Quotes about fact (7437 quotes, page 61)

“Is it desired to call attention to this fact? Proclaim it upon the house-tops! Write it upon every leaf that trembles in the forest! Make it blaze from the sun at high noon and shine forth in the radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God. Let it echo through all the arches of heaven, and reverberate and bellow through all the deep gorges of hell, where slave catchers will be very likely to hear it. Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, three-quarters of a mile east of the village, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery! Dost thou think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless? I bid you defiance in the name of my God.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA178 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 178
Also quoted in The History of Abraham Lincoln, and the Overthrow of Slavery http://books.google.com/books?id=RW0FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA225, by Isaac Newton Arnold
Also quoted as Yes, I do assist fugitive slaves to escape! Proclaim it upon the house-tops; write it upon every leaf that trembles in the forest; make it blaze from the sun at high noon, and shine forth in the radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God. Let it echo through all the arches of heaven, and reverberate and bellow through all the deep gorges of hell, where slave catchers will be very likely to hear it. Owen Lovejoy lives at Princeton, Illinois, and he aids every fugitive that comes to his door and asks it. Thou invisible demon of slavery! Dost thou think to cross my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and shelter to the houseless? I bid you defiance in the name of God.
1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

God , Star , Hell , Thinking

“The position of these ‘academics’ in Bengal has, of course, been helped by the fact that the CPI(M) has been in power there for so long. But their sway has not been confined to the teaching and ‘research’ institutions of that state. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the same ‘line’ being poured down the throats of students at the national level. And so strong is the tug of intellectual fashion, so lethal can the controlling mafia be to the career of an academic that often, even though the academic may not quite subscribe to their propositions and ‘theses’, he will end up reciting those propositions. Else his manuscript will not be accepted as a textbook by the NCERT, for instance, it will not be reviewed….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion , Strong , Help

“It is not facts, but rumors that cause emotions among the people. What is believed creates everything.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

People

“Perhaps the best testimony to the effectiveness of the reforms of 1852 is the fact, that men of a slightly later generation, familiar with the working of the courts half a century after, find it difficult to believe that such abuses as are plainly described by the legislation of that year, should really have existed in the middle of the nineteenth century.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter XIX, Modern Civil Procedure, p. 360

Men

“On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Race is a fact of life and is not a problem unless people make it out to be so.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

2003
Miscellaneous quotes

Life , People , Problem

“What has a student to become? A student has to become a receptacle. What has a devotee to become? A devotee also has to become a receptacle. And what has a disciple to become? A disciple too has to become a receptacle. Whatever you name him….
Have you seen worms? Have you seen ants? I can understand what it means to be born as an ant or worm in your next birth. That's why it has been said: 'it is with great good fortune we secure this human body. It is rarely attained even by gods, as scriptures say. It is actually the means to practice Knowledge and the gateway to salvation…'
… Now this ego. Though it appears to be of little consequence, but even if a devotee is conscious of the fact -l know, it is akin to the devotee's crucifixion. If you are plagued with a little bit of arrogance that 'you know', you are gone. You are finished. You know nothing. Period. Again you have to turn to the Master and pray to him to give you prudence - Maharaji, please give me wisdom. I even don't know that as a human being I should not be egoistic. This is the problem. As a human being, I don't know how to conduct myself as a devotee. This too please teach me. Please let me know.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

form “Student, Disciple or Devotee?”, Shri Sant Yogashram, New Delhi - Vaishakhi Celebrations - (Evening Session) 13th April, 1991. (Translated to English from Hindi).
1990s

Wisdom , God , Birth , Understanding

“My dear Sensier, - I shall be greatly obliged if after reading and sealing the enclosed letter, you will take it to Rue du Delta, No. 8. [Paris].... Jaque [common friend and painter] and I have settled to stay here [ Barbizon ] for some time, and have accordingly each of us taken rooms. The prices are excessively low compared to those in Paris; and as it is easy to get to town if necessary, and the country is superbly beautiful, we hope to work more quietly here, and perhaps do better things. In fact, we intend to spend some time here... I wish you good-bye, with many hearty embraces. Jacque sends you warm remembrances, and will answer your letter tomorrow.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote from Millet's first letter to fr:Alfred_Sensier, from Barbizon, 28 June 1849; as cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 95
1835 - 1850

Beauty , Hope , Time , Reading

“I just think they’re douchebags. They’re not champions. I just think they’re losers. I don’t like them. How do I explain the fact that I got a GQ Man of the Year award and no women’s magazines and no women’s organisations have supported me?”

