Quotes about exception (3016 quotes, page 26)

“I never thought of that, really, when I was younger, but when I started doing some of the autobiographical picture books, I realized that my family was a great treasure trove. We were pretty ordinary — we weren't really exceptional. I don't think my life growing up was really too much different from the average kid in Meriden, Connecticut at that time. But it's very different from young people today, so I like it that older people my age feel that it's helping them to remember their childhood. Little kids think it's like life on a different planet.”

Tomie dePaola (1934) American children's illustrator and writer

An Interview with Tomie dePaola http://katybeebe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/car-2000-05-12-b-013.pdf (May 2000)

Life , People , Books , Age

“All excepting one man who was in the front rank,
A man by the name of Sam Small,
And 'im and the Sergeant were both 'daggers drawn',
They thought 'nowt' of each other at all”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

Sam, Sam, Pick Oop Tha' Musket

“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.... But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

As quoted in Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism (1987) by Amir Taheri, pp. 241-3.
Disputed

Men , War , People , World

“This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahead. Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the viewpoint of men who’d long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only valid point for life—life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Life , Men , Dreams , Tree

“Techniques are performed upon raw materials. The state of art of analyzing the characteristics of the raw materials is likely to determine what kind of technology will be used. (Tools are also necessary, of course, but by and large, the construction of tools is a simpler problem than the analysis of the nature of the material and generally follows the analysis.) To understand the nature of the material means to be able to control it better and achieve predictability and efficiency in transformation. We are not referring here to the 'essence of the material, only the way the organization perceives it to be … The other relevant characteristic of the raw material, besides the understandability of Its nature, is Its stability and variability; that is, whether the material can be treated in a standardized fashion or whether continual adjustment to it is necessary. Organizations uniformly seek to standardize their raw material In order to minimize exceptional situations. This is the point of de-individualizing processes found in military academies, monasteries and prisons, and the superiority of the synthetic shoe material Corfam over leather.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1960s, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations", 1967, p. 195

Art , Shoe , Way , Fashion

“Today, more than ever, women are occupying positions of influence. However, in the past they have been the exceptions to the rule and were usually obliged to hold on to their power by deforming themselves into honorary men or into magnified archetypes of the female who manipulated men. It still is not clear that women can successfully become part of the established structures without accepting these deformations.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Women , Men , Past , Parting

“Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of ‘systematically assisting Sisyphus’s stealthy, syst-susceptible sister,’ which is easier done than said.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

World , Sister

“We must choose between two paths. Either we conclude that Americans have lost control over their government or we reject this information as a mere distortion of history. In the first case we become advocates of the conspiratorial view of history in the later we endorse the accidental view. It is a difficult choice.

The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (1995)

People , History

“Nothing but man was really cruel, vindictive, except perhaps the loathly cat.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter VIII Sirius at Cambridge.

Cats

“In time, of course, Paul's day world ceased to be flat, and became a huge ball. At this stage the universe was more like a dumpling than a sandwich. Vaguely Paul still conceived the three levels of existence. The nether night was deep down within the ball of the day world. The starry night was all around it. On the ball were all the countries except Fairyland, which was nowhere.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter III: The Child Paul

World , Universe , Time , Night

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Death , Women , Men , Money

“One, a caliphate is a global government, and you know that's where we're headed. Everybody is headed now towards a global government. Well, so are the Islamic extremists, except theirs is Sharia law and infidels will be beheaded. The Shiite Muslims, the ones in Iran, believe in — and not all of them, not the people necessarily on the street — but the real radicals, the revolutionaries and the people at the very top are called Twelvers. They believe in the Twelfth Imam. And that will — that Twelfth Imam, when he returns, he will set up a global caliphate in ancient Babylon. This one should gravely concern you because he has all of the earmarks — in their own writings — of an antichrist, or the Antichrist. I don't know if he is or not. But there are those who will just claim, you know, he's the Twelfth Imam, et cetera et cetera. And the way to get there is global chaos.”

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

2011-02-01
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Network
Beck Warns Of The Coming "Caliphate," "Global Government," "Marxists," "Global Chaos" And "The Anti-Christ"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102010012
2011-02-28
2010s, 2011

People , Law , Way

“Many companies are not driving significant business value from the digitized platforms they build as part of their enterprise architecture initiatives. Our 2011 survey of 146 senior IT leaders found that the companies that benefit from their platforms' efforts are consistently relying on four architecture-related practices that encourage organizational learning about the value of enterprise architecture: 1) making IT costs transparent, 2) debating architectural exceptions, 3) performing post-implementation reviews, and 4) making IT investments with enterprise architecture in mind.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Jeanne W. Ross & Anne Quaadgras (2012) " Enterprise Architecture Is Not Just for Architects http://cisr.mit.edu/blog/documents/2012/09/19/2012_0901_architecturelearning_rossquaadgras.pdf/," Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vol. XII, No. 9, September 2012

Business , Effort , Learning , Parting

“The Professor of Philosophy seems quite aware of what has happened. His previous little eye-flick of malice toward Phædrus has turned to a little eye-flick of fear. He seems to understand that within the present classroom situation, when the time comes, he can get exactly the same treatment he gave, and there will be no sympathy from any of the faces before him. He's thrown away his right to courtesy. There's no way to prevent retaliation now except to keep covered.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Fear , Way , Understanding , Time

“There's no bad publicity except an obituary.”

