Quotes about exception
page 16

“Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream (1978)

Life, Truth, Dreams, Soul

“You don’t need to impress anyone except you.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

“We possess nothing certainly except the past.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 3, start of chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Past

“With a few exceptions, Fellini's films have failure and despair running through them: Life continues, but I can't imagine 'Felliniesque' as an exclusively uplifting adjective. Fellini's best films are the ones that distill this essence -- the paradoxical quality of melancholic ecstasy, a surreal, bittersweet vitality -- to perfection.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On the adjective ‘Felliniesque’, in The Los Angeles Times (April 2003)]

Life, Imagination, Failure, Perfection

“He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it…. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 11: "God"

Evil, Chance, Success

“For months the life of the little band went on much as it had before, except that Tarzan's greater intelligence and his ability as a hunter were the means of providing for them more bountifully than ever before. Most of them, therefore, were more than content with the change in rulers.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 12 : Man's Reason

Life, Intelligence, Change

“Foundational to our exceptional nation’s sacred private property rights, a business must have freedom to locate where it wishes. In a free market, if a business makes a mistake (including a marketing mistake that perhaps Carrier executives made), threatening to move elsewhere claiming efficiency’s sake, then the market’s invisible hand punishes. Thankfully, that same hand rewards, based on good business decisions. But this time-tested truth assumes we’re operating on a level playing field. When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent. Meanwhile, the invisible hand that best orchestrates a free people’s free enterprise system gets amputated. Then, special interests creep in and manipulate markets. Republicans oppose this, remember? Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2016, But… Wait… The Good Guys Won’t Win With More Crony Capitalism (December 2, 2016)

People, Truth, Business, Support

“Of the radical and iconoclastic ideals preached in the early years of the revolution, all were discarded except those which helped the state to exert absolute control over the individual. Hence the idea of collective education and reduction of parental authority to the minimum continued to hold sway, but an end was put to "progressive" educational methods designed to promote initiative and independence. Strict discipline became once more the rule, and in this respect Soviet schools differed from Tsarist ones only in the immensely increased emphasis on indoctrination. In due course, puritanical sexual ethics were restored to favour.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 53
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Education, School, Idea, Parent

“Woana was the most talented, amazing and prodigious human in the world, and the most beautiful too. For Woana, if she had summoned them, those bright eyes in the sky would have danced down to earth; but naturally Woana was far too sophisticated to stoop to such a thing. Woana was, in fact, unrivalled, peerless. The reason being that Mitz belonged to her, and Mitz’s feline ego would never consider that anyone, but the most sublime, could have acquired her own exceptional self.”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 17 (p. 144)

World, Beauty, Nature, Dance

“The mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist is a potent intensifier of the almost equally mad idea that the State of Israel can somehow be eliminated. I say 'almost' because a friend of mine in Australia recently presented me with a plausible case that the Middle East would probably be a more peaceful area if the State of Israel had never been founded. Like her argument that the Aborigines would have been a lot happier if the Europeans had never shown up, this contention was hard to rebut, except by rudely pointing out that we were both sitting in an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, history having happened.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'The University of the Holocaust: On Anti-Semitism Now' (Sunday Times, March 28, 2004)
Essays and reviews

Peace, History, Idea, Madness

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

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

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Love, Life, Books, World

“How lasting the impact of social media will have is yet to be determined, but one thing for sure, it has turned the chain of influence upside down. Today the reader, the lowly reader, that presumably passive consumer of all the great insight handed down by the reporter, confirmed by the analyst, attested to by the reference customer—this reader, I say, has now become the writer! Except it is not a reader/writer. It is reader/writers at large, many readers, the wisdom (or madness) of crowds. We have embarked upon the world's largest and longest cocktail party, and every issue imaginable is up for grabs.”

Geoffrey Moore (1946) American business writer

Paul Gillin, ‎Geoffrey A. Moore (2009), The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media. p. vii

Wisdom, World, Imagination, Madness

“I look upon prayer-meetings as the most profitable exercises (excepting the public preaching) in which Christians can engage. They have a direct tendency to kill a worldly, trifling spirit, and to draw down a Divine blessing upon all our concerns, compose differences, and enkindle (at least maintain) the flames of Divine love amongst brethren.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 475.

Love, Exercises, Drawing

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

"Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 9. 1962, G2 — as reported in The Ayn Rand Lexicon http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/socialism.html: Objectivism from A to Z (1986)

Men, Communication, Suicide

“The methods of the Bernoullis and of Taylor, were held, at the time of their invention, to be most complete and exact. Several imperfections, however, belong to them. They do not apply to problems involving three or more properties; nor do they extend to cases involving differentials of a higher order than the first: for instance, they will not solve the problem, in which a curve is required, that with its radius of curvature and evolute shall contain the least area. Secondly, they do not extend to cases, in which the analytical expression contains, besides x, y, and their differentials, integral expressions; for instance, they will not solve the second case proposed in James Bernoulli's Programma if the Isoperimetrical condition be excluded; for then the arc s, an integral, since it =\int \! dx \sqrt(1+\frac{dy^2}{dx^2}), is not given. Thirdly, they do not extend to cases, in which the differential function, expressing the maximum should depend on a quantity, not given except under the form of a differential equation, and that not integrable; for instance, they will not solve the case of the curve of the quickest descent, in a resisting medium, the descending body being solicited by any forces whatever.”