Rose McGowan (1973) American actress

thedailybeast / rose-mcgowan-rips-lily-livered-metoo-hypocrites-as-douchebags 8 October 2018

Women , Support , Thinking

“And as for the close connection between philosophy and poetry, we can refer to a little-known statement by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics [I, 3]: the Philosopher is akin to the Poet in this, that both are concerned with the mirandum, the "wondrous," the astonishing, or whatever calls for astonishment or wonder. This statement is not that easy to fathom, since Thomas, like Aristotle, was a very sober thinker, completely opposed to any Romantic confusion of properly distinct realms. But on the basis of their common orientation towards the "wonderful" (the mirandum — something not to be found in the world of work!) — on this basis, then, of this common transcending-power, the philosophical act is related to the "wonderful," is in fact more closely related to it than to the exact, special sciences; to this point we shall return.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 68–69
The Aquinas quote cited — "The reason why the philosopher can be compared to the poet is that both are concerned with wonder" — is the epigraph of "The Philosophical Act".

World , Science

“Unless in fact he had a very dim memory of her and the photograph had blown on the tiny little ember of his connection with his granny, like a faint orange glow in a heap of soft grey ash, and for a moment he really could remember when he had sat on his granny’s lap and smiled at her and patted her wrinkly old face — his mother said he smiled at her and she was really pleased.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 10

Smile , Memory

“The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science
First Principles (1862)

Past

“The strong environmental position should not be and cannot be to do nothing, and to put our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem does not exist. It would be nice if Texas had no low-level radioactive waste, or Vermont or Maine or any other State. That would be great. That is not the reality. The environmental challenge now is, given the reality that low-level radioactive waste exists, what is the safest way of disposing of that waste. Leaving the radioactive waste at the site where it was produced, despite the fact that that site may be extremely unsafe in terms of long-term isolation of the waste and was never intended to be a long- term depository of low-level waste, is horrendous environmental policy. What sense is it to say that you have to keep the waste where it is now, even though that might be very environmentally damaging? That does not make any sense at all. No reputable scientist or environmentalist believes that the geology of Vermont or Maine would be a good place for this waste. In the humid climate of Vermont and Maine, it is more likely that groundwater will come in contact with that waste and carry off radioactive elements to the accessible environment. There is widespread scientific evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that locations in Texas, some of which receive less than 12 inches of rainfall a year, a region where the groundwater table is more than 700 feet below the surface, is a far better location for this waste. This is not a political assertion, it is a geological and environmental reality. … From an environmental point of view, I urge strong support for this legislation.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking at the House of Representatives on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, in 7 October 1997. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1997/10/7/house-section/article/h8512-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22all+that+Texas+and+Maine+and+Vermont+are+asking+for+today%5C%22%22%5D%7D&r=1
1990s

Way , Support , Problem , Reality

“The fact is that fifty percent of our national mind is a giant, explosive blowup of a Xerox of a 1970s rock-and-roll press list.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

“Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 92

Life , Men , Way , Change

“It is generally assumed that men are damaged in their capacity for closeness and intimacy. If intimacy is defined as a loving closeness with another person, then it is usually true that the early conditioning of men to be performers and competitors in the impersonal competitive world limits their intimacy capacity. Women are assumed to have a greater capacity for intimacy than men because they express caring emotions and allow themselves to be dependent and close in relationships more easily. Yet, a closer look will provide a different perspective.

True intimacy is love and closeness based on knowledge of the inner reality and inner experience of the other. However, in romantic relationships, closeness ends or is put into crisis when men describe honestly their inner experiences to women. Women assail the relationship behavior of men and men acknowledge what they are told. Rarely is the opposite true. Men accept the reality of women more than women accept the reality of men.

The fact that a woman's priority is placed on personal needs bears no relationship to a genuine capacity for intimacy. To be loved and known, and to be fully comfortable expressing one's personal self, are two major components of intimacy. There are few men who have received that from a woman. The opposite holds true. A woman's love for a man is contingent on his participating in her romantic fantasy of what he and the relationship should be. Few men risk challenging or undermining that fantasy. Instead, they play by the rules of romance even when it feels uncomfortable, knowing that being loved by her is fragile and easily broken once he reveals his resistances and unromantic feelings.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why Women Are Also Incapable of Intimacy, pp. 120–121
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love , Women , Men , World

“Above all do not forget your duty to love yourself; do not permit the fact that you have been set apart from life in a way, been prevented from participating actively in it, and that you are superflous in the obtruse eyes of a busy world, above all, do not permit this to deprive you of your idea of yourself, as if your life, if lived in inwardness, did not have just as much meaning and worth as that of any human being in the eyes of all-wise Governance, and considerably more than the busy, busiest haste of busy-ness - busy with wasting life and losing itself.”

