Quotes about exception
page 18

“The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women — because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 203.

Women, Men, Law

“Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Thoughts on Taste", Edinburgh Magazine (July 1819), final paragraph

Perfection

“Of all the principles, gentlemen, of foreign policy which I attach the greatest value is the principle of the equality of nations; because, without recognising that principle, there is no such thing as public right, and without public international right there is no instrument available for settling the transactions of mankind except material force. Consequently, the principle of equality among nations lies, in my opinion, at the very basis and root of a Christian civilisation, and when that principle is compromised or abandoned, with it must depart our hopes of tranquillity and of progress for mankind.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 123.
1870s

Hope

“What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark (1816)

Health, Intelligence, Idea, Universe

“Monogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Accordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should utterly demoralize society; whilst those to whom marriage is a matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes said to be distinctively human, though birds and animals in a state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface: "The Personal Sentimental Basis of Monogamy" http://www.enotalone.com/article/13714.html 1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Women, Men, Marriage, Children

“I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Childhood

“The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side.
The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 3)

World

“An object which is used to create instances, i. e., a template, description, pattern, or "blueprint" of a category or collection of very similar items. Among other things, a class describes the interface the these items will present to the outside world, i. e., the available and appropriate methods, constants, and exceptions. A class represents an abstraction of the items. A class may itself be parameterized (i. e., it actually represents a family of very closely related classes), in which case we refer to it as a parameterized class. Class is a recursive concept. Specifically, we may define classes as being composed of other classes (i. e., heterogeneous composite classes and homogeneous composite classes), in terms of itself (a recursively defined class), as inheriting characteristics from one or more other classes (i. e., the superclasses of the class), and as providing characteristics to other classes (i. e., the subclasses of the class). In some places, classes are defined as "the set of all instances of a type," and the term "type" is given the above definition for class.”

Edward V. Berard

Source: Essays on object-oriented software engineering (1993), p. 328

World, Family

“I make known unto thee how He hath provided for the bodily health of us all, by having produced Æsculapius, the Preserver of the universe; and how he hath communicated to us virtue of every kind, by sending down Aphrodite in company with Athene for our guardian; having made it all but a law that no one should use copulation except for the end of generating his like. For this reason truly, according to his revolutions and seasons, do the various vegetable and animal races feel themselves stirred towards the generation of their kind. What need is there to magnify the glory of his rays, and of his light? A night without moon, and without stars, how terrible is it! Let anyone reflect on this, in order that he may estimate how great a blessing is the light we derive from the Sun!”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

Health, Law, Feeling, Star

“Everything can be inherited except sterility.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

“I left Symons’s company newly aware of the unthinking cruelty discreetly coiled within the magnanimous bourgeois assurance that everyone can discover happiness through work and love. It isn’t that these two entities are invariably incapable of delivering fulfilment, only that they almost never do so. And when an exception is represented as a rule, our individual misfortunes, instead of seeming to us quasi-inevitable aspects of life, will weigh down on us like particular curses. In denying the natural place reserved for longing and error in the human lot, the bourgeois ideology denies us the possibility of collective consolation for our fractious marriages and our unexploited ambitions, and condemns us instead to solitary feelings of shame and persecution for having stubbornly failed to become who we are.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 127-128.

Love, Life, Marriage, Error

“I try to carry out the most precise and discriminative analyses I can in order to show in what ways things change, are transformed, are displaced. When I study the mechanisms of power, I try to study their specificity… I admit neither the notion of a master nor the universality of his law. On the contrary, I set out to grasp the mechanisms of the effective exercise of power; and I do this because those who are inserted in these relations of power, who are implicated therein, may, through their actions, their resistance, and their rebellion, escape them, transform them—in short, no longer submit to them. And if I do not say what ought to be done, it is not because I believe there is nothing to be done. Quite on the contrary, I think there are a thousand things to be done, to be invented, to be forged, by those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, have decided to resist or escape them. From this point of view, my entire research rests upon the postulate of an absolute optimism. I do not undertake my analyses to say: look how things are, you are all trapped. I do not say such things except insofar as I consider this to permit some transformation of things. Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité… Je n’admets ni la notion de maîtrise ni l’universalité de la loi. Au contraire, je m’attache à saisir des mécanismes d’exercise effectif de pouvoir ; et je le fais parce que ceux qui sont insérés dans ces relations de pouvoir, qui y sont impliqués peuvent, dans leurs actions, dans leur résistance et leur rébellion, leur échapper, les transformer, bref, ne plus être soumis. Et si je ne dis pas ce qu’il faut faire, ce n’est pas parce que je crois qu’il n’y a rien à faire. Bien au contraire, je pense qu’il y a mille choses à faire, à inventer, à forger par ceux qui, reconnaissant les relations de pouvoir dans lesquelles ils sont impliqués, ont décidé de leur résister ou de leur échapper. De ce point de vue, toute ma recherche repose sur un postulat d’optimisme absolu. Je n’effectue pas mes analyses pour dire : voilà comment sont les choses, vous êtes piégés. Je ne dis ces choses que dans la mesure où je considère que cela permet de les transformer. Tout ce que je fais, je le fais pour que cela serve.
Dits et Écrits 1954–1988 (1976) Vol. II, 1976–1988 edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, p. 911-912