Robert Woodhouse (1773–1827) English mathematician

A Treatise on Isoperimetrical Problems, and the Calculus of Variations (1810)

Problem, Time, Dependency

“You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/zbigniew-brzezinski-nato-putin-ukraine_n_5760068.html (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

People, Parting

“Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"The Death of Politics", essay in Playboy (March 1969) http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html; also available in Hess's autobiography, Mostly on the Edge.

Men, Communication

“You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12

“Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolidation of business, for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets and prices.
Except for this monstrous crime, 65 per cent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 per cent of the people.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)

People, Business, Country, Wealth

“Of all the ridiculous expressions people use--and people use a great many ridiculous expressions--one of the most ridiculous is "No news is good news." "No news is good news" simply means that if you don't hear from someone, everything is probably fine, and you can see at once why this expression makes such little sense, because everything being fine is only one of many, many reasons why someone may not contact you. Perhaps they are tied up. Maybe they are surrounded by fierce weasels, or perhaps they are wedged tightly between two refrigerators and cannot get themselves out. The expression might as well be changed to "no news is bad news," except that people may not be able to contact you because they have just been crowned king or are competing in a gymnastics tournament. The point is that there is no way to know why someone has not contacted you, until they contact you and explain themselves. For this reason, the sensible expression would be "no news is no news," except that it is so obvious that it is hardly an expression at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

People, Way, Sense, Change

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."… the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion…. The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, Mathematics, Understanding, Science

“Abu Hurayra stated that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The most truthful phrase ever said by a poet is the words of Labid: "Everything except Allah is false."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 490
Sunni Hadith

Truth, Peace, Falseness

“By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in seeking after. Long-headed cunning people and rich fools are so plentiful in our country that I don’t fear getting now and then a face to paint for bread, but a man of genius with truth and simplicity, sense and good nature, I think worth his weight in gold - [signed:] 'Your Likeness Man”

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

Quote in Gainsborough's letter to Hon. Constantine Phipps, undated; as cited in 'My Dear Maggoty Sir – The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough' http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/10/my-dear-maggoty-sir-the-letters-of-thomas-gainsborough/, review by Roger Hudson, in Slightly Foxed, 18 Oct, 2011 undated

God, People, Truth, Fear

“Laplace created a number of new mathematical methods that were subsequently expanded into branches of mathematics, but he never cared for mathematics except as it helped him to study nature.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 495

Mathematics, Nature, Study, Help

“The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

First Inaugural Address http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25831 (4 March 1913) 1910s

Success

“How then can the curious drawer watch, and as it were catch these lovely graces, witty smilings, and those stolen glances which suddenly like lightning pass, and another countenance taketh place, except to behold and very well note and conceit to like.”

Nicholas Hilliard Art of Limning

A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning, eds. R K R Thornton and T G S Cain, (Manchester, 1981), p. 77.

Love, Smile

“It is a bit unsettling, at first, to think of Apple as a control freak, because it is completely at odds with their corporate image. Weren't these the guys who aired the famous Super Bowl ads showing suited, blindfolded executives marching like lemmings off a cliff? Isn't this the company that even now runs ads picturing the Dalai Lama (except in Hong Kong) and Einstein and other offbeat rebels?
It is indeed the same company, and the fact that they have been able to plant this image of themselves as creative and rebellious free-thinkers in the minds of so many intelligent and media-hardened skeptics really gives one pause. It is testimony to the insidious power of expensive slick ad campaigns and, perhaps, to a certain amount of wishful thinking in the minds of people who fall for them. It also raises the question of why Microsoft is so bad at PR, when the history of Apple demonstrates that, by writing large checks to good ad agencies, you can plant a corporate image in the minds of intelligent people that is completely at odds with reality.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Class Struggle on the Desktop"
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)

People, Guy, History, Intelligence

“Lee is the greatest military genius in America, myself not excepted.”

Winfield Scott (1786–1866) Union United States Army general

As quoted in Life of General Robert Edmund Lee (1870) by C. Stoctly Errickson, p. 35.