Brendan Behan (1923–1964) Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright

As quoted in The World of Brendan Behan (1966) by Sean McCann, p. 56
Variant: There's no bad publicity except an obituary notice.

“Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.”

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) Greek-French philosopher

From an interview conducted on 23 March 1983 for the May-August issue of the French journal Lutter ( "Marx today: the tragicomical paradox " http://www.rebeller.se/m.html). It was translated by Franco Schiavoni for the January 1984 issue of the Australian magazine Thesis Eleven.

Law , History , Sense

“We never have any understanding of any subject matter except in terms of our own mental constructs of "things" and "happenings" of that subject matter.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Structured analysis (SA): A language for communicating ideas (1977), p. 19.

Understanding

“I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except by some women everybody hated.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Loudest Voice" (1959)

Women , Hate

“I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

"Preface"
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Truth , World , Religion , Error

“But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found so convenient? I answer, let us have banks; but let them be such as are alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There is not a bank of discount on the continent of Europe (at least there was not one when I was there) which offers anything but cash in exchange for discounted bills.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:277
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Country

“And then a funny thing happened to me…except when I think about it, it wasn't very funny at all. There must be a line in all of us, a very clear one, just like the line that divides the light side of a planet from the dark. I think they call that line the terminator. That's a very good word for it. Because at that moment I was freaking out, and at the next I was as cool as a cucumber.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Thinking , Light

“Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair.
Well the night's busting open,
These two lanes will take us anywhere.
We got one last chance to make it real,
To trade in these wings on some wheels.
Climb in back, heaven's waiting on down the tracks.
Oh come take my hand,
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land.
Oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road.
Thunder Road.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Thunder Road"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Chance , Waiting , Night

“Surely, there is no advantage (preference) for an Arab over an aajami (non-Arab), nor a non-Arab over an Arab, nor a white over a black, except by piousness and good deeds.”

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

Reported by Imaam Ahmad, 22391; al-Silsilat al-Saheeh, 2700
Sunni Hadith

“I prepare even for a conversation with him — I never want to say too little or too much. And, I never disturb him except when I feel I've done something worthwhile. It's a rare relationship — unconditional and [professional]].”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

About his relationship with Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010

Feeling

“The range of H 1255 is only four tenths of a magnitude, and on account of its brightness it is difficult to observe on all plates except those taken with the 1-inch Cooke lens. It seemed necessary, therefore, to take unusual precautions in order to secure accurate observations, and to give each one its full weight. Accordingly, one hundred and thirty six photographs were selected, including nearly all of those taken with the Cooke lens, and also those taken with the 8 inch Bache Telescope on which the variable was certainly faint. Four independent estimates of brightness were made on each plate, and means were taken, thus reducing the probable error one half. The phase was computed for each observation, thus covering all parts of the light curve. …H 1255 and H 1303 differ from the other variables in a marked degree as in each case the duration of the phase of minimum is very long in proportion to the length of the period. This fact led to considerable difficulty in determining their periods as they were apparently at their minimum brightness for some time before and after the actual minima occurred. In H 1255, the change in brightness is obviously continuous throughout the period, although it is much more rapid near minimum than near maximum. This is clearly seen in Plate IV, Figs. 5 and 6.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) astronomer

"Ten Variable Stars of the Algol Type" http://books.google.com/books?id=UkdWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA87 (1908) Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College Vol.60. No.5

Error , Light , Change , Time

“There was always something about Creative Commons and its name that bugged me, too. The name sounds like a variation of the once-powerful Common Cause political-action committee. A ring of days gone by — nostalgia. All I see here is making the very easy and simple U. S. copyright laws more complex for no apparent reason, except maybe as a protest.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

"Creative Commons Humbug" in PC Magazine (18 July 2005) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838249,00.asp
2000s

Law , Nostalgia

“Be it understood, then, that what we have to do, as students of phenomenology, is simply to open our mental eyes and look well at the phenomenon and say what are the characteristics that are never wanting in it, whether that phenomenon be something that outward experience forces upon our attention, or whether it be the wildest of dreams, or whether it be the most abstract and general of the conclusions of science.
The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear. When the ground is covered by snow on which the sun shines brightly except where shadows fall, if you ask any ordinary man what its color appears to be, he will tell you white, pure white, whiter in the sunlight, a little greyish in the shadow. But that is not what is before his eyes that he is describing; it is his theory of what ought to be seen. The artist will tell him that the shadows are not grey but a dull blue and that the snow in the sunshine is of a rich yellow. That artist's observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology. The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.41 - 42
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Dreams , Color , Nature , Study