Law, Way, Exercises, Optimism

“I feel like I was particularly impressed by Richard Corben's work. But in general I would not say the underground made that big of an impression except for Corben… His science-fiction stories, those almost primitive black and white comics he did back then. I was very struck by the visceral punch they had, by the unusual artistic point of view. And also by the unabashed exaggeration. It's as if you wanted a woman to have big breasts, you drew it. There was something just so joyously excessive and erotic about his stuff, that I just ate it up.|Frank Miller }}”

Richard Corben (1940) American illustrator

Feeling, Science

“Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. V, p.53

World, Law, Nature, Parting

“Public opinion* is the unseen product of education and practical experience. Education, in turn, is the function, in co-operation, of the family, the church and the school. If the family fails in its guiding influence and discipline and if the church fails in its religious instruction, then everything is left to the school, which is given an impossible burden to bear. It is just this situation which has arisen in the United States during the generation through which we are still passing. In overwhelming proportion, the family has become almost unconscious of its chief educational responsibility. In like manner, the church, fortunately with some noteworthy exceptions, has done the same. The heavy burden put upon the school has resulted in confused thinking, unwise plans of instruction and a loss of opportunity to lay the foundations of true education, the effects of which are becoming obvious to every one. Fundamental dis cipline, both personal and social, has pretty well disappeared, and, without that discipline which develops into self-discipline, education is impossible.
What are the American people going to do about it? If they do not correct these conditions, they are simply playing into the hands of the advocates of a totalitarian state, for that type of state is at least efficient, and it is astonishing to how many persons efficiency makes stronger appeal than liberty.
Then, too, we have many signs of an incapacity to understand and to interpret liberty, or to distinguish it from license. There is a limit to liberty, and liberty ends where license begins. It is very difficult for many persons to understand this fact or to grasp its implications. If we are to have freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of the press, why should we not be free to say and think and print whatever we like? The answer is that the limit between liberty and license must be observed if liberty itself is to last. To suppose, as many individuals and groups seem to do, that liberty of thought and liberty of speech* include liberty to agitate for the destruction of liberty itself, indicates on the part of such persons not only lack of common sense but lack of any sense o humor. If liberty is to remain, the barrier between liberty and license must be recognized and observed.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

People, Education, School, Family

“By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun.”

Charles E. Sorensen (1881–1968) American businessman

Source: My Forty Years with Ford, 1956, p. 130-131 ; As cited in: EyeWitness to History (2005)

History, Time, Parting, Speed

“The people of South Dakota are taking the lead in the preparation of this memorial out of their meager resources, because the American spirit is strong among them. Their effort and courage entitles them to the sympathy and support of private beneficence and the national government. They realize fully that they have no means of succeeding in the development of their state except a strong reliance upon American institutions. They do not fail to appreciate their value. There is no power that can stay the progress of such a people. They are predestined to success. Our Country is fortunate in having the advantage of their citizenship. They have been pioneers in the development of their State. They will continue to be pioneers in the defense and development of American institutions.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

People, Courage, Support, Effort

“You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own — for he cannot conceive of any other except himself — and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision

God, Understanding, Teachers

“Why should five hundred or six hundred titled persons govern us, and why should their children govern our children for ever? I invite a reply from the apologists and the admirers of the House of Lords. I invite them to show any ground of reason, or of logic, or of expediency or practical common sense in defence of the institution which has taken the predominant part during the last few days in the politics of our country. There is no defence, and there is no answer, except that the House of Lords…has survived out of the past. It is a lingering relic of a feudal order. It is the remains, the solitary reminder of a state of things and of a balance of forces which has wholly passed away. I challenge the defenders, the backers, and the instigators of the House of Lords—I challenge them to justify and defend before the electors of the country the character and composition of the hereditary assembly.”