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

' Letter to Kierkegaard's cousin Hans Peter http://books.google.de/books?id=CUfkNXWLyboC&pg=PR21 (1848)
1840s

Love , Life , World , Way

“The above interpretation has been introduced, not on account of its immediate value in the present system, but as an illustration of a significant fact in the philosophy of the intellectual powers, viz., that what has commonly been regarded as the fundamental axiom of metaphysics is but the consequence of a law of thought, mathematical in its form.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 50

Law , Mathematics

“The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe. The English have never belonged to it and have always known that they did not belong. The assertion contains no element of paradox. The Angevin Empire contradicts it as little as the English claim to the throne of France; neither the possession of Gascony nor the inheritance of Hanover made Edward I or George III anything but English sovereigns. When Henry VIII declared that 'this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself', he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant—as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before—that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called 'the reformation'—misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event. The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognised within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been made for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England—or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to The Lions' Club, Brussels (24 January 1972), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 49-50
1970s

People , Law , History , Decision

“About the percentage of Muslims in the total population no precise information can be obtained from the contemporary records. Babur’s statement that most of the inhabitants were Hindus, conveys only a general impression. Two facts are, however, certain. First, it is widely recognised that the majority of Muslims were converts from Hinduism. Secondly, the largest number of conversions took place under the Turks and Afghans who ruled between C. 1300 and 1556.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

“One seeking to understand the recurrent ebb and flow of economic activity characteristic of the present day finds these numerous explanations both suggestive and perplexing. All are plausible, but which is valid? None necessarily excludes all the others, but which is the most important? Each may account for certain phenomena; does any one account for all the phenomena? Or can these rival explanations be combined in such a fashion as to make a consistent theory which is wholly adequate?
There is slight hope of getting answers to these questions by a logical process of proving and criticizing the theories. For whatever merits of ingenuity and consistency they may possess, these theories have slight value except as they give keener insight into the phenomena of business cycles. It is by study of the facts which they purport to interpret that the theories must be tested. But the perspective of the investigation would be distorted if we set out to test each theory in turn by collecting evidence to confirm or to refute it. For the point of interest is not the validity of any writer's views, but clear comprehension of the facts. To observe, analyze, and systematize the phenomena of prosperity, crisis, and depression is the chief task. And there is better prospect of rendering service if we attack this task directly, than if we take the round about way of considering the phenomena with reference to the theories.
This plan of attacking the facts directly by no means precludes free use of the results achieved by others. On the contrary, their conclusions suggest certain facts to be looked for, certain analyses to be made, certain arrangements to be tried. Indeed, the whole investigation would be crude and superficial if we did not seek help from all quarters. But the help wanted is help in making a fresh examination into the facts.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: Business Cycles, 1913, p. 19-20; as cited in: Mary S. Morgan. The History of Econometric Ideas. p. 46

Hope , Way , Fashion , Understanding

“The facts of the matter are (that) I did not do any of the things of which I was accused by paid witnesses. But having said that, I'm not sitting here today pleading for the world to believe me because I've come to God. He knows what's in my heart; he knows the truth of the matter. And the witnesses who lied do as well.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Speaking in 1995 in an SABC interview about witnesses in her libel case against Channel 4. http://70.84.171.10/~etools/newsbrief/1995/news0103
Other

God , Truth , World , Heart

“In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn’t develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote “with his blood,” and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one’s lifeblood. … It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), pp. xxiv-xxv

Life , Books , Effort

“When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III “Of the three evil things”). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego.”

Gilles Deleuze book Nietzsche and Philosophy

Source: Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), p. 7

Way , Evil

“We have entered an age of insecurity—economic insecurity, physical insecurity, political insecurity. The fact that we are largely unaware of this is small comfort: few in 1914 predicted the utter collapse of their world and the economic and political catastrophes that followed. Insecurity breeds fear. And fear—fear of change, fear of decline, fear of strangers and an unfamiliar world—is corroding the trust and interdependence on which civil societies rest.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Introduction

Age , World , Fear , Change

“The good thing about Higgs is that depending on the mass it actually manifests itself inside the detector in completely different ways. And many different ways depending on the mass, and we have to cover all the different ways and, in fact, when you have done you find that detector can do anything that the nature has in store for us. Anything.”

Tejinder Virdee (1952) British physicist

"Discovery machine; Interview with Dr. Jim Virdee," 2010

Way , Nature , Dependency

“Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Historical Introduction, p.17
Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885)

Fate , Age , Mathematics , Understanding

“I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter I

“I'm all for illegal immigration in this country except for the fact that they don't have to serve on jury duty. That's horseshit. It should be the other way around, they should serve exclusively on jury duty. Yeah, then, then, it would truly be a jury of one's own peers. [Some of the audience groans] It's not a stereotype if it's always true. Yeah, then it becomes law. That joke was called, "Latinos are criminals."”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Law , Way , Country

“Learning the long lines and delivering them in one take was a nightmare, but Rameshji helped me as also the fact that I have a good memory. It is only when you become successful that you realize how everything contributes to your success.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

On her delivery of long dialogue In the film Sholay, page 1978
MOTHER MAIDEN MISTRESS

