Quotes about excitement

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"The Making of a Scientist," p. 11: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=26s
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)
Context: I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. … There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalisation. Feeling tends to spread; connections between feelings awaken feelings; neighboring feelings become assimilated; ideas are apt to reproduce themselves. These are so many formulations of the one law of the growth of mind. When a disturbance of feeling takes place, we have a consciousness of gain, the gain of experience; and a new disturbance will be apt to assimilate itself to the one that preceded it. Feelings, by being excited, become more easily excited, especially in the ways in which they have previously been excited. The consciousness of such a habit constitutes a general conception.
The cloudiness of psychological notions may be corrected by connecting them with physiological conceptions. Feeling may be supposed to exist, wherever a nerve-cell is in an excited condition. The disturbance of feeling, or sense of reaction, accompanies the transmission of disturbance between nerve-cells or from a nerve-cell to a muscle-cell or the external stimulation of a nerve-cell. General conceptions arise upon the formation of habits in the nerve-matter, which are molecular changes consequent upon its activity and probably connected with its nutrition.

Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech (1985)
Context: I am convinced that today is a great and exciting day not only for the members of our international movement but also for all physicians on our planet, irrespective of their political and religious beliefs. For the first time in history, their selfless service for the cause of maintaining life on Earth is marked by the high Nobel Prize. True to the Hippocratic Oath, we cannot keep silent knowing what final epidemic-nuclear war — can bring to humankind. The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet.
We were among the first to demolish the nuclear illusions that existed and to unveil the true face of nuclear weapons — the weapons of genocide. We warned the peoples and governments that medicine would be helpless to offer even minimal relief to the hundreds of millions of victims of nuclear war.
However, our contacts with patients inspire our faith in the human reason. Peoples are heedful of the voice of physicians who warn them of the danger and recommend the means of prevention.

Improvisation for the Theater 1963), page 4

United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
1920s

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)
Context: Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary Principle, Time will mend it:—till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral; a hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. These scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men,—thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers have seldom done,—ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.

Just Say No (1986)
Context: And finally, to young people watching or listening, I have a very personal message for you: There's a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It's exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don't cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you, but it needs you to be clear-eyed and clear-minded. I recently read one teenager's story. She's now determined to stay clean but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray and after her treatment she was able to see colors again.
So, to my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say NO.

Black Boy (1945)

A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831)
Context: We must never forget that it is principles, not phenomena, — laws not insulated independent facts, — which are the objects of inquiry to the natural philosopher. As truth is single, and consistent with itself, a principle may be as completely and as plainly elucidated by the most familiar and simple fact, as by the most imposing and uncommon phenomenon. The colours which glitter on a soapbubble are the immediate consequence of a principle the most important, from the variety of phenomena it explains, and the most beautiful, from its simplicity and compendious neatness, in the whole science of optics. If the nature of periodical colours can be made intelligible by the contemplation of such a trivial object, from that moment it becomes a noble instrument in the eye of correct judgment; and to blow a large, regular, and durable soap-bubble may become the serious and praise-worthy endeavour of a sage, while children stand round and scoff, or children of a larger growth hold up their hands in astonishment at such waste of time and trouble. To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of nature's works he may learn the greatest lessons. The fall of an apple to the ground may raise his thoughts to the laws which govern the revolutions of the planets in their orbits; or the situation of a pebble may afford him evidence of the state of the globe he inhabits, myriads of ages ago, before his species became its denizens.
And this, is, in fact, one of the great sources of delight which the study of natural science imparts to its votaries. A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations. One would think that Shakspeare had such a mind in view when he describes a contemplative man as finding

Salon interview (1996)
Context: It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children’s writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as “loquacious,” it works so much better than “talkative.” And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, “Don't be so loquacious.” It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: A Government which has decided on embarking on the hazardous and terrible enterprise of war must at the outset present a one-sided case in justification of its action, and cannot afford to admit in any particular whatever the smallest degree of right or reason on the part of the people it has made up its mind to fight. Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed, and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question. A moment's reflection would tell any reasonable person that such obvious bias cannot possibly represent the truth. But the moment's reflection is not allowed; lies are circulated with great rapidity. The unthinking mass accept them and by their excitement sway the rest. The amount of rubbish and humbug that pass under the name of patriotism in war-time in all countries is sufficient to make decent people blush when they are subsequently disillusioned.