“I came to Paris with all my ideas of art fixed, and I have never found it necessary to change them. I have been more or less in love with this master, or that method in art, but I have not modified any fundamental opinions. You have seen my first drawing, made at home without a master, without a model, without a guide. I have never done anything different since. You have never seen me paint except in a low tone; demi-teinte [half-tone] is necessary to me in order to sharpen my eyes and clear my thoughts, - it has been my best teacher.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Millet is describing his development as artist to his friend and later biographer fr:Alfred_Sensier
Source: Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, 1881, p. 44

Love, Art, Home, Idea

“One of the distinct features of XP is the lack of any documentation whatsoever, except for the code itself. This is a contraposition to the modeling techniques like the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which strongly focus on documentation. XP takes an extreme position there, not even documenting the architecture of the system. Often, it is very difficult to extract the overall structure, behavior or interactions with the environment from the code. The code is a rather detailed and fragile representation of the system’s tasks. Even though the code contains all necessary information about the system, this information is often burdened with details and it is tedious to extract the aspects one is interested in. Therefore, it would be useful to have a more compact system representation. The UML does provide a number of notations that are suited for this purpose. However, the tools so far are not capable of supporting UML in such a manner that it can be well-integrated with the approach of Extreme Programming.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Source: Executable Modeling with UML. A vision or a Nightmare (2002), p. 698

Behavior, Support

“Nothing is accidental in the universe — this is one of my Laws of Physics — except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity. So it cannot be an accident that I think of you so constantly.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

"The Summing Up: Meredith Dawe," Do What You Will (1970)

Law, Thinking, Universe

“"No man can come to Christ except the Father draw him." If he comes asking, that proves he comes drawn.”

Charles Seymour Robinson (1829–1899) American pastor, editor and compiler of hymns

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 151.

Christ, Drawing

“I mean, the official definition of Surrealism is to make a work automatically without a priori aesthetic or moral conditions, which is exactly what we do [artist in New York School / Abstract Expressionism]. At the same time Surrealism was an assault, - with a few exceptions: Giacometti, Arp and Miro - on the 'purity' of painting. I mean mean, on making painting - means themselves speak, without reliance on literature; and that second insistence of Surrealism, Americans really rejected. So that historically.... Abstract Expressionism is in part, I think, a fusion of certain Surrealist means, above all plastic 'automatism' with the Cubist's insistence that the picture speaks as a picture in strictly pictorial language.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 82
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

School, Literature, Thinking, Time

“Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

The Search for Talent, 12 August 1982 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/record-details/73eb9163-115d-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad 1980s

Business, Universe

“The only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy…to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted.”

Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) British baronet

Noble Essences, Bk. IX, ch. 7 (1950).

Affliction

“The anxiety of falling in love could not find repose except in bed.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 269

Love

“Modern positivism…expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms… by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning… should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This… is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules… However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning.
The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress… new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example… sentence: "In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?"”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.
Physics and Philosophy (1958)

Mathematics, Question, Nature, Decision

“Some seekers will do anything for their Self-realisation — except work for it.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

January 24
Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970)

“You have surely noticed among schoolboys, that the one that is regarded by all as the boldest is the one who has no fear of his father, who dares to say to the others, "Do you think I am afraid of him?" On the other hand, if they sense that one of their number is actually and literally afraid of his father, they will readily ridicule him a little. Alas, in men’s fear-ridden rushing together into a crowd (for why indeed does a man rush into a crowd except because he is afraid!) there, too, it is a mark of boldness not to be afraid, not even of God. And if someone notes that there is an individual outside the crowd who is really and truly afraid – not of the crowd, but of God, he is sure to be the target of some ridicule. The ridicule is usually glossed over somewhat and it is said: a man should love God. Yes, to be sure, God knows that man’s highest consolation is that God is love and that man is permitted to love Him. But let us not become too forward, and foolishly, yes, blasphemously, dismiss the tradition of our fathers, established by God Himself: that really and truly a man should fear God. This fear is known to the man who is himself conscious of being an individual, and thereby is conscious of his eternal responsibility before God.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, 1847 Steere translation p. 196-197
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Love, Men, God, Fear

“I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.”

Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American artist

As quoted in her obituary in The New York Times (14 December 1961) http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0907.html

People, Painting, Forgetting

“It was very, very hard work organizing that Wall concert but everyone was fabulous to work with - Bryan Adams, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, bloody brilliant. All brilliant. Except for Sinead O'Connor… She doesn't understand anything. She's just a silly little girl. You can't just lie in the corner and shave your bloody head and stick it up your arse and occasionally pull it out to go (_"brogue"_) 'Oh, I tink this is wrong and dat is wrong' and burst into tears.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Q magazine, November 1992
Music

Lie, Girl, Understanding, Tear

“The Prophet said, "Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's cause). The Prophet said, "A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's cause in the afternoon or in the forenoon is better than all the world and whatever is in it. A place in Paradise as small as the bow or lash of one of you is better than all the world and whatever is in it. And if a houri from Paradise appeared to the people of the earth, she would fill the space between Heaven and the Earth with light and pleasant scent and her head cover is better than the world and whatever is in it."”