“The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about - except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises. That's why in the final analysis, although we've laughed a lot with Stewart Home, we even reject the meta-criticism of innovation-fixation articulated in 'neoism.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

The new sorts itself out when it lands in the museum. Finito.
Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-3

Home , Fashion , Thinking

“The type for the great newspaper is set up by linotype operators. Apprenticeship is rigorously limited. Some operators can never get beyond the 2500-em class, others with no more personal effort can set 5000 ems. Do the employers test out applicants for apprenticeship so as to be sure to secure boys who will develop into the 5000-em class? They do not: they select applicants for any near reason except the fundamental important one of innate fitness.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 156; ; cited in Münsterberg (113; 53)

Boy , Effort , Personality

“Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep. His so-called "talent" consists of nothing but tormenting helpless creatures and, if necessary, torturing them to death or simply murdering them. He doesn't care about anyone or anything except his career as a so-called filmmaker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensationalism, he creates the most sensless difficulties and dangers, risking other people's safety and even their lives — just so he can eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable odds. For his movies he hires retards and amateurs whom he can push around (and alledgedly hypnotize!), and he pays them starvation wages or zilch. He also uses freaks and cripples of every conceivable size and shape, merely to look interesting. He doesn't have the foggiest inkling of how to make movies. He doesn't even try to direct the actors anymore. Long ago, when I ordered him to keep his trap shut, he gave up asking me whether I'm willing to carry out his stupid and boring ideas.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 222

Death , Money , Hate , People

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Art , Time , Past

“"I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Beauty , Understanding

“"You know how to deal with senior officers?" "Respectfully." "Confuse them. Except for the ones who can't be confused, like Wellington."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Jorge Vicente and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 176
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

“Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,—imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics, — "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of—the air!"”

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

Richter.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Thinking , Sea , Country

“The dangers to which we are exposed from our Women must now be manifest to the meanest capacity in Spaceland. If even the angle of a respectable Triangle in the middle class is not without its dangers; if to run against a Working Man involves a gash; if collision with an officer of the military class necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertex of a Private Soldier brings with it danger of death; — what can it be to run against a Woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point, how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious, always to avoid collision!”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 4. Concerning the Women

Death , Women

“… your 90MHz Pentium won't have any trouble doing arithmetic (except for certain divisions).”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/3
About the Industry

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" A Child's Christmas in Wales http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_christmas.html", from Quite Early One Morning (1954)

Sleep , Distant , Christmas , Sea

“But no public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means; and I have no reason to hope that Mr Coote may be an exception to the rule.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

"The Living Pictures", The Saturday Review, LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443, reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Vol. 1. London: Constable & Co. 79-86
1890s

Hope

“Every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. …liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one. …they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

"Some Good Whig Principles. Declaration of those Rights of the Community of Great Britain, without which they cannot be Free," as quoted in Memoirs of the Llife and Writings of Benjamin Franklin https://books.google.com/books?id=jmMFAAAAQAAJ (1818) by Benjamin Franklin and William Temple Franklin
Attributed

Life , Men , God , Peace

“Excellent attitude of the socialists, even of the revolutionaries and of the CGT…We have not had arrested any of the individuals registered in the Carnet B, apart from a few rare exceptions, when the Préfets believed themselves confronted with dangerous anarchists.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Diary entry (2 August 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 136.

“In the recent past, wolves were labeled a flagship species or an umbrella, indicator, or keystone species, depending on what conservation market one was trying to penetrate… A flagship species is an attraction to nearly all society's strata, but wolves are not welcomed by all factions of society. With a few rare exceptions, the rural world opposes wolves, so the animal's flagship role is restricted primarily to urbanites or to local areas. Wolves are certainly a powerful flagship species for the conservation movement, particularly that of affluent societies with strong lobbies in large cities, but a true flagship species should be able to move an entire society toward a goal.
Neither are wolves a good umbrella species (i. e., a species, usually high in the ecological pyramid, whose conservation necessarily fosters that of the rest of the chain) in that they can live well on a variety of food resources and in areas with an impoverished prey base. Wolves are not a keystone species either, in that they are not essential for the presence of many other species (e. g., herbivores flourish in areas devoid of wolves). And wolves are not necessarily indicators of good habitat quality or integrity because they are too generalist to be good indicators of the presence of a pristine trophic chain.
The above labels have been very useful in many circumstance and have contributed significantly to wolf recovery. They may still be useful in the future, but we should be aware that they are shortcuts to "sell a product" rather than good scientific grounds on which to build conservation.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

World , Food , Strong , Wolf

“Not in matter but in thought, not in possessions nor even in attainments but in ideals, is to be found the seed of immortality. Not through material acquisition but in generous diffusion of ideas and ideals can the true empire of humanity be established. Thus to Asoka, to whom belonged this vast empire, bound by the inviolate seas, after he had tried to ransom the world by giving away to the utmost, there came a time when he had nothing more to give, except one half of an Amlaki fruit. This was his last possession, and his anguished cry was that since he had nothing more to give, let the half of the Amlaki be accepted as his final gift.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

World , Idea , Time , Cry

“It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

Knowledge , Country

“I felt both a state of envy and contempt. The yacht itself was not vulgar, but I smelt something vulgar about owning it…A few moments later I set off back to my dull daily penal colony of an existence on the far side of the dream, as Adam left the Garden of Eden perhaps…except I knew there were no Gods, and nothing was going to bar my return…”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

God , Dreams , Envy

“The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her… But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Madame de Pompadour.