1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
Context: This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel. New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further — unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?id=p24GkAsgjGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?id=qZjO9_ov74EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id=4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, p.5

1860s, 1864, Letter to the City of Atlanta (September 1864)
Context: You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 263–264.
Context: I had been living four or five months in New Bedford when there came a young man to me with a copy of the Liberator, the paper edited by William Lloyd Garrison and published by Isaac Knapp, and asked me to subscribe for it. I told him I had but just escaped from slavery, and was of course very poor, and had no money then to pay for it. He was very willing to take me as a subscriber, notwithstanding, and from this time I was brought into contact with the mind of Mr. Garrison, and his paper took a place in my heart second only to the Bible. It detested slavery, and made no truce with the traffickers in the bodies and souls of men. It preached human brotherhood; it exposed hypocrisy and wickedness in high places; it denounced oppression; and with all the solemnity of "Thus saith the Lord," demanded the complete emancipation of my race. I loved this paper and its editor. He seemed to me an all-sufficient match to every opponent, whether they spoke in the name of the law or the gospel. His words were full of holy fire, and straight to the point. Something of a hero-worshiper by nature, here was one to excite my admiration and reverence. It was my privilege to listen to a lecture in Liberty Hall by Mr. Garrison, its editor. He was then a young man, of a singularly pleasing countenance, and earnest and impressive manner. On this occasion he announced nearly all his heresies. His Bible was his textbook — held sacred as the very word of the Eternal Father. He believed in sinless perfection, complete submission to insults and injuries, and literal obedience to the injunction if smitten "on one cheek to turn the other also." Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarianism was false and mischievous — the regenerated throughout the world being members of one body, and the head Christ Jesus. Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart. Those ministers who defended slavery from the Bible were of their "father the devil"; and those churches which fellowshiped slaveholders as Christians, were synagogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars. He was never loud and noisy, but calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure. "You are the man — the Moses, raised up by God, to deliver his modern Israel from bondage," was the spontaneous feeling of my heart, as I sat away back in the hall and listened to his mighty words, — mighty in truth, — mighty in their simple earnestness.

Love is not a feeling ~ The Article (1995)
Context: Feelings, even the best of them, turn to negativity - disappointment, anger, discontent, resentment, jealousy, guilt, etc. A good feeling starts off being elevating, exciting, like taking a drug substance, alcohol or having sex. But what goes up must come down and feelings are no exception. So in a couple of hours or days the down side starts and you perhaps wonder why you feel moody, depressed, suicidal or just plain unhappy. You're paying the piper for yesterday's music. And between the upside and the downside is the no-man's and no-woman's land of boredom, indifference, inertia, weariness and pointlessness.

Part II Section XIII
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Context: A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: We’re not just dealing in willingness. Humanity has to qualify to survive. You have to have some confidence. We’re all born naked, with no external equipment and no experience. Therefore we’re terribly ignorant. We’re hungry and thirsy, driven to find food by trial and error. So we’re designed to live by trial and error. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Study your mistakes; admit them, study them, and be terribly excited about them too. If this isn’t true, what is true?

PENN Address (2004)
Context: Don't get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited.
I'd just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N. Come to think of it 'Bono' is a four-letter word. The whole business of obscenity — I don't think there's anything certainly more unseemly than the sight of a rock star in academic robes. It's a bit like when people put their King Charles spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats. It's not natural, and it doesn't make the dog any smarter.

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)
Context: By the time we got to the street, I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I’d spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was a peace and brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships and the sea beyond them, and I felt crazy to be free with a whole day ahead of me.
Then I realized I would sleep most of the day, and my excitement disappeared.

Interview at The New Space Race (August 2007) http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/00861/armstrongiscool.htm
Context: The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking.

The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

The Stereotype
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Context: The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the Sexual Object sought by all men, and by all woman. She is of neither sex, for she has herself no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she has herself no sex at all. her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity.

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: Of late years the thoughts of men have been turned, by virtue of modern discoveries, as the result of countless influences, to an investigation of the foundation of orthodox religion. Other religions were put in the crucible of criticism, and nothing was found but dross. At last it occurred to the intelligent to examine our own religion, and this examination has excited great interest and great comment. People want to hear, and they want to hear because they have already about concluded themselves that the creeds are founded in error.