Learning , Memory , Success , Help

“The statute in question cannot be justified by reason of the fact that the publisher is permitted to show, before injunction issues, that the matter published is true and is published with good motives and for justifiable ends. If such a statute, authorizing suppression and injunction on such a basis, is constitutionally valid, it would be equally permissible for the legislature to provide that at any time the publisher of any newspaper could be brought before a court, or even an administrative officer (as the constitutional protection may not be regarded as resting on mere procedural details) and required to produce proof of the truth of his publication, or of what he intended to publish, and of his motives, or stand enjoined. If this can be done, the legislature may provide machinery for determining in the complete exercise of its discretion what are justifiable ends, and restrain publication accordingly. And it would be but a step to a complete system of censorship.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Truth , Exercises , Motivation , Question

“One of the big problems is — and here goes the grenade — Israel. The second you mention the word "Israel," the nation Israel, the concept Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We’re not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel. And the other thing we’re not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel and the notion of Israeli interests may in fact be dictating what America is doing, that what we’re doing in the Middle East may not be to the benefit of America’s national security, but to Israel’s national security. But, see, we don’t want to talk about that, because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israeli lobby that has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together, so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say, "No, we’re speaking of American interests."It’s interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don’t have to register as agents of a foreign government. It would be nice if they did, because then we’d know when they’re advocating on behalf of Israel or they’re advocating on behalf of the United States of America.I would challenge The New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role of Israel’s influence, the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy. Let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is, when they do this and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government and they advocate on behalf of that foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that government, so we know where they’re coming from. That’s all I ask the Israelis to do. Let us know where you’re coming from, because stop confusing the American public that Israel’s interests are necessarily America’s interests.I have to tell you right now, Israel has a viable, valid concern about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. If I were an Israeli, I would be extremely concerned about Hezbollah, and I would want to do everything possible to nullify that organization. As an American, I will tell you, Hezbollah does not threaten the national security of the United States of America one iota. So we should not be talking about using American military forces to deal with the Hezbollah issue. That is an Israeli problem. And yet, you’ll see The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets confusing the issue. They want us to believe that Hezbollah is an American problem. It isn’t, ladies and gentleman. Hezbollah was created three years after Israel invaded Lebanon, not three years after the United States invaded Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s sole purpose was to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. I’m not here to condone or sing high praises in virtue for Hezbollah. But I’m here to tell you right now, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the security of the United States of America.”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Money , Problem , Singing , Time

“Although quantum theory involves the use of nonlocal states, such as wave packets and entangled states, there is nothing in the theory, or in the real world so far as it is accurately described by quantum theory, that corresponds to the sorts of instantaneous nonlocal influences which have often been thought to arise in the situation envisaged in the EPR paradox, or implied by the fact that quantum theory violates Bell inequalities.”

Robert Griffiths (physicist)

"Quantum Locality", Found Phys (2011) 41: 705–733

World

“In astronomy two characteristics are common to all data on which the solution of the great problems depends. The first is the extreme minuteness of the quantities to be measured. …New epochs were inaugurated in the beginning of the seventeenth century by the invention of the telescope, and in the last third of the nineteenth by the discovery of photography and spectroscopy…. The other characteristic is that astronomy always requires a very large number of data. …These two characteristics of the data that the astronomer requires to build his science on make two things more necessary in astronomy than in any other science: patience and organised coöperation. …The astronomer—each working at his own task…—is always conscious of belonging to a community, whose members, separated in space and time, nevertheless feel joined by a very real tie, almost of kinship. …whatever his special work may be it is always a link in a chain, which derives its value from the fact that there is another link to the left and one to the right of it. It is the chain that is important, not the separate links.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Feeling , Communication , Problem , Science

“We must be careful to discriminate between our own incapacity to test truth and the necessary improbability of an event. It is plain that from our ignorance of the remote spheres of God's action we cannot judge of His works removed from our experience; but a fact is not necessarily doubtful because it cannot be reached by our ordinary senses. To recapitulate, we may lay down the following propositions:
1. That there is no real physical distinction between miracles and any other operations of the Divine energy : that we regard them differently is because we are familiar with one order of events and not the other.
2. There is nothing incredible in a miracle, and the credibility of a miraculous event is to be measured only by the evidence which sustains it. And although the extraordinary character of a phenomenon may render the event itself improbable, it does not, therefore, necessarily render it either incredible or untrue.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix, p. 489
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

God , Truth , Sense

“The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

“I feel the conflict still exists in me – but not causing me any difficulty in working, as it did immediately after returning from Italy [in 1925]. In fact I ask myself is this [the] conflict what makes things happen? For it seems to me now that this conflict between the excitement & great impression I got from Mexican sculpture & the love & sympathy I felt for Italian art, represents two opposing sides in me, the 'tough' & the 'tender', & that many other artists have had the same two conflicting sides in their natures.... and really I see no difficulty in appreciating both sides & finding them in the same artist. Perhaps an obvious & continuous synthesis will eventually derive in my own work – I can’t say – I can only work as I feel & believe at the time I do the work.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

in 'Undated notes' 1950; as quoted in The Art of Henry Moore, Will Grohmann, Thames and Hudson, London 1960, n.p.
1940 - 1955

Love , Art , Feeling , Nature

“Like the Soviet regime before it, the Putin government spreads fear by destroying the illusion that one can protect oneself… People who work at two Moscow restaurants have warned me, separately, about the precise locations of listening devices at the eateries. The warnings came unbidden. The food at both places was, incidentally, not only very good but also apparently safe. That, along with the springtime sun, helps maintain the bizarre sense of normalcy that has a way of going hand in hand with the mortal danger that has become a fact of everyday life.”