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

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 23
Early career years (1898–1929)

Children, Sense, Past, Parting

“I am not bloodthirsty. I am working for my country and the coming generations. I can't waste my time on a few young idiots. I don't believe the tortures attributed to the SAVAK are as common as people say, but I can't run everything. Besides, we have ways of using psychological pressure that are much more effective than torture… My people have every kind of freedom, except the freedom to betray.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 259
Attributed

People, Way, Freedom, Time

“All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ's religion has been changed and corrupted.”

Virchand Gandhi (1864–1901) Jain scholar who represented Jainism at the first World Parliament of Religions in 1893

Christian Missions: A Triangular Debate, Before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York (1895)

Religion, Effort, Change, Christ

“English people … never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

People

“Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

Statement to a friend shortly before his death, as recounted in Men of Letters by Lord Henry Brougham

Hostility

“Do not in any way 'prove the rule,' but on the contrary are completely valid disproofs, even though they are rare, indeed, so long as one single exception is demonstrable.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 24.

Way

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

Jerome David Salinger book A Girl I Knew

A Girl I Knew (1948)

Heart Touching, Universe

“The maid glanced at her employer. "Oh, you have heard of me," she said. "I am glad that he speaks of me. I would not like to think that nobody speaks of me." "No," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is better to be spoken of than not to be spoken of. Except sometimes, that is."”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tears of the Giraffe

Tears of the Giraffe, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

Thinking

“Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir.”

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

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 16

Faith

“What the heck is a neocon anyway in 2003? A friend of mine suggests it means the kind of right-winger a liberal wouldn't be embarrassed to have over for cocktails. That's as good a definition as any, since the term has clearly come unmoored from its original meaning. … In social policy, it stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism. Neocons have led the charge to combat some of the wilder excesses of academia and the arts. But there is hardly an orthodoxy laid down by Neocon Central. I, for one, am not eager to ban either abortion or cloning, two hot-button issues on the religious right. On economic matters, neocons--like pretty much all other Republicans, except for Mr. Buchanan and his five followers--embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

[What the Heck Is a ‘Neocon’?, http://web.archive.org/web/20030210064645/http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840, OpinionJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2002]

Art

“Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.”

Alan Ayckbourn (1939) English playwright

Preface to The Norman Conquests (New York: Grove Press, [1975] 1988) p. 11.

Women, Men, Money

“I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On writing "The Little White Cloud That Cried", The Chicago Tribune (16 March 1952)

Life, Hope, Tree

“Why do we forget our childhood? With rare exceptions we have no memory of our first four, five, or six years, and yet we have only to watch the development of our own children during this period to realize that these are precisely the most exciting, the most formative years of life. Schachtel’s theory is that our infantile experiences, so free, so uninhibited, are suppressed because they are incompatible with the conventions of an adult society which we call ‘civilized’. The infant is a savage and must be tamed, domesticated. The process is so gradual and so universal that only exceptionally will an individual child escape it, to become perhaps a genius, perhaps the selfish individual we call a criminal. The significance of this theory for the problem of sincerity in art (and in life) is that occasionally the veil of forgetfulness that hides our infant years is lifted and then we recover all the force and vitality that distinguished our first experiences—the ‘celestial joys’ of which Traherne speaks, when the eyes feast for the first time and insatiably on the beauties of God’s creation. Those childhood experiences, when we ‘enjoy the World aright’, are indeed sincere, and we may therefore say that we too are sincere when in later years we are able to recall these innocent sensations.”

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

Source: Collected Poems (1966), pp. 16-17

Life, God, Children, World

“Do you believe that a dead woman can conceive from a live man and bring forth a live child? Do you believe it, any of you mothers? Do you believe it, any of you fathers? No, you know better. Well, if a woman will not produce when she is dead, then the earth cannot produce living things if it was dead. Does the earth conceive? It does, and it brings forth. If it did not, why do you go and put your wheat into the ground? Does it not conceive it? But it does not conceive except you put it there. It conceives and brings forth, and you and I live, both for food and for clothing, silks and satins. What! satin grow? Yes. What produces it? The silkworm produces it. Does the silkworm produce except it conceives? No, it eats of the mulberry tree. Where does the mulberry tree come from? It comes from the earth. Where did the earth come from? From its parent earths. Well, some of you may call that foolish philosophy. But if it is, I will throw out foolish things, that you may gather up wise things. The earth is alive. If it was not, it could not produce: If you find a piece of earth that is dead, you cannot produce anything from it, except you resurrect it and restore it to life.”