"Points of Character", p. 37.
Faraday as a Discoverer (1868)
Context: A point highly illustrative of the character of Faraday now comes into view. He gave an account of his discovery of Magneto-electricity in a letter to his friend M. Hachette, of Paris, who communicated the letter to the Academy of Sciences. The letter was translated and published; and immediately afterwards two distinguished Italian philosophers took up the subject, made numerous experiments, and published their results before the complete memoirs of Faraday had met the public eye. This evidently irritated him. He reprinted the paper of the learned Italians in the Philosophical Magazine accompanied by sharp critical notes from himself. He also wrote a letter dated Dec. 1,1832, to Gay Lussac, who was then one of the editors of the Annales de Chimie in which he analysed the results of the Italian philosophers, pointing out their errors, and' defending himself from what he regarded as imputations on his character. The style of this letter is unexceptionable, for Faraday could not write otherwise than as a gentleman; but the letter shows that had he willed it he could have hit hard. We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives "gentle" and "tender" would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. "He that is slow to anger" saith the sage, "is greater than the mighty, and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated all hearts.

Stig Bjorkman interview <!-- pages 6-7 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: In our family we had a well-to-do aunt who always gave us magnificent Christmas presents. She was so much part of the family that we even included her in our prayers at bedtime... I suppose I must have been nine or ten years old at the time. Suddenly Aunt Anna's Christmas presents were lying there too, and among them a parcel with 'Forsner's on it. So of course I instantly knew it contained a projector. For a couple of years I'd been consumed with a passionate longing to own one, but had been considered too small for such a present... I was incredibly excited. Because my father was a clergyman we never got our presents on Christmas Eve, like other Swedish children do. We got them on Christmas Day... Well, you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be my older brother — he's four years older than myself — who got the projector — and I was given a teddy bear. It was one of my life's bitterest disappointments. After all, my brother wasn't a scrap interested in cinematography. But both of us had masses of lead soldiers. So on Boxing Day I bought the projector off him for half my army and he beat me hollow in every war ever afterwars. But I'd got the projector, anyway.

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)
Context: The help and the leadership of South Africa or of the United States cannot be accepted if we, within our own country or in our relationships with others, deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our borders, if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has erected between men within our own nations — barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.
Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

Source: The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788), Ch. IV.

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: Once, when hitchhiking, I was picked up by a professor from some small college. He noticed a book in my coat pocket, and was curious. It was a Modern Library edition, in the limp bindings they used to have, which sold at the time for 95 cents. This one contained Nietzsche‎‎'s Ecce Homo, and The Birth of Tragedy.
The professor was a pedantic man of limited imagination and seemed almost offended that I was reading such a book. Obviously I did not fit some category in which he decided I belonged, and when he dropped me off in town, I suspect he was relived to be rid of me.
He kept asking me why I wanted to read such a book. At first, he doubted I was reading it. Where had I heard of Nietzsche‎‎?
When I told him I thought it was in the preface to a book on Schopenhauer, he was even more disturbed and probably believed I was lying. Fortunately, there seem to be few of his kind, and my subsequent friendships with university professors have proved exciting, stimulating and fun.

2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup
Context: Played in, and it comes out into Landon Donovan, who strikes again. What a golden goal for the USA, if you're just joining us? There it is, the moment. Deep, deep into the match! To give the USA surely, a place in the last sixteen. It is breathtakingly exciting!

United States v. Algeria http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=DALDkkXodRU (23 June 2010).

"The Bugbear of Relativism," p. 89
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Context: Can an idea — a notion as abstract as Relativism — produce by itself the effects alleged? cause all the harm, destroy all the lives and reputations? I am as far as anyone can be from denying the power of ideas in history, but the suggestion that a philosophy (as Relativism is often called) has perverted millions and debased daily life is on the face of it absurd. No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)
Context: No sane person with a life really wants to be a political activist. When activism is exciting, it tends to involve the risk of bodily harm or incarceration, and when it's safe, it is often tedious, dry, and boring. Activism tends to put one into contact with extremely unpleasant people, whether they are media interviewers, riot cops, or at times, your fellow activists. Not only that, it generates enormous feelings of frustration and rage, makes your throat sore from shouting, and hurts your feet.
Nonetheless, at this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that the Earth is a living, conscious being that we're part of, that human beings are interconnected and precious, and that liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: I mean not to boast; I would not excite envy, but manly emulation. We have all one common cause; let it, therefore, be our only contest, who shall most contribute to the security of the liberties of America. And may the same kind Providence which has watched over this country from her infant state still enable us to defeat our enemies!

The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love — then we wish for knowledge about the subject of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.

Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)

The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: I write all the time. I get up every morning not knowing what I’m going to do. I usually have a perception around dawn when I wake up. I have what I call the theater of morning inside my head, all these voices talking to me. When they come up with a good metaphor, then I jump out of bed and trap them before they’re gone. That’s the whole secret: to do things that excite you.

The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.
Progress In Religion (2000)

"Robertson Davies" [by Paul Soles]
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Context: Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this — I think I have happiness. And happiness, you know, so many people when they talk about happiness, seem to think that it is a constant state of near lunacy, that you're always hopping about like a fairy in a cartoon strip, and being noisily and obstreperously happy. I don't think that is it at all. Happiness is a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of having your feet rooted firmly in the ground, of being aware that however miserable things are at the moment that they're probably not going to be so bad after awhile, or possibly they may be going very well now, but you must keep your head because they're not going to be so good later. Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), p. 267 The Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 3 (1892)

Neither Democrats, Nor Dictators: Anarchists (1926)
Context: !-- The majority is, by definition, backward, conservative, enemy of the new, sluggish in thought and deed and at the same time impulsive, immoderate, suggestible, facile in its enthusiasms and irrational fears. --> Every new idea stems from one or a few individuals, is accepted, if viable, by a more or less sizeable minority and wins over the majority, if ever, only after it has been superseded by new ideas and new needs and has already become outdated and rather an obstacle, rather than a spur to progress.
But do we, then, want a minority government?
Certainly not. If it is unjust and harmful for a majority to oppress minorities and obstruct progress, it is even more unjust and harmful for a minority to oppress the whole population or impose its own ideas by force which even if they are good ones would excite repugnance and opposition because of the very fact of being imposed.
And then, one must not forget that there are all kinds of different minorities. There are minorities of egoists and villains as there are of fanatics who believe themselves to be possessed of absolute truth and, in perfectly good faith, seek to impose on others what they hold to be the only way to salvation, even if it is simple silliness. There are minorities of reactionaries who seek to turn back the clock and are divided as to the paths and limits of reaction. And there are revolutionary minorities, also divided on the means and ends of revolution and on the direction that social progress should take.
Which minority should take over?
This is a matter of brute force and capacity for intrigue, and the odds that success would fall to the most sincere and most devoted to the general good are not favourable. To conquer power one needs qualities that are not exactly those that are needed to ensure that justice and well-being will triumph in the world.

Black Boy (1945)

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)
Context: As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America — with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side. But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

The New York Times interview (1994)
Context: I've been very fortunate throughout my career. And I've been lucky enough to have worked with some great and talented people, like Price and Serling. I was just a part of the whole phenomenon coming together. They were exciting times that bubbled over with energy for all those involved.

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Moral of the work
Context: It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems.

Why Is It So?, episode 1 (1963) http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/whyisitso/, Australian ABC Television show
Context: Whatever work you undertake to do in your lifetime, it is very important that first you have a passion for it — you know, get excited about it — and second, that you have fun with it. That's important. Otherwise, you see, your work becomes nothing but an idle chore. Then, you hate the life you live.

Dedication address upon installing 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House (20 June 1979), as quoted in "Where Did the Carter White House's Solar Panels Go?" by David Biello, in Scientific American (6 August 2010) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/. The solar panels would later removed by Ronald Reagan and some eventually were displayed in museums, including the Smithsonian Institute, and the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China.
Presidency (1977–1981)
Context: In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.

On the question "When and what was responsible for you becoming interested in your academic discipline?" http://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/governance/equality/meettheprofessors/artshums/mantognazza.aspx, at kcl.ac.uk, 2015.

[A model with no firewall, arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04342, 2015, https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.04342]

On her Communist upbringing in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

On her quick rise to stardom in “EXCLUSIVE: Lupita Nyong'o: 'Success Has Brought Me Freedom'” https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/exclusive-lupita-nyongo-interview/ in Grazia (2017 Sep 11)

Hazen, C. (2001, May 15). Johnny Rivers. Retrieved from https://www.vintageguitar.com/2800/johnny-rivers/.