Love , Thinking , Sleep

““Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?” Carmody asked.
“Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 136)

God , Fate , Universe

“I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student — thirty-six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. The forgotten one was left to struggle on his own, with no line of communication to that which he so hugely needed. Corrigan had lost his line with God: he bore the sorrows on his own, the story of stories.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

Men , God , World , Communication

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

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

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

“Muhammad took the fort [of Rawar] and stayed there for two or three days. He put six thousand fighting men, who were in the fort, to the sword, and shot some with arrows. The other dependents and servants were taken prisoners, with their wives and children… When the number of the prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons, amongst whom thirty were the daughters of chiefs, and one of them was Rai Dahir's sister's daughter, whose name was Jaisiya. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of the prisoners were forwarded in charge of Ka'ab, son of Mharak. When the head of Dahir, the women, and the property all reached Hajjaj, he prostrated himself before Allah, offered thanksgivings and praises… Hajjaj then forwarded the head, the umbrellas, and wealth, and the prisoners to Walid the Khalifa. When the Khalifa of the time had read the letter, he praised Almighty Allah. He sold some of those daughters of the chiefs, and some he granted as rewards. When he saw the daughter of Rai Dahir’s sister he was much struck with her beauty and charms, and began to bite his finger with astonishment…. It is said that after the conquest was effected and the affairs of the country were settled and the report of the conquest had reached Hajjaj, he sent a reply to the following effect. 'O my cousin! I received your life-inspiring letter. I was much pleased and overjoyed when it reached me. The events were recounted in an excellent and beautiful style, and I learnt that the ways and rules you follow are conformable to the Law. Except that you give protection to all, great and small alike, and make no difference between enemy and friend. God says, - Give no quarter to Infidels, but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God [Allah]. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work. After this, give no quarter to any enemy except to those who are of rank.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 172-173. Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Life , Women , Men , God

“I moved out to Santa Barbara to straighten out, supposedly, and I started using drugs, which I found were plentiful in Isla Vista, around the college campus — UCSB. And then I started rollicking around with all kinds of kids a lot younger than me. Anywhere from 15 to their 20s, but I was kind of in my late 20s. And, uh…I had fun, but I really didn't have anyone I particularly loved. And I still don't, except for loving friends, but I mean I haven't been in love with anyone in years and years. But I have a certain amount of faith that it'll come.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

On coming home to California in the late 1960's.
Edie : American Girl (1982)

Love , Faith

“The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

Past

“To see the Convulsions, Agonies and Tortures of a poor Fellow-Creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify Luxury, and scratch callous and rank Organs, must require a rocky Heart, and a great Degree of Cruelty and Ferocity. I cannot find any great Difference on the Foot of natural Reason and Equity only, between feeding on human Flesh, and feeding on brute animal Flesh, except Custom and Example. I believe some rational Creatures would suffer less in being fairly butcher'd, than a strong Ox, or red Deer; and in natural Morality and Justice, the Degrees of Pain here, make the essential Difference; for as to other Differences, they are relative only, and can be of no Weight with an infinitely perfect Being.”

George Cheyne (physician) (1671–1743) British doctor

Did not Use and Example weaken this Terror, and make the Difference, Reason alone could never do it.
An Essay on Regimen (London: C. Rivington, 1740), pp. 70 https://books.google.it/books?id=ezswAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA70-71.

Pain , Justice , Nature , Strong

“I have left the obvious, essential fact till this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, August 2, 1944.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: [Churchill, Winston, The Dawn of Liberation, 1945, Rosetta Books, 2013, 9780795329494]

World , Tear

“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

In a letter of Gustave Courbet (1869); in Letters of Gustave Courbet, 1992, University of Chicago Press, transl. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, ISBN 0226116530
1860s

Life , School , Freedom , Dead

“The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable — hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and "darkness," solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the "deep." To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VI

Secret , World , Law , Idea

“We're not allowed to do anything to nature anymore, except look at it. It's like porn with leaves.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

When Did Nature Get So Whiney? (12 September 2003)

Nature

“He did not make the rule against the Christians, for Trajan did that; and if we admit that he would have been willing to let the Christians alone, we cannot affirm that it was in his power, for it would be a great mistake to suppose that Antoninus had the unlimited authority, which some modern sovereigns have had. His power was limited by certain constitutional forms, by the senate, and by the precedents of his predecessors. We cannot admit that such a man was an active prosecutor, for there is no evidence that he was, though it is certain that he had no good opinion of the Christians, as appears from his own words. But he knew nothing of them except their hostility to the Roman religion, and probably thought they were dangerous to the state.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Hostility , Religion , Appearance

“Since the beginning of our critical career, we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion, in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remembrance…The rich melodies of Keats and Shelley,—and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,—and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the fields of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride…. The two who have the longest withstood this rapid withering of the laurel, and with the least marks of decay on their branches, are Rogers and Campbell.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) British politician

Edinburgh Review (1829). He goes on to promise "enduring fame" to Felicia Hemans.