Heber C. Kimball (1801–1868) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 6:35-36 (Nov. 8, 1857)

Life, Food, Parent, Tree

“Mexico is such an important problem. The Mexican government's policies are pushing migration north… There isn't any sensible approach except to do what we need to do simultaneously. Secure our border — with technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary in some places. We need to have tough employer sanctions, incentivize Mexico to do more.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Council on Foreign Relations speech in 2006 ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uXJ1mgkyF0), quoted in "Hillary Clinton In 2006: ‘Secure Our Border With… Physical Barriers’" http://www.westernjournalism.com/hillary-clinton-in-2006-secure-our-border-with-physical-barriers/ by Gerry Urbanek, Western Journalism (10 June 2016). Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

Problem

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life, Money, God, Pleasure

“…no one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter.”

William Ian Beardmore Beveridge (1908–2006) British zoologist

Source: The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950), p. 65.

“.. because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting? ] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

it's just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important.
Quote from 'Some late thoughts of Marcel Duchamp', an interview with Jeanne Siegel, p. 21; as quoted in 'The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties' Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 194
posthumous

Art, Idea, Beer, Painting

“While she was exceptional, I was average, a man whose major accomplishment in life was to love her without reservation, and that would never change.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 14 Ira, p. 187
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Love, Life, Change

“Andy and his little gang of bearded apes have made it clear that they intend to patrol the streets of London enforcing Sharia and preventing people going about their lawful business. I'll be interested to see how that works out for them. I've known a few Eastenders in my time, and I can't think of anyone — with the possible exception of Geordies (that's people from Newcastle) — who are less likely to tolerate having their pint of beer, their betting shop and their song and dance interfered with by a bunch of puffed-up bearded blowfish in pyjamas. And that's just the women.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sharia poster boy" (29 July 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=CwDo1uB-CBk 2011

Women, People, Law, Beer

“Fantasies aren't reality, I know, I know, I know. Except when they are. Except when you make them into reality.”

Laura Antoniou (1963) American novelist

Source: "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny", p. 12

Reality

“Tell me, my Life and my Spouse, this whole ineffable mystery, is it not rather for the admiration of the Seraphim, than for the expression of one like me, your spouse, who doesn’t know what to do about this, except to babble.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Epithalamium

Life

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37

Life, Children, Age, Cars

“Without real experience in using the computer to get useful results the computer science major is apt to know all about the marvelous tool except how to use it. Such a person is a mere technician, skilled in manipulating the tool but with little sense of how and when to use it for its basic purposes.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)

Sense, Science, Personality

“The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But "prove" used in this way really means "test," in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, "The exception tests the rule." Or, put another way, "The exception proves that the rule is wrong."”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.
lecture I: "The Uncertainty of Science"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

People, Alcohol, Truth, Way

“Allah's Apostle used to say, "None has the right to be worshipped except Allah Alone (Who) honored His Warriors and made His Slave victorious, and He (Alone) defeated the (infidel) clans; so there is nothing after Him.”

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

Narrated Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 440
Sunni Hadith

Victory

“War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)

War, Peace

“[Consumer credit] is like giving yourself a blood transfusion from your left arm to your right. Nothing is accomplished, except the possibility of spilling blood on the floor. But it's not even that benign.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Debt is No Salvation http://www.europac.com/commentaries/debt_no_salvation

“There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

Elbert Hubbard, part of a larger comment quoted from Electrical Review without further attribution in The Search for the North Pole (1896) by Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, p. 520, this was later published as part of various works by Hubbard, including An American Bible (1918) edited by Alice Hubbard. Also once misattributed to Amelia J Calver in The Manifesto (January 1896) by the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shakers), misattribution to Kin Hubbard seems to be a relatively recent occurrence on the internet.
Misattributed

Failure

“You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Truth

“Hair on a man's chest is thought to denote strength. The gorilla is the most powerful of bipeds and has hair on every place on his body except for his chest.”

Anton LaVey book The Devil's Notebook

The Devil's Notebook (1992)

“Listen, I'm no social scientist and haven't done a survey. I don't pretend to know what John Q citizen thinks about this. But I've lived in prison for a long time now and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them… was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception. Deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

Men, Motivation, Question, Thinking

“Hindu immigration has so far been nothing more than a threat. The present immigration restrictions will prevent the immigration of these people, except for travel and study. Experience in many parts of the world has shown the folly of allowing white countries to be overrun by Hindus, and Americans should sympathize with the British possessions that are trying to maintain white supremacy in their own borders in this respect.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

People, World, Travel, Study

“I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society.”