Masha Gessen (1967) Russian-American journalist and activist

"Putin's Russia: Don't Walk, Don't Eat, and Don't Drink" http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-russia-dont-walk-dont-eat-and-dont-drink?intcid=mod-yml (28 May 2015), The New Yorker.

Life , People , Fear , Food

“A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on men's souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other's attitudes and way of life.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Inaugural Address (1989)

Life , Men , Way , Soul

“I don't know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Report Newsmagazine, March 25 2002: On the Iraq war.
2002

Thinking

“[S]cience is often regarded as the most objective and truth-directed of human enterprises, and since direct observation is supposed to be the favored route to factuality, many people equate respectable science with visual scrutiny—just the facts ma'am, and palpably before my eyes. But science is a battery of observational and inferential methods, all directed to the testing of propositions that can, in principle, be definitely proven false. […] At all scales, from smallest to largest, quickest to slowest, many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation. No one has ever seen an electron or a black hole, the events of a picosecond or a geological eon.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Muller Bros. Moving & Storage", pp. 200–201
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

People , Truth , Lie , Science

“Spinoza, then, emerged as the supreme philosophical bogeyman of Early Enlightenment Europe. Admittedly, historians have rarely emphasized this. It has been much more common, and still is, to claim that Spinoza was rarely understood and had very little influence, a typical example of an abiding historiographical refrain which appears to be totally untrue but nevertheless, since the nineteenth century, has exerted an enduring appeal for all manner of scholars. In fact, no one else during the century 1650–1750 remotely rivalled Spinoza's notoriety as the chief challenger of the fundamentals of revealed religion, received ideas, tradition, morality, and what was everywhere regarded, in absolutist and non-absolutist states alike, as divinely constituted political authority.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
G - L, Jonathan Israel

Religion , Idea , Appearance

“How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Introduction
Whose Word Is It?: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why (2006)

God , Time , Help

“The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Life , Imagination , Thinking , Future

“Mr. Jacob A. Riis, a few years ago, used some figures which showed that about one-third of the people of New York City were dependent upon charity at some time during the eight years previous to 1890. The report of the United Hebrew Charities for 1901 shows very similar conditions existing among the Jewish population of New York. But even more astonishing than all other facts we have are those furnished by the State Board of Charities... The poverty of New York State is enormous. In actual figures as reduced, the persons in distress in 1897 number… about 19 per cent of the people of New York and in 1899 they number… about 18 per cent. …If the figures are correct as published the persons in New York State in distress in 1897 and in Boston in 1903 would equal proportionately the number of those in poverty in London.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 22

People , Time , Dependency , Personality

“The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O. K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do.' He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked. Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic. When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with the Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and 'a vengeful God…' then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers a felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, 'My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,' then Carol found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

God , Children , School , Faith

“This fact, the surfacing of structure in an undeliberate action, is too big to take on here, but it was enough to convince me that the structuralists—the advocates of planning music before you hear or care what the plan gives you—were right: do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid.”

Robert Ashley (1930–2014) American composer

liner notes to Automatic Writing (1996), referring to both automatic writing and the piece Automatic Writing.

Music

“He was exceptionally aggressive. He said I would do anything to get on television. That's rubbish. The fact is that out of the 10 tasks we were given to do in the series I was on the winning side eight times.”

James Max (1970) British journalist

Of Apprentice judge Paul Kemsley. Daily Telegraph 28 Apr 2005 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2914680/Had-bad-day-at-the-office---I-got-fired-and-2.5m-were-watching.html

Time

“The earliest achievement of this (of equality and the restriction on the powers of the constitutionally mandated magistrates), the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of the consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term… Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways, resolution (of the community),.. or the rule might voluntarily abdicate; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud", may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors(sic); that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due… we are (in light of the ignorance of historical facts around the abolition of the monarchy) fortunately in possession of a clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution (after the expulsion of the monarchy). The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when a vacancy occurred, a "temporary king" (Interrex) was nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by two [one year] kings, who called themselves generals (praetores), or judges…, or merely colleagues (Consuls) [literally, "Those who leap or dance together"]. The collegiate principle, from which this last - and subsequently most current - name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king; and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place from the first - the one consul for instance undertaking the command of the army, and the other the administration of justice - that partition was by no means binding, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, Book II , Chapter 1. "Change of the Constitution" Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life , People , Justice , Way