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

Narrated Anas bin Malik, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 53
Sunni Hadith

People, World, Light, Appearance

“Without good-will, no man has any presumptive right, except the right or opportunity to change his will, so long as there is hope of it.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 32, p. 73.

Hope, Change

“The idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional.”

Maureen Dowd (1952) American journalist

New York Times column (September 20, 2008)

Idea

“"When I was a freshman, I fooled around with shooting free throws this way: For some reason, I thought you had to stay within the top half of that free-throw circle, so I would step back to just inside the top of the circle, take off from behind the line and dunk. They outlawed that, but I wouldn't have done it in a game, anyway. I was a good free throw shooter in college." Actually he was a 62% free throw shooter, which is poor except in comparison to his 51% as a pro.”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Dunking

Fools, Way, Game

“The focus of all life is its economy, the mode through which every living creature produces its material existence. I know no other criterion for the evaluation of social life except that of social economy. In society, just like anywhere else, the mode of production is the focus around which revolve all the modes of life: in the historical life of conscious beings, it is also the focus of all modes of consciousness.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Hess to Herzen, March 1850, Briefwechsel p. 253
Hess' Diary

Life

“The only other thing I've noticed is some kind of acute muscular spasm in my neck and left shoulder, and that's hardly entertaining, except maybe for the bit where the doctor rather brilliantly prescribed me diazepam so I necked some and walked very slowly around the Westfield shopping centre listening to Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme on repeat on an MP3 player, smiling eerily at shoppers.”

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

The Guardian 9 February 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/09/twitter Guardian columns

Smile

“Our so-called Society people, instead of going in for sport, persist in holding conversations in their drawing rooms, generally in a foreign tongue. They engage nurse maids, personal maids and governesses of all nationalities except Italian. They play poker and bridge with the accompanying drinks, certainly not Italian brands!”

Achille Starace (1889–1945) Italian Fascist general

About disloyal people in Italian society. Quoted in "Activist on Society" - Time Magazine - August 5, 1935.

People, Drink, Sport, Drawing

“This mass extermination, with all its attendant circumstances, did not, as I know, fail to affect those who took part in it. With very few exceptions, nearly all those detailed to do this monstrous "work," and who, like myself, have given sufficient thought to the matter, have been deeply marked by these events. Many of the men involved approached me as I went my rounds through the extermination buildings, and poured out their anxieties and impressions to me, in the hope that I could allay them. Again and again during these confidential conversations I was asked; is it necessary that we do this? Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children be destroyed? And I, who in my innermost being had on countless occasions asked myself exactly this question, could only fob them off and attempt to console them by repeating that it was done on Hitler's order. I had to tell them that this extermination of Jews had to be, so that Germany and our posterity might be freed for ever from their relentless adversaries. There was no doubt in the mind of any of us that Hitler's order had to be obeyed regardless, and that it was the duty of the SS to carry it out. Nevertheless we were all tormented by secret doubts.”

Rudolf Höss (1901–1947) German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp

Quoted in "Commandant of Auschwitz" (1951)

Women, Men, Children, Secret

“Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.”

James Barr (1924–2006) British bible scholar

Letter to David C.C. Watson, 23 April 1984. Quoted from https://answersingenesis.org/ https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/oxford-hebrew-scholar-professor-james-barr-meaning-of-genesis/ link https://web.archive.org/web/20170612180930/http://members.iinet.com.au:80/~sejones/barrlett.html Source: The authenticity of this letter is not verified yet.

Animals, Life, World

“The two cops dragging the little guy out stopped dead still. The other one washing the bloodstains from the seat quit swishing the brush over the wicker and held his breath. Nobody ever spoke that way to Dilwick. Nobody from the biggest politician in the state to the hardest apple that ever stepped out of a pen. Nobody ever did because Dilwick would cut them up into fine pieces with his bare hands and enjoy it. That was Dilwick, the dirtiest, roughest cop who ever walked a beat or swung a nightstick over a skull. Crude, he was. Crude, hard and dirty and afraid of nothing. He'd sooner draw blood from a face than eat and everybody knew it. That's why nobody ever spoke to him that way. That is, nobody except me.
Because I'm the same way myself.”

Mickey Spillane book The Twisted Thing

The Twisted Thing (1966)

Way, Guy, Drawing, Dead

“I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 587.