Douglas Fraser (1916–2008) American labor leader

Resignation letter from National Committee of Labor-Management Group http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fraserresign.html, July 17, 1978; Published in: North Country Anvil, Nr. 28, (1978) p. 22

War, People, Communication, Business

“The ones [compliments] I value most came from Edgar Degas who said he was happy to see my work becoming more and more pure. The etcher Bracquemond, a pupil of Ingres, said - possibly he meant what he said - that my work shows increasing strength. I will calmly tread the path I have taken, and try to do my best. At bottom, I have only a vague sense of its rightness or wrongness. I am much disturbed by my unpolished and rough execution. I should like to develop a smoother technique which, while retaining the old fierceness, would be rid of those jarring notes which make it difficult to see my canvases clearly except when the light falls in front. There lies the difficulty - not to speak of drawing.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 4 May 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 29-30
his comment after having seen his own painting-show at Durand-Ruel 's gallery in Paris, May 1883
1880's

Sense, Light, Drawing, Happiness

“The invention of logarithms and the calculation of the earlier tables form a very striking episode in the history of exact science, and, with the exception of the Principia of Newton, there is no mathematical work published in the country which has produced such important consequences, or to which so much interest attaches as to Napier’s Descriptio.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Edition; Article “Logarithms.”; Reported in Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book, (1914) : On the invention of logarithms

History, Mathematics, Science, Country

“What is the alternative to collective bargaining? There is none except anarchy, and there are rare elements in the country that would like to see anarchy in the trade unions—in my view the most dangerous thing for the country that could happen. Another alternative is force, but we may rule out force in this country, and I would lay it down that, so long as the industrial system remains as it is, collective bargaining is the right thing. I have no doubt about that. And yet we all know in our heart of hearts that it may be a clumsy method of settling disputes, and that the last word has not been spoken. Some day, when we are all fit for a democracy, we shall not need these aids, but certainly for my part, and as long as I can see ahead, unless there is that change in human nature which we are always hoping for, collective bargaining will be a necessity.”

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

Hope, Democracy, Nature, Change

“Bombacci had once been a friend and disciple of Lenin and revived the story that, according to Lenin, Mussolini had been the one serious socialist in Italy. No doubt the Duce was influenced by Bombacci when he called fascism of Salò [Italian Social Republic] the only truly socialist government in existence—with the possible exception of Soviet Russia.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 312

“You stared out of the window on the emptiness
Of a world exploding:
Stones and rubble thrown upwards in a fountain
Blasted sideways by the wind.
Every sensation except loneliness
Was drained out of your mind
By the lack of any motionless object the eye could
find.
You were a child again
Who sees for the first time things happen.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"To A Spanish Poet" (for Manuel Altolaguirre)
The Still Centre (1939)

World, Time, Loneliness

“And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.”

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

Letter to the Sovereigns (1493)

People, Fear

“You know, you can tell the difference between a terrorist and a toddler. On a terrorist, the diaper is gonna be on the head, all right? That's how you can tell the difference. [very loud applause] It's upsetting. Unbelievable. They got absolutely nothing in common except both diapers are full of crap.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

“The head of a free nation's government must direct towards obscure and shifting objectives the actions of a group of people who are not compelled to obey him by anything except the fear of anarchy, which fear does not exist in times f social peace. He can do nothing without being criticized by opponents whose desire to put someone in his place makes them the more pitiless. His lieutenants are not respectful assistants; they are his equals and his eventual successors.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

People, Fear, Peace, Time

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 5, 1776, p. 302
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Money

“2006, at least after August['s Vista release], will be great time for buyers and sellers of PC hardware and that has to be a good thing for everyone — except Apple.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Windows Vista: The Final Countdown Begins http://technewsworld.com/story/46149.html in Tech News World (19 September 2005)

Time

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

Love, Life, God, Marriage

“Women's studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink. It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 242

Women, Men, Study, Silence

“I have no thesis except that people get a very raw deal from life.”

James Gould Cozzens (1903–1978) American novelist

in "The Hermit of Lambertville", 2 September 1957, TIME Magazine

Life, People

“Narrated Abu Qilaba: Allah's Apostle said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims."”