“Who were the Macedonians? As an ethnic question it is the best avoided, since the mainly modern political overtones tend to obscure the fact that it really is not a very important issue. That they may or may not have been Greek in whole or in a part--while an interesting anthropological sidelight--is really not crucial to our understanding of their history. They made their mark not as a tribe of Greeks or other Balkan peoples, but as Macedonians. This was understood by foreign protagonists from the time of Darius and Xerxes to the age of Roman generals.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

Source: In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990), p. 97

People , Age , History , Understanding

“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it! — that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms — nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”

Joyce Carol Oates book You Must Remember This

You Must Remember This (1987), pt. 1, ch. 13

Color , Loss

“It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 14

Pain , Friendship , People

“I need to be looked after. I’m not talking about diamond rings and nice restaurants and fancy stuff—in fact, that makes me uncomfortable. I didn’t grow up with it and it’s not me, you know. But I need someone to say to me, ‘Shall I run you a bath?’ or ‘Let’s go to the pub, just us.”

Kate Winslet (1975) English actress and singer

Isn’t She Deneuvely?: Vanity Fair, Dec 2008 http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/12/winslet200812

“…education is the key to health and to social progress. The fact is that the average expectation of life of an Indian has doubled since Independence. In fact, it is 61 years now as against 28 or 30 years at the time of Independence.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Life , Health , Education , Time

“Sex itself only exists in relation to procreation. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes object — and it's just a theoretical objection, but it's worth thinking about — to the whole notion that one calls what people of the same sex do "sexual relations." As a matter of fact, they have precisely turned their back on sexual relations, in order to engage in acts of mutual pleasure that have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

National Federation of Republican Assemblies, NYC, August 31, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_08_31nfra.htm.
2009

People , Pleasure , Sex , Thinking

“I hope I may claim in the present work to have made it probable that the laws of arithmetic are analytic judgments and consequently a priori. Arithmetic thus becomes simply a development of logic, and every proposition of arithmetic a law of logic, albeit a derivative one. To apply arithmetic in the physical sciences is to bring logic to bear on observed facts; calculation becomes deduction.”

Gottlob Frege book The Foundations of Arithmetic

Gottlob Frege (1950 [1884]). The Foundations of Arithmetic. p. 99.

Law , Hope , Science

“The true American knew something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter but he never felt the law.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Law , Feeling , Reading

“Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

"Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism" http://www.dorislessing.org/unexamined.html, in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips

Dogs , Motivation , Idea

“I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 35.

“There were moments - when Jeopardy came on, in the car during radio trivia challenges, or for practically any question I couldn't answer in any subject - that Rogerson simply amazed me. I started to seek out facts, just to stump him, but it never worked. He was that sharp.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

Cars , Question

“The moments of perfect pleasure in Johnson's songs, and the beauty of those songs, remind one that it is not the simple presence of evil that is unbearable; what is unbearable is the impossibility of reconciling the facts of evil with the beauty of the world.”

Greil Marcus (1945) American historian

Marcus on Robert Johnson in Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975, fourth revision May, 1997) p. 31.

Pleasure , World , Beauty , Evil

“Remember, “you’re going to keep your doctor, you’re going to keep your plan, over and over again, you’re going to keep your doctor.” It was a lie. And in fact, if he didn’t make the lie, he would have never gotten it approved because most Democrats, many of the Democrats didn’t want to do it. It was only that, that got them to sign it and to approve it. And it was a lie.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Lie

“Truth is really whatever can be shown to correspond to reality. Truth is what the facts are essentially. Facts are after all points of data that you can verify to be accurate. A lot of people hate these definitions because it completely undermines their theology. They can’t make the assertions that they want to by saying anything is the absolute truth, because under the definition of either word no you don’t!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Hate , People , Truth , Reality

“The fact that I got to be the CEO of a publicly traded company in the marijuana space, that was something that was completely unexpected. But very quickly, marijuana products medicinally compete with legal prescription drugs that statistically kill 100,000 people a year. There's not been one documented death due to marijuana. Then on the recreational side, I've always maintained that legalizing marijuana will lead to less overall substance abuse because people will find it as such a safer alternative than everything else that's out there, starting with alcohol.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016, Interview with CNBC's John Harwood (August 22, 2016)

Death , People , Alcohol , Marijuana

“Crossing color, class, gender, and generational lines, the communities of addiction and recovery are as democratic as America gets. Twelve-step meetings are in fact downright radical: nonprofit and nonhierarchical, with a fierce etiquette of listening to and caring about everyone who wanders into the rooms.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"Can't Get Enough" http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/tv/reviews/2386/, New York Magazine (23 May 1998)