Truth

“July 1952/the 27th/This morning an exceptional defecation: two small turds in the shape of a rhinoceros horns. Such a scanty stool worries me. I would have thought the champagne, so alien to my routine, would have had a laxative effect.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

DG p. 59
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964)

“To hear Delly describe it, I had next to no friends because I intimidated people by being so exceptional. Not true. I had next to no friends because I wasn't friendly.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss (p. 188)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

People

“For four or five centuries, Islam was the most brilliant civilization in the Old World. (…) At its higher level the golden age of Muslim civilization was both an immense scientific success and a exceptional revival of ancient philosophy. These was not its only triumphs; literature was another: but they eclipse the rest. First, science: it was there that the Saracens (…) made the most original contributions. These, in brief, were nothing less than trigonometry and algebra (with its significantly Arab name). (…) Equally distinguished were Islam's mathematical geographers, its astronomical observatories and instruments (…). The Muslims also deserve high marks for optics, for chemistry (…) and for pharmacy. More than half the remedies and healing aids used by the West came from Islam (…). Muslim medical skill was incontestable. (…) In the field of philosophy, what took place was rediscovery - a return, essentially of the peripatetic philosophy. The scope of this rediscovery, however, was not limited to copying and handling on, valuable as that undoubtely was. It also involved continuing, elucidating and creating.”

Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) French historian and a leader of the Annales School

A History of Civilizations , Penguin, 1995, p. 73-81

Age, World, Literature, Mathematics

“Well, you know, a lot of work nowadays [c. 1991] tends to be illustrative of theory already written, and some of it tends to be quite consciously didactic, as if the determination is to teach somebody something. And letting that go for the moment, as far as its value is concerned, it's exactly the opposite of what I seem to find most useful, and that is to leave things open and not determine anything except the very clear form. The form is always very simple and clear. What is experienced is uncertain and unforeseeable, which is why I do it, and its point is never clear to me, even after I've done it. So that's a very, very different way of looking at the nature of our responsibility in the world.”

Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) American artist

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69

World, Way, Nature

“There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 542.

Love, God, Way

“We all concede that 'they' rule 'us'. But here is the secret shame of that amorphous entity that makes us all cower in shame: 'they' are losers. 'They' are failures. 'They' don't realize that life is-almost without exception-an absolute meritocracy, and everyone who succeeds completely deserves it. (The exceptions being Dale Peck, MTV on-air personalities who aren't Kurt Loder, Al Franken, and myself)”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Things That Might Be True

Life, Secret, Failure, Personality

“They're all crazy. They're all crazy except you and me. Sometimes I have me doubts about you.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Watching the inhabitants of the house trying to ward off the vampire
Dracula (1931)

“Over the years the Flying Scotsman has travelled the world and been owned by pretty well everyone except my wife, and possibly Kate Moss. As I write he's for sale again, for a not inconsiderable 2.5 million Pounds. That may seem a lot for something that no longer has a purpose, even if he is Britain's engineering heritage. But he is not simply a machine. Like an Aston Martin DB7 or an F-16 fighter, he works as an art form too, a piece of sculpture. So what if you can't go anywhere in him anymore. Put him in your garden and spend your days just looking at him.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World, Art, Travel, Flying

“In return for this great gift that I could not repay in a thousand lifetimes, at least I can promise that, although I have frequently advanced wrong, or even stupid, arguments (in the light of later discoveries), at least I have never been lazy, and have never betrayed your trust by cutting corners or relying on superficial secondary sources. I have always based these essays upon original works in their original languages (with only two exceptions, when Fracastoro's elegant Latin verse and Beringer's foppish Latin pseudocomplexities eluded my imperfect knowledge of this previously universal scientific tongue).”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

Preface, p. 6
I Have Landed (2002)

Stupidity, Knowledge, Light, Universe

“… We talked while the full moon mounted in the sky, words filling up the narrow space between us, as much a buffer as a link. Hours passed and then suddenly at my foot there was a wriggle of the soil. A kangaroo mouse emerged, a creature that I have never otherwise seen except fleeing at a distance. I put my hand on the man’s shoulder to call his attention to this surprise, and we fell silent and watched the strangely fearless mouse do its work for a long time, then resumed the conversation more slowly and more softly as the creature continued to refine its tunnel entrance and the mound of gravelly earth at its mouth, indifferent to our presence. Bats swooped down and snatched invisible meals from the air, and coyotes began to howl, more of them, closer and more persistently than I’ve ever heard before or since, a whole orchestra of drawn-out cries into the dawn.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)

Time, Indifference

“On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Cameras surrounded him. The energy in the room – and on Twitter – was electric. At last, the reluctant CEO is made to answer some questions! Except it failed. It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. It was a show that gave the pretense of a hearing without a real hearing. It was designed to deflect and confuse. … The worst moments of the hearing for us, as citizens, were when senators asked if Zuckerberg would support legislation that would regulate Facebook. I don’t care whether Zuckerberg supports Honest Ads or privacy laws or GDPR. By asking him if he would support legislation, the senators elevated him to a kind of co-equal philosopher king whose view on Facebook regulation carried special weight. It shouldn’t. Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people’s data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation. We should treat him as a danger to democracy and demand our senators get a real hearing.”

Zephyr Teachout (1971) American academic, political activist and candidate

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-hearing-sham?CMP=fb_gu (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

People, Law, Democracy, Question

“Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because … America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8.