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

[9, 83, 37]
Sunni Hadith

Personality

“I don't like records that are the same from beginning to end, that are too styled and slick. Everything is so designed and airbrushed and Botoxed, it makes us think, 'Oh, everybody's perfect except me. Everything's smooth except me.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

But nothing is smooth."
From Newsweek, September 6 2004 issue, defending a song claimed to be "really hard to listen to" ("Ancestors") from her album Medúlla
Other quotes

Thinking, Perfection

“With a few exceptions, lower population [density] means fewer problems [for survivalist retreats]. When the Schumer Hits the Fan, there will be a mass exodus from the cities. Think of it as an army that is spreading out across a battlefield: The wider they are spread, the less effective they are. The inverse-square law hasn’t been repealed.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009)

Law, Problem, Thinking

“The tempest was terrible and separated me from my [other] vessels that night, putting every one of them in desperate straits, with nothing to look forward to but death. Each was certain the others had been destroyed. What man ever born, not excepting Job, who would not have died of despair, when in such weather seeking safety for my son, my brother, shipmates, and myself, we were forbidden [access to] the land and the harbors which I, by God's will and sweating blood, had won for Spain?”

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

Letter to the Sovereigns (1503)

Death, God, Weather, Despair

“From New Orleans and the back roads of the Mississippi Delta to Harlem and Chicago, black musicians set enduring and distinctive standards for American creativity. The blues of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the gospel of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Duke Ellington, and the soul of Marvin Gaye claim fans of all ages from around the world. The trumpeting genius of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie illustrate the exceptional musicianship so prominent in various genres of African-American music.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Black Music (June 2001)

Age, World, Music, Soul

“I stress that we unambiguously support strengthening the non-proliferation regime, without any exceptions, on the basis of international law.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Kremlin RU http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/10/1823_type70029type82912_105566.shtml (10 May 2006) 2006- 2010

Law, Support

“To some this may appear to be a small matter, but to Mr. Harry Hook, it is very important. He is a street trader in the Barnsley Market. He has been trading there for some six years without any complaint being made against him; but, nevertheless, he has now been banned from trading in the market for life. All because of a trifling incident. On Wednesday, October 16, 1974, the market was closed at 5:30. So were all the lavatories, or 'toilets' as they are now called. They were locked up. Three quarters of an hour later, at 6:20, Harry Hook had an urgent call of nature. He wanted to relieve himself. He went into a side street near the market and there made water, or 'urinated' as it is now said. No one was about except one or two employees of the council, who were cleaning up. They rebuked him. He said: 'I can do it here if I like'. They reported him to a security officer who came up. The security officer reprimanded Harry Hook. We are not told the words used by the security officer. I expect they were in language which street traders understand. Harry Hook made an appropriate reply. Again, we are not told the actual words, but it is not difficult to guess. I expect it was an emphatic version of 'You be off'. At any rate, the security officer described them as words of abuse. Touchstone would say that the security officer gave the 'reproof valiant' and Harry Hook gave the 'counter-check quarrelsome'; As You Like It, Act V, Scene IV. On Thursday morning the security officer reported the incident. The market manager thought it was a serious matter. So he saw Mr. Hook the next day, Friday, October 18. Mr. Hook admitted it and said he was sorry for what had happened. The market manager was not satisfied to leave it there. He reported the incident to the chairman of the amenity services committee of the Council. He says that the chairman agreed that 'staff should be protected from such abuse.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

That very day the market manager wrote a letter to Mr. Hook, banning him from trading in the market.
Ex Parte Hook [1976] 1 WLR 1052 at 1055.
Judgments

Life, Understanding, Nature, Water

“The way in which our society does do honor to its indubitably great men … is a study in immunizing people against their virus. … They are the menagerie of Very Important People who exist only for ceremonial occasions. … The effectually prevents the two practical uses that we could make of them. We neither take seriously the simple, direct, fearless souls that they invariably are, whether humble or arrogant, to model ourselves after them because they make more sense as human beings; nor do we have recourse the them to help us when we have need of exceptional purity, magnanimity, profundity, or imagination.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 152.

Men, People, Way, Soul

“My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis, it's not a political issue, it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act, that's a renewable resource, let's renew it.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Academy Award acceptance speech (21 February 2007) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/gore-wins-hollywood-in-a-landslide/.

