Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 8.

Affliction

“It has been reported from Sulaiman b. Buraid through his father that when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war, do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge; and do not mutilate (the dead) bodies; do not kill the children. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. Then invite them to migrate from their lands to the land of Muhajirs and inform them that, if they do so, they shall have all the privileges and obligations of the Muhajirs. If they refuse to migrate, tell them that they will have the status of Bedouin Muslims and will be subjected to the Commands of Allah like other Muslims, but they will not get any share from the spoils of war or Fai' except when they actually fight with the Muslims (against the disbelievers). If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them. When you lay siege to a fort and the besieged appeal to you for protection in the name of Allah and His Prophet, do not accord to them the guarantee of Allah and His Prophet, but accord to them your own guarantee and the guarantee of your companions for it is a lesser sin that the security given by you or your companions be disregarded than that the security granted in the name of Allah and His Prophet be violated When you besiege a fort and the besieged want you to let them out in accordance with Allah's Command, do not let them come out in accordance with His Command, but do so at your (own) command, for you do not know whether or not you will be able to carry out Allah's behest with regard to them.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Muslim, Book 019, Number 4294
Sunni Hadith

War, Children, Fear, Peace

“Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. … This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 77-78

Dreams, Freedom

“No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

The Latest Decalogue http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/misc/lastdecalogue.html, l. 3-4 (1862).

“Well, I still don't get it,' she said. 'The way you talk, it sounds calculating or something. Too cold. Planning every tiny detail.' 'And that's bad?' 'No. Not exactly.' 'What then?' She made a shifting motion with her shoulders. 'I don't know, it just seem strange, sort of. How you've figured everything out, all the angles, except what it's for.' 'For us,' he said. 'I love you, Kath.' 'But it feels — I shouldn't say this — it feels manipulating.'… He talked about leading a good life, doing good things for the world. Yet even as he spoke, John realized he was not telling the full truth. Politics was manipulation. (p. 35)”

Tim O'Brien (1946) American novelist

In the Lake of The Woods (1994)

Love, Life, Truth, World

“Chomsky just has not entered deeply into what he is talking about and he is not greatly interested in anything except digging out material for anti-American invective.”

Adrian Hastings (1929–2001) Roman Catholic priest, historian and author

Adrian Hastings (June 2001) " Chomsky and Kosova - book review http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=802&reportid=151" in Human Rights Review.

“The present government of Quebec is the most financially and intellectually corrupt in the history of the province. There are the shady deals, brazenly conducted, and the broken promises, most conspicuously that of last October to retain Bill 63… The government dragged out the ancient and totally fictitious spectre of assimilation to justify Bill 22 and its rejection of the right of free choice in education, its its reduction of English education to the lowest echelon of ministerial whim, its assault upon freedom of expression through the regulation of the internal and external language of businesses and other organizations, and its creation of a fatuous new linguistic bureaucracy that will conduct a system of organized denunciation, harassment, and patronage… There is a paralytic social sickness in Quebec. In all this debate, not a single French Quebecker has objected to Bill 22 on the grounds that it was undemocratic or a reduction of liberties exercised in the province. The Quebec Civil Liberties Union, founded by Pierre Trudeau, from which one might have expected such sentiments, has instead demanded the abolition of English education, and this through the spokemanship of Jean-Louis Roy, who derives his income from McGill University…. It is clear that Mr. Bourassa… is now going to try to eliminate the Parti Quebecois by a policy of gradual scapegoatism directed against the non-French elements in the province… The English community here, still deluding itself with the illusion of Montreal as an incomparably fine place to live, is leaderless and irrelevant, except as the hostage of a dishonest government. Last month one of the most moderate ministers, Guy St-Pierre, told an English businessman's group, 'If you don't like Quebec, you can leave it.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

With sadness but with certitude, I accept that choice.
radio broadcast on 26 July 1974, the day Black left Quebec for good
The Establishment Man by Peter Newman

Education, Sadness, Guy, Exercises

“Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1920s, A Peck of Gold (1926)