Color , Communication

“Most of the writers I know come from a variety of backgrounds: history, journalism, engineering, physics. The common element here is not what you study, but the fact that you learn how to study, to do research, and to synthesize new ideas out of old. The soul of science fiction, and perhaps even all fiction, is to look at a situation and ask, “what would happen if….” Change some variables and see how that makes people react to the situation. So, getting yourself a good grounding in any field of study will supply you with a great background wealth of material to use to build your stories. Then you really just need to start writing and keep writing. Writing is a skills-based endeavor and there is no easy way to become successful at it. Writers write.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

"Interview" at his official website http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?page_id=8

People , Way , Soul , History

“A sense of social hierarchy prevented Mrs Munde from actually telling the lousy bastard to get out, so instead she began to think evil thoughts. She had once read an article on mind control, explaining that the best way to bend someone to your will was to think of a gooey mudlike substance called Cliff Richard and direct it at the object of your intent. Such were the marshmellow-suffocating properties of this image that the victim fell instantly into an undignified froth. Putty in your hands in fact. It didn't seem to work. The stranger was insensitive as well as intrusive. Mrs Munde gave it one last go till the kitchen air was thick with Cliff Richard. The stranger suddenly made a little squeaking noise and fell sideways.
'Stop it, stop it!' he cried. 'You're pulping my brain.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

'Well go away then,' sulked Mrs Munde, releasing her victim, not through generosity but because she found the image too nauseating to continue.
Page 28.
See Wikipedia on Cliff Richard.
Boating For Beginners (1985)

Way , Thinking , Sense , Evil

“The moment juries or judges go beyond their functions, and take upon themselves to lay down the law or find the facts, not according to the law as it is, but according to the law as they think it ought to be, then the certainty of the law is at an end; there is nothing to rely upon; we are left to the infinite variety and uncertainty of human opinion; to caprice which may at any moment influence the best of us, to feelings and prejudices, perhaps excellent in themselves, but which may distort or disturb our judgment, and distract our minds from the single simple operation of ascertaining whether the facts proved bring the case within the law as we are bound to take it.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law , Feeling , Thinking

“The greatness in an ideology is not, in fact, in the ideology; but it is in the subject which lives that ideology.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“Envy is the central fact of American life.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Gore Vidal," interview by Gerald Clarke (1974), The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 5th series (1981)
1970s

Life , Envy

“To me there is nothing more important in a democracy than free speech and debate. We should debate everything, we should talk about everything, we should engage ideas we aren't comfortable with, and we should let the best ideas win, that's how a healthy society based on rational ideas and a secular government should work, but too often these days it's simply isn't what's happening, and while the far right in this country went off the deep end a while ago, what I've really been affected by is seeing my side, the people on the Left cherry-picking, fact stifling, debate and labeling everyone they disagree with a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, or worse. These aren't liberal principles, much less are they the ideals our founders intended for us to use when they started this country.”

Dave Rubin (1976) American comedian

Dave Rubin Explains The Rubin Report Rules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97SafVeKoF4 (September 9, 2015)

People , Democracy , Idea , Country

“As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn't also happen to have the Qur'an.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos" (29 March 2006) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/2863 — in Free Inquiry, Vol. 26, issue 3
2000s

Books

“The famous MacGuffin, the Hitchockian object, the pure pretext whose sole role is to set the story in motion but which is in itself nothing at all - the only significance of the MacGuffin lies in the fact that it has some significance for the characters - that it must seem to be of vital importance to them… - that's a MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is non the less efficient… what Lacan calls object petit a: a pure void which functions as the object cause of desire.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

183
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

“The world economy is not yet a community--not even an economic community…Yet the existence of the "global shopping center" is a fact that cannot be undone. The vision of an economy for all will not be forgotten again.”

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

The Age of Discontinuity (1969)
1960s - 1980s

World , Communication

“It is because prices are stable, and are perceived by agents to be in equilibrium, that the task facing market institutions is less daunting in this respect. However, market institutions may still have many other functions, such as providing information regarding quality and the location of potential buyers and sellers, and regulating both the product and the entrants to the market. In fact, a crucial function may be more subtle; by ordering trade under the aegis of some institution, the price and quality of the product may be legitimized at its given level. There is a kind of stamp of institutional approval which may contribute in a powerful manner to the emergence of price norms…..”

Geoffrey Hodgson (1946) British economist

Source: Economics and Institutions, 1988, p. 185-6

“Mr. President, this is Ed Bradley in New York. There are many people who would question our system of criminal justice today in the United States--in fact, many people who have lost faith in our criminal justice system. With so many people languishing on death row today for so many years, how can you say with such assurance that justice will be certain, swift, and severe?”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Ed Bradley, Interview with '60 Minutes' on CBS, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-1995-05-01/html/WCPD-1995-05-01-Pg689.htm, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 17, 689-694, April 23, 1995, United States Government Printing Office]

Death , People , Faith , Justice

“The fact of it is that all of us agreed to save 6d. in the Income Tax by breaking up the Army in peace-time and not having it prepared when war broke out…I will never be a party to it again.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 376, col. 1336.
Speech in the House of Commons, 4 December 1941.