People, World

“Q:So God cannot teach anything, except through a Master?”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

A: What is God? You don't know what God is. God cannot be a human being. God is Light; God is power. God cannot talk. Electricity cannot give light. Only the bulb gives light, but electricity has to be put through the wire for the bulb to give light. It's power. Power cannot do anything; it has to be put through a medium. Yes?
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 2, 1971
1970s

God

“Under queen Elizabeth, the minstrels had lost the protection of the opulent; and their credit was sunk so low in the public estimation, that, by a statute in the thirty-ninth year of her reign against vagrants, they were included among the rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and subjected to the like punishments. This edict also affected all fencers, bearwards, common players of interludes (with the exception of such players as belonged to great personages, and were authorised to play under the hand and seal of their patrons), as well as minstrels wandering abroad, jugglers, tinkers, and pedlars; and seems to have given the death's wound to the profession of the minstrels, who had so long enjoyed the public favour, and basked in the sunshine of prosperity.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 185
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Minstrels

Death

“The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war on the terms indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities without exception.”

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

Report on Peace (8 November 1917) http://marx.org/archive/lenin/works//1917/oct/25-26/26b.htm, Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. 26. 1910s

War, Peace, Strong

“There are two kinds of morality—the kind of morality that one imposes on oneself and the kind of morality that one imposes on others. For the first kind of morality, that is, for self-restraint, I have the greatest respect. The second kind of morality I do not respect except when it constitutes self-defense. (For example, when women say that rape and wife-beating are immoral, that is self-defense.) I have noticed that the people who try hardest to impose moral code on others (not in self-defense) are often the least careful to abide by that moral code themselves.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

"Morality and Revolution"
The Road to Revolution (2008)

Women, People

“As we go further into humanity's past and study its great spiritual cultures, the need for Vedanta becomes still greater. There is no other way of understanding them except through a living culture which is also as ancient as they. Take Egypt, for example. We have happily found plenty of texts bearing on its religion, but the oral traditions through which its spiritual knowledge was transmitted was lost. Therefore, bare texts do not make a meaning as literalists have found. To understand them, "it is necessary that we tum to the Vedanta … because the Upanishads provide the purest metaphysics available to us from the primordial past," as Arthur Versluis, the author of The Egyptian Mysteries, says. He himself followed this method and he found that the study of Vedanta "in-fills" Egyptian studies. His labour resulted in an illuminating study of Egypt's ancient religious tradition.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Religion, Way, Understanding, Knowledge

“The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Sun, Country

“The sound convert takes a whole Christ, and takes Him for all intents and purposes, without exceptions, without limitations, without reserves. He is willing to have Christ, upon His own terms, upon any terms. He is willing to bear the dominion of Christ as well as have deliverance by Christ. He saith with Paul, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 436.

Christ

“One may speculate whether the contemporary idea of American society in decay is not a false notion which has been created, at least partially, by this old movie portrait of a society that was once stable, orderly and governed by the immutable justice of the Hollywood censorship code.
This is the ever-popular myth of a golden age which persuades so many generations that there was once a wonderful moment in the past when the world was sound and good people ruled and evil was justly punished. After Camelot came chaos and despair, except, of course, that Camelot never existed, any more than the world portrayed by those old Hollywood films existed.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Golden Oldies" (p.293)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Age, World, Justice

“For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism. Is there any evidence from the past that institutionalizing sects and ethnic grievances would ensure a nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom? America’s melting pot is history’s sole exception of e pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language, and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt…”

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

2010s, Diversity: History's Pathway to Chaos (2016)

History, Freedom, Success, Past

“No white anything (except sheets).”

Robert Denning (1927–2005) American interior designer

Patricia Volk, " The Sweet Smell of Excess http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/style/tmagazine/08texcess.html", The New York Times (October 8, 2006; retrieved October 4, 2007).

“Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being. Being, indeed! – there is no being, but a universal becoming of individualities, and Plato turned his back os truth when he turned towards his museum of specific ideals.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 1, sect. 5

Truth, Universe, Perfection

“Amendments ought not to be made, except in cases where the alteration is of such a nature as that no one can be misled by it.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Ex parte Motley et uxor (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 456.

Nature

“Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is no inner discord between private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 148.