“There is something in what you say,” Dahl admitted. “I’ve been aware for some time of the shortcomings inherent in the sane, dispassionate thinking that we scientists advocate. People don’t pay any attention. Unless there’s an emergency like Love Canal or Chernobyl, the idea of maintaining and upgrading the earth and its ecosystems is not exactly box-office.”
Source: Hunter/Victim (1988), Chapter 65 (p. 259)

On becoming a Chicana artist in “CARMEN LOMAS GARZA – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-art/carmen-lomas-garza/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

On using personal history in “Fruits of the Same Tree: An Interview with Stephanie Powell Watts” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-stephanie-powell-watts/ in Fiction Writers Review (2012 Aug 6)

On his role in the film We the Animals in “After ‘Looking’ and ‘We the Animals,’ Raul Castillo Is Ready to Be a Movie Star” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/raul-castillo-interview-we-the-animals-looking-1202029967/ in IndieWire (2019 Jan 2)

Worst of all, I felt that every day that passed riveted another link to the chain of habit which was binding our life into a fixed shape, that our emotions, ceasing to be spontaneous, were being subordinated to the even, passionless flow of time… ‘It’s all very well … ‘ I thought, ‘it’s all very well to do good and lead upright lives, as he says, but we’ll have plenty of time for that later, and there are other things for which the time is now or never.’ I wanted, not what I had got, but a life of challenge; I wanted feeling to guide us in life, and not life to guide us in feeling.
Family Happiness (1859)

"The Common-Sense View", pp. 184–185
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Psychical Kinship

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 9, “Science Fiction—A Personal View” (p. 166)

United States of Banana (2011)

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

Tory leadership: Johnson warns party of risk of Brexit 'extinction' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48521389, BBC News, 5 June 2019
2010s, 2019

Waldersee in his diary, 9 November 1890

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her First Weeks In Washington, The Intercept https://theintercept.com/2019/01/28/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-podcast/ (28 January 2019)
Quotes (2019)

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

Speech to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
Foreign Secretary

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists, an interview by Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine, 30 December 2017) https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/spinozas-metaphysics-relationship-hegel-german-idealists/
M - R

What, child, you have a camera in hand and you are not taking a photograph
My daddy, His Highness, the Maharaja of Mysore

Anish Kapoor's Olympic Park sculpture sends public art into Orbit

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it!
How to become a good theoretical physicist http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html

Mike Watkinson (2008), quoted in [Lancashire sign Lou Vincent, Cricinfo staff, http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/story/353666.html, Cricinfo, 2008-06-05, 2008-06-05]

And this, he suddenly realized, was the heart of the problem. Habit. Habit was a stifling, warm blanket that threatened you with suffocation and lulled the mind into a state of perpetual nagging dissatisfaction. Habit meant the inability to escape from yourself, to change and develop . . .

pp. 132-133
Spider World: The Desert (1987)

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 12 (hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original; line break across "highly-"/"sexed").

Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 4: Boredom and excitement

It's the only honest thing to do. Miracles, magic and myths, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. The real truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical, in the best and most exciting sense of the word, than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality.
Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s
The Magic Of Reality (2012)

"I never closed my eyes at all – I saw that ship sink. And I saw that ship break in half.
Interview from 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5J43Z9AWI, quoted in New York Times, 16 February 1996

On whether she feels creatively satisfied in “Tracey Thorn: ‘Not everything you do is cool’” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/27/tracey-thorn-another-planet-a-teenager-in-suburbia-interview in The Guardian (2020 Jan 27)

24 August 2014. "Mack Horton presented the Georgina Hope Foundation Rising Star of the Australian Swim Team". http://swimswam.com/mack-horton-presented-georgina-hope-foundation-rising-star-australian-swim-team/
Quote

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.
End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

I wish to play with human feeling, with its 'morbidity' in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.
Quote from Klein's 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', 1961; from the Yves Klein Archives - archived from the original on 15 January 2013; as cited on Wikipedia: Yves Klein
After the opening of his unsuccessful exhibition at Leo Castelli's Gallery, New York 1961, Klein stayed with Rotraut Uecker (fr) at the Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the exhibition. While there, he wrote the 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', a proclamation of the 'multiplicity of new possibilities'
1960 -1964

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

Part 2, Chapter 3 (p. 78)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

Political Register (27 October 1832), p. 225
1830s

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 143)

The Stereotype
The Female Eunuch (1970)

United States v. Algeria http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=DALDkkXodRU (23 June 2010)
2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup

1870s, Eighth State of the Union Address (1876)

on mainstream Hollywood films

Liv Tyler On Her Iconic Career, Living Through Fame And The Importance Of Female Friendship http://www.oystermag.com/2018/11/liv-tyler-on-her-iconic-career-living-through-fame-and-the-importance-of-female-friendship-for-oyster-115/ (November 28, 2018)