Beauty , Music , Star , Effort

“Traditionalists value hierarchy. An infantile, immoral society deifies The Child. Kids should follow Florence King's injunction that "children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, 'Do you have enough room in the toes?'”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2016

Children , Business

“They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The Causes of World War Three (1960)

War , Peace , Way , Problem

“With the exception of some early Christian sects that were exterminated when the Fathers of the Church wormed their way to power and could start killing their competitors, Christianity, during the greater part of its history, enforced celibacy and homosexuality on a fairly large part of our race, including some of its most intelligent members, through the priesthood and monasticism, and broke up families and family property by prohibiting marriages between even fairly distant relatives. Islam, on the other hand, ordained polygyny and encouraged Moslems to fill their harems, and engender children by women of all different races; that is why the Arabic stock was diluted and liquidated so much more quickly than our own.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Descent of Islam", National Vanguard magazine (January-February 2003)

Women , Marriage , Children , Family

“Orientation in time, space, and status are the essentials of social existence, and the Balinese, although they make very strong spirits for ceremonial occasions, with a few startling exceptions resist alcohol, because if one drinks one loses one's orientation. Orientation is felt as a protection rather than as a strait jacket and its loss provokes extreme anxiety.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 11

Alcohol , Drink , Strong , Loss

“Orthodoxy can be as stubborn in science as in religion. I do not know how to shake it except by vigorous imagination that inspires unconventional work and contains within itself an elevated potential for inspired error. As the great Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto wrote: “Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.” Not to mention a man named Thomas Henry Huxley who, when not in the throes of grief or the wars of parson hunting, argued that “irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.””

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Bathybius and Eozoon", pp. 243–244
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

War , Truth , Religion , Error

“Home plays a very small role in the group activities of the corner boy. Except when he eats, sleeps, or is sick, he is rarely at home, and his friends always go to his corner first when they want to find him. Even the corner boy's name indicates the dominant importance of the gang in his activities. It is possible to associate with a group of men for months and never discover the family names of more than a few of them. Most are known by nicknames attached to them bv the group. Furthermore, it is easy to overlook the distinction between married and single men. The married man regularly sets aside one evening a week to take out his wife. There are other occasions when they go out together and entertain together, and some corner boys devote more attention to their wives than others, but, married or single, the corner boy can be found on his corner almost every night of the week.”

William Foote Whyte book Street Corner Society

Source: Street Corner Society, 1943, pp. 255-63, as cited in: Mercer (1958, p. 35-36)

Men , Family , Home , Boy

“None of you ask for anything — except everything, but just for so long as you need it.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“The Republican Party was organized in 1854-55, upon the platform of liberty and independence, to maintain the union of the States and the rights of the States; freedom of speech and the press; to resist the spread of slavery and the aggressions of the slave power; the equal rights of all persona to impartial protection at home and abroad, and in the enjoyment of religious freedom; and of all American citizens, whether native or naturalized, to the free exercise of the elective franchise and the enjoyment of its benefits; and requiring no test for office except honesty, capacity, and devotion to American institutions.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Exercises , Home , Nature , Freedom

“Neutrality has increasingly become obsolete and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.”

John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) United States Secretary of State

[Ian Shapiro, Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror, https://books.google.com/books?id=i7L6if3mwzsC&pg=PA145, 2009, Princeton University Press, 145–]

“Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i. e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

for science and reality
Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 118

Knowledge , Reality , Science , Time

“The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Writing", p. 22
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Cooking

“[To] me naturalization is just an obvious extension of what somebody in my position would desire anyway — the right to vote and to legally participate in society the same as any other citizen. I am already as entrenched as any other citizen: I have a house and land with a debt of a quarter-million dollars; with a thirty-year loan I really cannot leave Japan… Moreover, naturalization has knock-on benefits that suit a person with my personality. It will enable me to stand on my rights (yes, more than I do now!) with renewed vigor — because I will indeed have more rights, as well as a firmer ground to demand even more (I can except myself from, say, this 'as a foreigner, you are a guest in our country so shut up' bullshit). And — dare I say it?”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

I would be able to participate in politics as a candidate if I so choose).
Debito Arudou, " A Bit More Personal Background on Arudou Debito/Dave Aldwinckle http://www.debito.org/morebackground.html," Debito.Org

Nature , Housing , Personality , Country

“Mr. Lelar gave me a paper for the arrest of Crow Dog. Found defendant on a hill between White River and Rosebud Creek, where I made the arrest. Defendant had no clothes at the time, except a blanket, breechclout, and leggings and was on horseback. I did as I was ordered and took defendant to Fort Niobara.”