Love, Christ, Drawing, Personality

“The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 109)

Way, Feeling, Hell

“I have already spoken of the effects which the solitary and ascetic life of the early monks produced upon their imagination. The same thing took place amongst the recluses of the convents, but particularly nunneries. “The imaginations of women,” says a celebrated author whom I have already quoted, “as their feelings are more keen and exquisite, are more susceptible and ungovernable than those of men; more obnoxious to the injurious influence of solitude; more easily won upon by the arts of delusion, and inflamed by the contagion of the passions.” Hence we may account for the rapidity with which in orphan houses, cloisters, and other institutions, where numbers of the sex are [122] intimately connected with each other, the sickness, humour, habits, of one, if conspicuous and distinguished, become those of all. I remember to have read in a medical writer of considerable merit, that in a French convent of nuns, of more than common magnitude, one of the sisters was seized with a strange impulse to mew like a cat, in which singular propensity she was shortly imitated by several other sisters, and finally, without a solitary exception, by the whole convent, who all joined at regular periods in a general mew that lasted several hours”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 93

Life, Women, Men, Art

“On account of their savage nature, the Bedouins are people who plunder and cause damage. They plunder whatever they are able to lay their hands on without having to fight or to expose themselves to danger. They then retreat to their pastures in the desert. They do not attack or fight except in self-defence. Every stronghold or (locality) that seems difficult to attack, they by-pass in favour of some less difficult (enterprise). Tribes that are protected by inaccessible mountains are safe from their mischief and destructiveness. The Bedouins would not cross hills or undergo hardship and danger in order to get to them. Flat territory, on the other hand, falls victim to their looting and prey to their appetite whenever they (have the opportunity of) gaining power over it. Then they raid, plunder, and attack that territory repeatedly, because it is easily (accessible) to them. Eventually, its inhabitants succumb utterly to the Bedouins and then are pushed around by them in accordance with changes of control and shifts in leadership. Eventually, their civilization is wiped out. God has power over His creatures.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, p. 118, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Muqaddimah (1377)

God, People, Mountain, Nature

“It was in the year 1843 that I read a paper "On the Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity and the Mechanical Value of Heat" to the Chemical Section of the British Association assembled at Cork. With the exception of some eminent men, among whom I recollect with pride Dr. Apjohn, the president of the Section, the Earl of Rosse, Mr. Eaton Hodgkinson, and others, the subject did not excite much general attention; so that when I brought it forward again at the meeting in 1847, the chairman suggested that, as the business of the section pressed, I should not read my paper, but confine myself to a short verbal description of my experiments. This I endeavoured to do, and discussion not being invited, the communication would have passed without comment if a young man had not risen in the section, and by his intelligent observations created a lively interest in the new theory. The young man was William Thomson, who had two years previously passed the University of Cambridge with the highest honour, and is now probably the foremost scientific authority of the age.”

James Prescott Joule (1818–1889) English physicist and brewer

[James Prescott Joule, Joint Scientific Papers, The Physical Society of London, 1887, 215]

Men, Age, Intelligence, Communication

“Any intervention now would be a triumph for Germany! A military triumph! A war triumph! Intervention would have been for us a military disaster. Has the Secretary of State for War no right to express an opinion upon a thing which would be a military disaster? That is what I did, and I do not withdraw a single syllable. It was essential. I could tell the hon. Member how timely it was. I can tell the hon. Member it was not merely the expression of my own opinion, but the expression of the opinion of the Cabinet, of the War Committee, and of our military advisers. It was the opinion of every ally. I can understand men who conscientiously object to all wars. I can understand men who say you will never redeem humanity except by passive endurance of every evil. I can understand men, even—although I do not appreciate the strength of their arguments—who say they do not approve of this particular war. That is not my view, but I can understand it, and it requires courage to say so. But what I cannot understand, what I cannot appreciate, what I cannot respect, is when men preface their speeches by saying they believe in the war, they believe in its origin, they believe in its objects and its cause, and during the time the enemy were in the ascendant never said a word about peace; but the moment our gallant troops are climbing through endurance and suffering up the path of ascendancy begin to howl with the enemy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/oct/11/statement-by-prime-minister in the House of Commons (11 October 1916) Secretary of State for War

Men, War, Peace, Courage

“To hold vivisection to be never justified is a hard belief. But so is its opposite. I believe it is never justified because I can see nothing (except our being able to get away with it) which lets us pick on animals that would not equally let us pick on idiot humans (who would be more useful) or, for the matter of that, on a few humans of any sort whom we might sacrifice for the good of the many. If we do permit vivisection, here if anywhere we are under the most stringent minimum obligations. The very least we must make sure of is that no experiment is ever duplicated, or careless, or done for mere teaching's sake or as a substitute for thinking. Knowing how often, in every other sphere, pseudo-work proliferates in order to fill time and jobs, and how often activity substitutes for thought, and then reading the official statistics about vivisection, do you truly believe we do make sure?”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), pp. 19-20

Thinking, Time, Reading, Animals