Children, Sea

“One night at Socko and a year of probation were no comparison to the punishment at home. My rehabilitation was one of the fastest in adolescent history. I had it coming, and it taught me that moral rehab is possible. I behaved during my term of probation and stopped all of my criminal activity. But I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible. There is room for such types in America, even in the disciplined confines of the United States Army. I’m a big believer in the value of unconventional men and women. They are the innovators and risk takers. Apple, one of the world’s most creative and successful high-tech companies, lives by the vision of transformation through exception. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Apple’s campaign says. “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you talk to my colleagues, they’ll tell you that I’m cut from the same cloth. My military biography starts badly. I was a miserable dropout in my freshman year of college (1.2 GPA), enlisted in a delayed-entry Marine Corps program, went to work as a lifeguard at a local beach, and then came the first of several miracles: an Army ROTC scholarship. Little did I know that my rebellious activities, such as skipping class and sundry other mistakes, would lead me to playing basketball (which I was very good at) with an ROTC instructor who saw something in me. Not only that, he took surprising initiative.”

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

Women, Men, People, World

“My father once told me that the art of receiving a compliment is, of all things, the sign of a civilized man. He died soon afterwards, leaving my education in this important matter sadly incomplete; I'm only glad that, on this, the occasion of the rarest compliment he ever could have dreamed of, that he isn't here to see his son so publicly at a loss. In receiving a compliment, or in trying to, the words are all worn out by now. They're polluted by ham and corn. And, when you try to scratch around for some new ones, it's just an exercise in empty cleverness. What I feel this evening, is not very clever. it's the very opposite of emptiness. The corny old phrase is the only one I know to say it: my heart is full; with a full heart, with all of it, I thank you. This is Samuel Johnson, on the subject of what he calls contrarieties: "there are goods, so opposed that we cannot seize both, and, in trying, fail to seize either. Flatter not yourself, he says, with contrarieties. Of the blessings set before you, make your choice. No man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source, and from the mouth of the nile." For this business of contrarieties has to do with us. With you, who are paying me this compliment, and for me, who has strayed so far from this hometown of ours. Not that I am alone in this, or unique, I am never that; but there are a few of us left in this conglomerated world of us who still trudge stubbornly along this lonely rocky road; and this is in fact our contrariety. We don't move nearly as fast as our cousins on the freeway; we don't even get as much accomplished just as the family sized farm can't possibly raise as many crops or get as much profit as the agricultural factory of today. What we do come up with has no special right to call itself better it's just.. different. No if there's any excuse for us it all, it's that we're simply following the old American tradition of the maverick, and we are a vanishing breed. This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. And also, as a tribute to the generosity of all the rest of you; to the givers, to the ones with fixed addresses. A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way, or ever claim that it's the best one, except maybe for himself. And don't imagine that this raggle-taggle gypsy-o is claiming to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are different from yours. As a director, for instance, I pay myself out of my acting jobs. I use my own work to subsidize my work (in other words I'm crazy). But not crazy enough to pretend to be free. But it's a fact that many of the films you've seen tonight could never have been made otherwise. Or, if otherwise, well, they might have been better, but certainly they wouldn't have been mine. The truth is I don't believe that this great evening would ever have brightened my life if it wasn't for this: my own, particular, contrariety. Let us raise our cups, then, standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, to what really matters to us all: to our crazy, beloved profession, to the movies — to good movies, to every possible kind.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given upon his acceptance of the AFI Lifetime Achievement award. Viewable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJnxClGamA&list=HL1349840607&feature=mh_lolz

Life, Truth, World, Education

“I’ve never planned any part of my career—except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Life’s Work: Ai Weiwei, 2012

Way, Freedom, Parting

“[Nelson] "…People are crazy. At times when I'm with clients I can't see the difference between them and me, except for the structure we're all in. I get paid, a little, and they get taken care of, a little."”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

People, Time

“The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good. Of course, we like to do everything possible for the benefit of humanity in general, but when we do, we first see that we are benefiting ourselves. Railroads are not run on sentiment, but on business principles and to pay, and I don't mean to be egotistic when I say that the roads which I have had anything to do with have generally paid pretty well.”