History

“The critics have no historical sense. I have no Cabinet papers by me and do not want to trust my memory. But recall the Fulham election, the Peace Ballot, Singapore, sanctions, Malta. The English will only learn by example. When I first heard of Hitler, when Ribbentrop came to see me, I thought they were all crazy. I think I brought Ramsay and Simon to meet Ribbentrop. Remember that Ramsay's health was breaking up in the last two years. He had lost his nerve in the House in the last year. I had to take all the important speeches. The moment he went I prepared for a General Election and got a bigger majority for re-armament. No power on earth could have got re-armament without a General Election except by a big split. Simon was inefficient. I had to lead the House and keep the machine together with those Labour fellows.”

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

Conversation with Thomas Jones (21/22 January 1941), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 482.
1940s

Health, Peace, Thinking, Sense

“A danger in emphasizing mean values for each sex is that these values may be projected onto all or most normally developing men and women. The mean may be treated as a description of the typical group member, despite the fact that the majority of individuals fall above or below it. Psychologists do make some effort to stress that means cannot be attributed to all members of any group, as evidenced by the fact that we often append the phrase “on average” to our descriptions of mean differences. But is this enough? Consider again the robust sex difference in willingness to engage in casual sex: The mean SO [sociosexuality] score for men is higher than that for women. What does this tell us, though, about individual men and women? It clearly does not tell us that all men are interested in casual sex and that all women are not. However, given the degree of overlap between the male and female distributions, it also does not tell us that a large majority of men are more interested in casual sex than a large majority of women. That is, it is not accurate to say even that “men are typically more interested in casual sex than women, but there are of course exceptions.””

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Here is what the data that the means are drawn from actually tell us:
Men and women can be found at virtually every level of interest in casual sex. At the right-hand tail of the distribution, only a small number of people are strongly interested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are men than women. At the left-hand tail, only a small number of people are strongly disinterested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are women than men. Most people — men and women — fall somewhere in between. If you were to choose one man and one woman at random, it would be somewhat more likely that the man would have higher SO. However, you wouldn't want to bet your life savings on it. Around a third of the time — i.e., closer to 50% than to 0% — the woman would have higher SO.
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)

Women, Men, Sex, Effort

“Therefore, the only thing that is not up for grabs is no change. It is fair to say that it is all to play for, except in ruling out no change.”

Rhodri Morgan (1939–2017) British politician

Record of Proceedings http://www.wales.gov.uk/cms/2/ChamberSession/380313AC00046B17000028C300000000/N0000000000000000000000000037726.html#_Toc120595420, National Assembly for Wales, 15 November 2005. Morgan won the "Foot in Mouth" award for a second time for this statement, which refers to changes in policing arrangements in Wales.

Change

“The sexuality of creativity – on that level, human interaction becomes less of an oppressive pyramid and more of a dance, an orgy, something that you can imagine being a bit of fun. It seems to work naturally, except when order is imposed upon it, from above, and then everything starts getting a bit screwed up. The information, the energy, starts to get messed up.”

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

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Imagination, Nature, Dance

“Our government has a responsibility to defend our borders, but we must do so in a way that makes us safer and upholds all that is decent and exceptional about our nation.”

Lindsey Graham (1955) United States Senator from South Carolina

2010s Source: Statement by Senators McCain & Graham on Executive Order on Immigration (27 January 2017) from the Office of Senator John McCain http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/1/statement-by-senators-mccain-graham-on-executive-order-on-immigration regarding [Donald J. Trump]'s Executive Order 13769 entitled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States", as quoted by Jacob Sallum from Reason magazine in Here Is What Republican Critics of Trump's Immigration Order Are Saying on January 31, 2017 http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/31/here-is-what-republican-critics-of-trump

Way

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). 1937

Love, Children, People, World

“Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be an essential quality of the excellent companies.”

Tom Peters book In Search of Excellence

Source: In Search of Excellence (1982), p. 75.

“Oh Yeah, we really are great people. I think Keanu and I are the nicest guys on the planet.. with the exception of George Bush and Ronald Reagan”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Interview (1991)

People, Guy, Thinking

“At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992).
1990s

God, Hate, Quotes

“I depart 105 finally lifting my foot of the throat of my eternal subordinate the Thai Duck Wanheng Menayothin, who showed exceptional survival skills best found in healthy women, wellbred slaves & the offspring of submissive prostitutes.”