Hollow Horn Bear (1850–1913) 19th century Lakota chief and policeman

On the arrest of Crow Dog, in [Harring, Sidney L., Crow Dog's Case: A Chapter in the Legal History of Tribal Sovereignty Harring, American Indian Law Review, 1989, 14, 2, 191-240, http://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/aind14&i=202, 1 March 2018]

Dogs , Time , Clothes

“We know only what we do, what we make, what we construct; and all that we make, all that we construct, are realities. I call them images, not in Plato's sense (namely that they are only reflections of reality), but I hold that these images are the reality itself and that there is no reality beyond this reality except when in our creative process we change the images: then we have created new realities.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote of Naum Gabo, 1950; as cited in: Eidos: a journal of painting, sculpture and design. Nr.1, p. 31
1936 - 1977

Reality , Sense , Change

“If from the wilderness the righteous and honest John were actually to come who, clothed in skins and living on locusts and untouched by all the terrible mischief, were meanwhile to apply himself with a pure heart and in all seriousness to the investigation of truth and to offer the fruits thereof, what kind of reception would he have to expect from those businessmen of the chair, who are hired for State purposes and with wife and family have to live on philosophy, and whose watchword is, therefore, Primum vivere, deinde philosophari [first live and then philosophize]? These men have accordingly taken possession of the market and have already seen to it that here nothing is of value except what they allow; consequently merit exists only in so far as they and their mediocrity are pleased to acknowledge it. They thus have on a leading rein the attention of that small public, such as it is, that is concerned with philosophy. For on matters that do not promise, like the productions of poetry, amusement and entertainment but only instruction, and financially unprofitable instruction at that, that public will certainly not waste its time, effort, and energy, without first being thoroughly assured that such efforts will be richly rewarded. Now by virtue of its inherited belief that whoever lives by a business knows all about it, this public expects an assurance from the professional men who from professor’s chairs and in compendiums, journals, and literary periodicals, confidently behave as if they were the real masters of the subject. Accordingly, the public allows them to sample and select whatever is worth noting and what can be ignored. My poor John from the wilderness, how will you fare if, as is to be expected, what you bring is not drafted in accordance with the tacit convention of the gentlemen of the lucrative philosophy? They will regard you as one who has not entered in the spirit of the game and thus threatens to spoil the fun for all of them; consequently, they will regard you as their common enemy and antagonist. Now even if what you bring were the greatest masterpiece of the human mind, it could never find favor in their eyes. For it would not be drawn up ad normam conventionis [according to the current pattern]; and so it would not be such as to enable them to make it the subject of their lectures from the chair in order to make a living from it. It never occurs to a professor of philosophy to examine a new system that appears to see whether it is true; but he at once tests it merely to see whether it can be brought into harmony with the doctrines of the established religion, with government plans, and with the prevailing views of the times.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, pp. 160-161, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 148-149
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Men , Truth , Family , Religion

“I'm no novelist. Or anything else, I suppose, except, just possibly a poet, once in a while.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Scannell's diary entry - 28 December 1966 James Andrew Taylor - Walking Wounded: The Life and poetry of Vernon Scannell O U P 2013 ISBN 9780199603183

“Zuko saysThermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, so it doesn't bother you any more.”

Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951) physicist

As quoted in: J.Muller, Physical Chemistry in Depth (Springer Science & Business Media, 1992), p. 1. No primary source is given in that book.
Disputed

Understanding , Thinking , Time

“Australia became a full-blooded democracy in the late 1850s, achieving it with lightning speed. Only 30 years previously it had consisted of two convict colonies, ruled by governors whose personal power was magnified because most of their subjects were prisoners or ex-prisoners. Moreover, the governors were so remote geographically that Britain’s control of them and their decisions was loose. One year might elapse between the governor writing an urgent dispatch to London, and the arrival of an official reply. And yet, from this prison-like regime, democracy speedily emerged. This was an exceptional outcome.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"After the gold rush, the colonial cradle of democracy," http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/after-the-gold-rush-the-colonial-cradle-of-democracy/news-story/5cf7a3bd7dd077c91a282b4a8c0efa65, The Australian (August 27, 2016)

Democracy , Decision , Personality , Speed

“There's that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it's gone. And when you hate yourself, you feel like spending money. Except there's no money left. And no hope.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

Money , Hate , World , Hope

“It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say.
"On Coffee-House Politicians"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

War , People , Truth , Feeling

“Management — The definition that includes all the other definitions in this book and which, because of that, is the most general and least precise. Its concrete, people meaning — the board of directors and all executives with the power to make decisions — is no problem, except for the not-so-little matter of where to draw the line between managers who are part of "the management" and managers who are not.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Pocket Manager, (1987), p. 161

People , Books , Problem , Decision

“The moral elements are among the most important in war. They constitute the spirit that permeates war as a whole, and at an early stage they establish a close affinity with the will that moves and leads a whole mass of force, practically merging with it, since the will is itself a moral quantity. Unfortunately they will not yield to academic wisdom. They cannot be classified or counted. They have to be seen or felt. … It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Ch 3 : Moral Factors, as translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
On War (1832), Book 3