War , Peace , Time

“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Unvanquished : A U.S. - U.N. Saga (1999), p. 198.
1990s

Law , Time , Training , Country

“Well, ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit.
They give us fact or fiction?
I guess an even split.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

“I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Gift from the Sea (1955)

Life , Search , Learning

“It seems that Wikipedia. com, that splendid source for all kinds of information, is no longer dedicated to the truth, assuming it ever was.
Individuals who have tried to edit the pages about Barack Obama — to reflect the incontrovertible fact that he is not God, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan — report that their contributions have vanished within minutes of posting them, and that they, themselves, have been suspended for three days following each 'infraction'.
When some sort of official at Wikipedia was contacted about this, she stonewalled, claiming that this censorship was the work of 'volunteers', implying they were somehow beyond control of Wikipedia itself.
Like the Red Guard and the Khmer Rouge were 'volunteers'.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Announcifications From Your Publicatorialist: Wikipedia, Missouri, and Ceres," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle510-20090315-04.html
15 March 2009.

God , Truth

“When self-knowledge reveals the answer it will be a living fact in your own experience. At any time you wish to experience the answer it will be there, just as you can say 'It is night' or 'It is day'. You will know, while the rest of the world is arguing and speculating.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

World , Knowledge , Time , Night

“I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly... I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci cited in Fiori, 1970, pp. 22-23.

Pain , Children , Truth , Education

“There was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn’t help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back.”

Isaac Asimov book Pebble in the Sky

Pebble in the Sky, chapter 7 “Conversation with Madmen?”, p. 58
Pebble in the Sky (1950)

Nature , Help , Childhood

“In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Foreword to the English edition
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)

Truth , Age , History , Fashion

“When a fact came along, he junked theories that failed to match.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 12

“The danger which menaces you will come from the agricultural districts, for the next time there is any outbreak, the destitute hands of the agricultural districts will be added to the destitute hands of the manufacturing districts. Does the right hon. Gentleman, who must know the state of the country, doubt whether this be the fact? …The right hon. Baronet cannot conceal from himself what is that condition: capital is melting away, pauperism is increasing, trade and manufactures are not reviving. What worse description can be given of our condition?—and what can be expected if such a state of things continue but the disruption and dissolution of the State?”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/feb/17/distress-of-the-country-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (17 February 1843) against the Corn Laws.
1840s

Time , Country

“What we do when defeat stares us in the face is the real touchstone of character. But the very fact that success has time and again proved the means of awakening people to the knowledge of greater ability than they ever before dreamed they possessed, ought to hearten and encourage us to keep on no matter how often we fail. If we brace ourselves and continue to push forward we will ultimately win out.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Everybody Ahead (or, Getting the Most Out of Life) (1916).

People , Dreams , Knowledge , Time

“Here’s a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life—’’possessive’’, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life, only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The Second Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Life , Feeling , Time , Fight

“Bosh," he said, "On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Club of Queer Trades

The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 2 "The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation"

World , Business

“If there would not have been a Waco, I would have put down roots somewhere and not been so unsettled with the fact that my government … was a threat to me. Everything that Waco implies was on the forefront of my thoughts. That sort of guided my path for the next couple of years.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letters published in the Buffalo News (10 June 2001).
2000s

“I have been singularly hard with myself. I have had to be. You must realize that this is so, since you have, at times, reproached me for it, and were astonished because I had so little confidence in myself. I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself. I ask your pardon, then, if, with this damned art as an excuse, I have wounded your noble and intelligent spirit; perhaps even your heart..”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"The Sensitive Artist" (p. 43)
quote from Degas' letter to a friend; but unknown because Vollard did not want to reveal the name
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Art , Confidence , Intelligence , Time

“Just as the mother influence is formative with a man's anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter. The father imbues his daughter's mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter. For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death. A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead. Again and again she presses him to say who he is. At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand. Then suddenly he tells her he is death. The young woman is so frightened that she dies. Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone). He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man. A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things "ought to be," prevents all contact with life. The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man, p. 319 - 320

Love , Life , Death , God

“But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 46
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body

“The microphone-amplifier-loudspeaker combination is having an enormous effect on our civilization. Not all of it is good! Consider to what heights of impudence and tyranny, and to what depths of moral depravity, has radio broadcasting and the loudspeaker attained in that recent monstrosity, Transit Radio, Inc. Almost incredible is the loathsome fact that already in 21 cities bus riders must listen to never-ending, blatant advertising and unwelcome jitterbug and bop music.”

Lee De Forest (1873–1961) American inventor

"Dawn of the Electronic Age" http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/03/20/dawn-of-the-electronic-age/, Popular Mechanics, January 1952

Music

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, pages 477-508, edited by Cliff Walker. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingwhatrel.htm

Life , God , World , Fear