Ali Raymi (1973–2015) Boxing Knockout Artist

As quoted in "Ali Raymi announces move to flyweight" by Robert Coster, at FightNews (8 September 2014) http://www.fightnews.com/Boxing/ali-raymi-announces-move-to-flyweight-260235

Women

“Max was the exception. He had no taste for military life or for the prospect of getting shot at. His father, Colonel Maxwell E. Collingwood, USAF (retired), to his credit, tried to hide his disappointment in his only son. But it was there nonetheless, and Max had, on more than one occasion, overheard him wondering aloud to Max’s mother whether there was anything at all to genetics.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 17)

Life, Disappointment

“It seemed to him that the Order of St Clement labored under the curse of mediocrity, and had done so almost from the beginning. In Europe, the Clementines hadn't (it was always said) recovered from the French Revolution. It was certain that they hadn't ever really got going in the New World. Their history revealed little to brag about-one saint (the Holy Founder) and a few bishops of missionary sees, no theologians worthy of the name, no original thinkers, not even a scientist. The Clementines were unique in that they were noted for nothing at all. They were in bad shape all over the world. The Chicago province was probably better off than the others, but that wasn't saying much. Their college was failing, their high schools were a breakeven proposition at best, and their parishes, except for a few, were in unsettled parts of Texas and New Mexico where no order in its right mind would go. The latest white elephant was an abandoned sanitarium in rural Minnesota! But that was typical of Father Boniface and the rest of them. They just didn't know a bad thing when they saw it-or a good one.”

J. F. Powers (1917–1999) American writer

Morte d’Urban (1962)

World, School, History, Parting

“Indeed. there is a whole section in the Old Testament which does not square with its dominant ideas. The Proverbs, to my mind the best part of the Bible, represents a non-Mosaic tradition. In its spirit, it is very different from the Pentateuch and the Prophets; its ethics is high; it represents a very different spiritual tradition, the tradition of Self-knowledge. Its teaching is mostly, anonymous; it has also a woman teacher… rather an exception in the Bible…”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Idea, Knowledge, Teachers, Parting

“The US owes the world. The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower," CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Money, War, World, Cats

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

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

Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library http://www.jfklibrary.org/white%20house%20diary/1962/April/29 1962

Knowledge, Thinking, Housing

“We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction.”

Iris Murdoch Sartre: Romantic Rationalist

Source: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 10, p. 148 (the concluding sentence of the book)

Personality

“Mass psychology is not simply a summation of individual psychologies; that is a prime theorem of social psychodynamics—not just my opinion; no exception has ever been found to this theorem. It is the social mass-action rule, the mob-hysteria law, known and used by military, political, and religious leaders, by advertising men and prophets and propagandists, by rabble rousers and actors and gang leaders, for generations before it was formulated in mathematical symbols. It works.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah’s Children (p. 535)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Men, Law, Mathematics

“A severe morality holds that intercourse (and may hold this of eating, too) has something wrong about it if it is ever done except explicitly as being required for that preservation of human life which is what makes intercourse a good kind of action. But this involves thoroughly faulty moral psychology. God gave us our physical appetite, and its arousal without our calculation is part of the working of our sort of life. Given moderation and right circumstances, acts prompted by inclination can be taken in a general way to accomplish what makes them good in kind and there's no need for them to be individually necessary or useful for the end that makes them good kinds of action. Intercourse is a normal part of married life through the whole life of the partners in a marriage and is normally engaged in without any distinct purpose other than to have it, just as such a part of married life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life, God, Marriage, Way

“Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

The Principles of Anarchism

Peace, Change

“The copious literature on the work of artist Robert Smithson has made very little of the many parallels between the inventor of earthworks and the nineteenthcentury author of pataphysics, despite the established fact that the artist read and made notes from Alfred Jarry’s Dr. Faustroll (1898) while working on the Spiral Jetty in 1970, which undoubtedly influenced the subsequent Broken Circle &/ Spiral Hill (1971, Emmen). Given the insightful literature reassessing Jarry’s influence on twentieth-century artists including Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Rodney Graham, a consideration of Smithson’s spiral earthworks in connection with Jarry is long overdue. In contrast to prevailing art research practices today, Smithson’s work is much more aligned with the pataphysical pursuit of ‘imaginary solutions’ that examine ‘the laws governing exceptions’ and describe ‘a universe which can be – and perhaps should be – envisaged in place of the traditional one’.”

Edward A. Shanken (1964) American art historian

Edward A. Shanken (2013). " Broken Circle &/ Spiral Hill: Smithson’s Spirals, Pataphysics, Syzygy, and Survival http://artexetra.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/shanken-smithson-2013.pdf."