Wisdom , War , Way , Fashion

“Technological systems are socially produced. Social production is culturally informed. The Internet is no exception.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 2, The Culture of the Internet, p. 36

“I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

Way

“Homo-Marxian puzzles all those who try to work with him because he seems irrational and therefore unpredictable. In reality, however, the Marxist Man has reduced his thinking to the lowest common denominator of values taken from nature in the raw. He lives exclusively by the jungle law of selfish survival. In terms of these values he is rational almost to the point of mathematical precision. Through calm or crisis his responses are consistently elemental and therefore highly predictable. Because Homo-Marxian considers himself to be made entirely of the dust of the earth, he pretends to no other role. He denies himself the possibility of a soul and repudiates his capacity for immortality. He believes he had no creator and has no purpose or reason for existing except as an incidental accumulation of accidental forces in nature. Being without morals, he approaches all problems in a direct, uncomplicated manner. Self-preservation is given as the sole justification for his own behavior, and "selfish motives" or "stupidity" are his only explanations for the behavior of others. With Homo-Marxian the signing of fifty-three treaties and subsequent violation of fifty-one of them is not hypocrisy but strategy. The subordination of other men's minds to the obscuring of truth is not deceit but a necessary governmental tool. Marxist Man has convinced himself that nothing is evil which answers the call of expediency. He has released himself from all the confining restraints of honor and ethics which mankind has previously tried to use as a basis for harmonious human relations.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men , Truth , Stupidity , Law

“People didn’t fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn’t sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule.
Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she’d collided with.
Moral, definitely: stay home.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People , Travel , Home , Help

“His little face was tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem of the strange little bugs.
In his hands was a primer opened at a picture of a little ape similar to himself, but covered, except for hands and face, with strange, colored fur, for such he thought the jacket and trousers to be. Beneath the picture were three little bugs — BOY.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Color , Way , Boy , Problem

“The Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that some truths are self-evident, and one of these is the fact that all men are created equal. Yet everyone knows that no two human beings are exactly alike in any respect. They are different when they are born. They plainly exhibit different natural skills. They acquire different tastes. They develop along different lines. They vary in physical strength, mental capacity, emotional stability, inherited social status, in their opportunities for self-fulfillment, and in scores of other ways. Then how can they be equal? The answer is, they can't, except in three ways. They can only be treated as equals in the sight of God, in the sight of the law, and in the protection of their rights. In these three ways all men are created equal. It is the task of society, as it is with God, to accept people in all their vast array of individual differences, but treat them as equals when it comes to their role as human beings. As members of society, all persons should have their equality guaranteed in two areas.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

Men , God , People , Truth

“My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Patriotism"
The Defendant (1901)

Thinking , Country

“By the late eighteenth century, there is a sad and permanent decline in the quality of music written for young performers or beginners: one has only to compare Bach's Album for Anna Magdalena Bach and the Two-Part Inventions with anything that came later. No composer of importance between Bach and Schumann turned his hand to writing for children, and Schumann's essays came after his years of greatest inspiration for piano writing had gone. (Mozart is the odd exception, but then he was, in fact, almost incapable of writing really easy pieces: he no doubt believed that his Sonata in D Major, K.576, was easy, perhaps because all the hard passages in the first movement were in simple two-part counterpoint, one voice in each hand, but he was wrong.)”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Children , Sadness , Music , Parting

“I could issue manifestos summoning seraphim to revolt against the Haavenly State we're in, or trumpets to summon American mankind to rebellion against the Authority which has frozen all skulls in the cold war, That is, I could, make sense, invoke politics and try organize a union of opinion about what to do to Cuba, China, Russia, Bolivia, New Jersey, etc. However since in America the folks are convinced their heaven is all right, those manifestos make no dent except in giving authority & courage to the small band of hipsters who are disaffected like gentle socialists. Meanwhile the masses the proletariat the people are smug and the source of the great Wrong. So the means then is to communicate to the grand majority- and say I or anybody did write a balanced documented account not only of the lives of America but the basic theoretical split from the human body as Reich has done- But the people are so entrenched in their present livelihood that all the facts in the world-such as that China will be 1/4 of world pop makes no impression at all as a national political fact that intelligent people can take counsel on and deal with humorously & with magnificence. So that my task as a politician is to dynamite the emotional rockbed of inertia and spiritual deadness that hangs over the cities and makes everybody unconsciously afraid of the cops- To enter the Soul on a personal level and shake the emotion with the Image of some giant reality-of any kind however irrelevant to transient political issue- to touch & wake the soul again- That soul which is asleep or hidden in armor or unable to manifest itself as free life of God on earth- To remind by chord of deep groan of the Unknown to most Soul- then further politics will take place when people seize power over their universe and end the long dependence on an external authority or rhetorical set sociable emotions-so fixed they don't admit basic personal life changes-like not being afraid of jails and penury, while wandering thru gardens in high civilization.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Gordon Ball (1977), Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, Grove Press NY
Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties

Life , God , War , People

“"Except a man be born again of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore the new birth from above, or of the Spirit, is that alone which gives true knowledge and perception of that which is the kingdom of God. The history may relate truths enough about it; but the kingdom of God, being nothing else but the power and presence of God, dwelling and ruling in our souls, this can only manifest itself, and can manifest itself to nothing in man but to the new birth. For everything else in man is deaf and dumb and blind to the kingdom of God; but when that which died in Adam is made alive again by the quickening Spirit from above, this being the birth which came at first from God, and a partaker of the divine nature, this knows, and enjoys the kingdom of God.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ: this record of scripture is true; but what a delusion, for a man to think that he knows and finds this to be true, and that Christ is all this benefit and blessing to him, because he assents, consents, and contends, it may be, for the truth of those words. This is impossible. The new birth is here again the only power of entrance; everything else knocks at the door in vain: I know you not says Christ to everything, but the new birth. "I am the way, the truth and the life"; this tells us neither more nor less, than if Christ had said, I am the kingdom of God, into which nothing can enter, but that which is born of the Spirit. ”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

¶ 86 - 89.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life , God , Truth , Way

“One of the things that kept most comics from being monthly was that very few artists could produce 24 pages per month. Jack Kirby was very much the exception to the rule, but his towering presence at Marvel started to dictate the whole shape of the industry—and that's where problems set in!”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2008
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26500&PN=1&totPosts=7
Monthly comics and creator's ability to keep on schedule

Problem

“No doubt, hatred and cursing are not the proper attitude. It is true also that to look upon all things and all people with a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in one's judgments is a quite proper yogic attitude. A condition of perfect samata [equanimity] can be established in which one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is not disturbed by what men do or by what happens. The question is whether this is all that is demanded from us. If so, then the general attitude will be of a neutral indifference to everything. But the Gita, which strongly insists on a perfect and absolute samata, goes on to say, 'Fight, destroy the adversary, conquer.' If there is no kind of general action wanted, no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one's personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the samata of indifference will suffice. But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are arrayed, invisible forces which can use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one is among the disciples, the seekers of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, to stand against the forces that attack it and seek to stifle it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either side, to refuse any action of hostility even against assailants; Sri Krishna, who insisted so much on samata, strongly rebuked his attitude and insisted equally on his fighting the adversary. 'Have samata,' he said, 'and seeing clearly the Truth, fight.' Therefore to take sides with the Truth and to refuse to concede anything to the Falsehood that attacks, to be unflinchingly loyal and against the hostiles and the attackers, is not inconsistent with equality…. It is a spiritual battle inward and outward; by neutrality and compromise or even passivity one may allow the enemy force to pass and crush down the Truth and its children. If you look at it from this point, you will see that if the inner spiritual equality is right, the active loyalty and firm taking of sides is as right, and the two cannot be incompatible.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

September 13, 1936
India's Rebirth

Men , Hostility , Children , People

“What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader – I’ll call him Pumpkin – was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs. … The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyone’s handcuffs except the target’s (they’d put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, he’d be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

Exercises , Game , Understanding , Parting

“You assumed that no other guarantees than those you asked were possible, and you determined deliberately, in cold anger, to starve out one third of the population of the city, to break the manhood of the men by the sight of the suffering of their wives and the hunger of their children. We read in the Dark Ages of the rack and thumb screw. But these iniquities were hidden and concealed from the knowledge of men in dungeons and torture chambers. Even in the Dark Ages, humanity could not endure the sight of such suffering, and it learnt of such misuse of power by slow degrees, through rumour, and when it was certain it razed its Bastilles to their foundations. It remained for the twentieth century and the capital city of Ireland to see an oligarchy of four hundred masters deciding openly upon starving one hundred thousand people, and refusing to consider any solution except that fixed by their pride. You, masters, asked men to do that which masters of labour in any other city in these islands had not dared to do. You insolently demanded of those men who were members of a trade union that they should resign from that union; and from those who were not members, you insisted on a vow that they would never join it.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

Men , Hunger , Children , People

“Sartre, whose underground activities had never amounted to anything except a secret meeting on Wednesday to decide whether there should be another meeting the following Tuesday, not only claimed the status of Resistance veteran but called down vengeance on people whose behaviour had not really been all that much more reprehensible than his own.”

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

'Raymond Aron' p. 35
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

People , Secret

““I’ll do everything I can to help, I promise.”
“You always have,” Emily murmured. Except tell me the truth about anything.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 23, “The Skycladdische and the Sangrimancer” (p. 329)

Truth , Help

“Human finitude as the summary of human powers, with its consequent complete subjection to Divine predestination, is inwrapt in this conception of Divine causation as causation by efficiency; and there can be no way of supplementing this finitude by the infinity (i. e. freedom) required by a moral order, except by dislodging this view of creation and regeneration.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.331-2

Way , Freedom