William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) American philanthropist

Quoted in Clarence P. Dresser, "Vanderbilt in the West" New York Times (9 October 1882). Dresser's account has Vanderbilt denying that he ran a particular passenger express service for the public benefit, but rather to drive down prices of a competing Pennsylvania Railroad service. By some accounts Dresser fabricated the interview except for the first sentence, which Vanderbilt said in refusing to give an interview. See "Reporter C. P. Dresser Dead", New York Times (25 April 1891).
Disputed

Business

“These people were worthy of love and admiration in their blind loyalty, in their blind strength and tenacity. With the exception of one small thing, one tiny little thing, they lacked nothing that the sage and thinker had, and that was the consciousness of the unity of all life.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Source: Siddhartha (1922), p. 90

Love, Life, People, Loyalty

“To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe … not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it … except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life … if you're into it.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in a 1976 interview, published in Desert Plants by Walter Zimmermann.

Life, Music, Feeling, Idea

“The Americans have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Governments of Grenada since 1979. They have sought consistently to undermine and destabilise the Government of Jamaica. They did so until Mr. Seaga was elected Prime Minister. They have consistently sought to undermine and destabilise any Government in the region who have sought to develop the interests of the people rather than the interests of the multinational companies that are busy exploiting those people. At the centre of the debate and of the activities of the United States lies its belief that its role is to defend the people who pay the Government — the multinational companies. The British Government are doing exactly the same. In every conference chamber around the world, the British Government support American foreign policy. They do not have a foreign policy in the Caribbean or central America. All they know is to follow the United States—except that when the issue of Grenada came up they did not know what to do. So, for three days running, we have had a pathetic appearance by the Foreign Secretary, who has been wondering what to do next. He comes to the House, wringing his hands, wondering what on earth to say next. He knows that he has been made to look an absolute idiot because he was incapable of standing up to the Americans for once. The one thing that the Americans do not respect is the Uriah Heep diplomacy that the British Government operate towards them. The Pavlovian response of agreeing to everything that the United States demands and wants has got them nowhere and has made them look incredibly stupid and shortsighted.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1983/oct/26/grenada-invasion in the House of Commons (26 October 1983). 1980s

People, Stupidity, World, Business

“Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the acting and story went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railway whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

On Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger
Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones (June 30, 1882).

Life, Night

“Nothing moves except my eyes and my hand occasionally turning a page, and yet something not exactly defined by the word "text" unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root as I read. But how does this process take place?”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Reading Shadows, p. 28.
A History of Reading (1996)

Reading

“Take the actions of our nearest friends, and how little do we know of the hopes that instigated, or of the fears that prevailed! We sometimes cannot avoid owning that we ourselves have committed a fault, but how we gloss it over—how we take temperament and temptation into account, till at length it appears to be a thing inevitable redeemed by the regret it has occasioned, and the lesson it has given. Not so do we reason for others—then we look to the isolated fact, not to the causes: the error shuts out the excuse. The truth is, we know nothing of each other excepting by the aid of philosophy and of poetry; philosophy, that analyzes our thoughts, and poetry that expresses our feelings.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Truth, Fear, Hope, Error

“Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, First Presidential address (1974)

People, Way

“It would be not only useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurption; and it would be impossible to enumerate every one. Let any one make what collection or enumeration of rights he pleases, I will immediately mention twenty or thirty more rights not contained in it.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 28, 1788, p. 150.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

“We believe in constitutional action in normal times; we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times. These are exceptional times.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Workers Republic (socialist newspaper) 4 December, 1915 in “Trust Your Leaders!”

Time

“What can man know about happiness except how to write it?”

Waldemar Łysiak book Statek

Statek (1994)

Happiness

““But a second afterthought would follow, and I should ask: What must be the nature of this life dissevered from Nature,—bodiless, void of all sense-perception? What would be left in it except the pure elements of reason, the pure elements of perception, the pure formularies of science, and pure imagination? But what are these, altogether, but the common equipment, not of my mind or of some other individual mind, but of the universal human nature? And what is that universal nature but just the nature of the eternal Cosmic Consciousness? Yes, my personality has vanished; and death, in dissolving the tie to Nature under the alluring prospect of an existence for me wholly self-referred and self-sustaining, has resolved me back into the infinite Vague of the Cosmic Mind, as this might, perchance, be fancied to be in itself, apart from Nature and creation,””

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.118-9

Life, Death, Imagination, Nature

“In all these congruence geometries, except the Euclidean, there is at hand a natural unit of length R = \frac{1}{K^\frac{1}{2}}; this length we shall, without prejudice, call the "radius of curvature" of the space.”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Nature

Quotes about exception page 15

Quotes about exception
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