Law, Art, Literature, Universe

“The light of the people of the world is their knowledge and utterance; while the splendours shed from the glorious acts of Him Whom God shall make manifest are His Words, through whose potency He rolleth up the whole world of existence, sets it under His Own authority by relating it unto Himself, then as the Mouthpiece of God, the Source of His divine light — exalted and glorified be He — proclaimeth: ‘Verily, verily, I am God, no God is there but Me; in truth all others except Me are My creatures. Say, O My creatures! Me alone, therefore, should ye fear’.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VIII, 1
The Persian Bayán

God, People, Truth, World

“[T]he United States is history’s exception, not its rule. America is a great, evolving experiment of a constitutional republic in which peoples of all different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds are equal under the law and see themselves as Americans first and members of tribes second — appearance and religion being incidental rather than essential to the American body politic.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, America: One Nation, Indivisible (2015)

People, Religion, Law, History

“Wrongly attributed to Noel Coward is a quotation about the Queen of Tonga. He is alleged to have been sitting under cover from the heavy rain with Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at the Coronation in London in 1953. Opposite them was the vast Queen Salote of Tonga. Princess Marina is supposed to have asked "Noel, who is that little man sheltering under Queen Salote's umbrella?" Coward is said to have peered through the rain and said "Oh, her lunch, my dear." In a later interview with Walter Harris, Coward revealed it had been said by someone at White's Club and was immediately attributed to Coward. "It was very flattering of course, except that I had intended to visit Tonga the following winter, and after that of course it was quite impossible."”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Interview with Walter Harris in 1960 reported in The Times (26 May 2009).

Winter, Princess

“You will find that there is no other difference of opinion as regards any portions of the Universe, except that the philosophers believe in the Eternity of the Universe and we believe in the Creation. Note this.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

Universe

“In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days … Harrow was a very good school … Most of the boys were very happy … I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. … I was on the whole considerably discouraged … All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations).

Life, World, School, Way

“He liked everything about the university except the students.”

Larry Niven book The Mote in God's Eye

Source: The Mote in God's Eye (1974), Chapter 19 “Channel Two’s Popularity” (p. 162)

Universe

“One should not label a firm as knowledge-intensive unless exceptional and valuable expertise dominates commonplace knowledge.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Source: Learning by knowledge‐intensive firms," 1992, p. 716
Context: In deciding whether a firm is knowledge-intensive, one ought to weigh its emphasis on esoteric expertise instead of widely shared knowledge. Everybody has knowledge, most of it widely shared, but some idiosyncratic and personal. If one defines knowledge broadly to encompass what everybody knows, every firm can appear knowledge-intensive. One loses the value of focusing on a special category of firms. Similarly, every firm has some unusual expertise. To make the knowledge-intensive firm a useful category, one has to require that exceptional expertise make important contributions. One should not label a firm as knowledge-intensive unless exceptional and valuable expertise dominates commonplace knowledge.

Knowledge

“To say that a thing "wholly pertains" to something else, or "does not pertain to it in any way," and that something "is predicated in a universal way" of something else, or "is completely alien to it" amount to the same thing. Nevertheless, while one form of expression is [now] in frequent use, the other has become practically obsolete, except so far as it may occasionally be admitted through mutual agreement. In Aristotle's day it was perhaps customary to use both of these forms of expression, but now one has replaced the other [simply] because usage has so decreed. p. 168”

John of Salisbury English philosopher and theologian

The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (1159)

Way, Universe

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Women, Men, War, People

“You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home—. home to a Father's house — to an eternal home?”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 560.

Travel, Home, Soul, Universe

“Appearance is not reality, except in Washington.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Watching the Watchmen: The CIA’s investigation of its own inspector general is perfectly legitimate (2007)

Reality, Appearance

“In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XIV.

Law, Change

“I cannot rival L[loyd] G[eorge] at that sort of speech—full of clever thrusts, innuendos, malicious half-truths. To L[loyd] G[eorge] and Winston [Churchill] it is all part of a game; as for me, I cannot make speeches which are sheer and mere dialectic…If I had made the sort of speech about L[loyd] G[eorge] that I could have made it would be a cruel attack on an old man and it would have done no good. All through his career, except during the War, he has done no end of harm, and his Versailles peace was iniquitous and his conduct after the peace execrable.”

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

Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 July 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 227.
1936

War, Truth, Peace, Game

“With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities. The girls' minds were perplexed by no conflicts, troubled by no philosophical queries, beset by no remote ambitions. To live as a girl with many lovers as long as possible and then to marry in one's own village, near one's own relatives, and to have many children, these were uniform and satisfying ambitions.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 107

Children, Girl, Lovers

“As I thought about this, I noted that the bacterium is just a physical system; it's just a bunch of molecules that hang together and do things to one another. So, I wondered, what characteristics are necessary for a physical system to be an autonomous agent? After thinking about this for a number of months I came up with a tentative definition.
My definition is that an autonomous agent is something that can both reproduce itself and do at least one thermodynamic work cycle. It turns out that this is true of all free-living cells, excepting weird special cases. They all do work cycles, just like the bacterium spinning its flagellum as it swims up the glucose gradient. The cells in your body are busy doing work cycles all the time.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

The Adjacent Possible: A Talk with Stuart Kauffman, 2003

Business, Thinking, Time

“We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

"Dr Bill Cosby Speaks at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision," known as the "Pound Cake" speech (May 2004).

People, Peace, Way, Idea

Quotes about exception page 16

Quotes about exception
page 16