Quotes about fail
page 14

“According to the orthodox creeds, Christianity came with the tidings that the human race was totally depraved, and that all men were in a lost condition, and that all who rejected or failed to believe the new religion, would be tormented in eternal fire. These were not “tidings of great joy.” If the passengers on some great ship were told that the ship was to be wrecked, that a few would be saved and that nearly all would go to the bottom, would they talk about “tidings of great joy”?”

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

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Men, Religion, Joy

“Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized. Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 106-7

Hate, Religion, Way, Feeling

“I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.”

David Dinkins (1927) former mayor of New York City

quoted by By Rudolf Melik in The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World (Page 57).

Law

“What do you mean, why? Is it not obvious? What is life but a betrayal? We start out young, full of hope. The sun is good; the world awaits us. But every passing year shows how small you are, how insignificant against the power of the seasons. Then you age. Your strength fails, and the world laughs at you through the jeers of younger men. And you die. Alone. Unfulfilled. But sometimes … sometimes there will come a man who is not insignificant. He can change the world, rob the seasons of their power. He is the sun.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 23

Life, Men, Age, World

“Resist the temptation to use special effects. Think about science fiction movies with lots of special effects: If you notice that special effects are special effects, they will fail.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Better PowerPoint (R), 2010, p. 24

Thinking, Science

“At a crisis in my youth he taught me the wisdom of choice: To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 31

Wisdom, Youth, Suffering, Learning

“In considering whether a larger association would be more satisfactory, do not fail to consider its extra costs, including a possible increase in the sense of individual powerlessness.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 2 : Varieties of Democratic Authority

Sense

“…The preferred Shofar of Redemption is the Divine call that awakens and inspires the people with holy motivations, through faith in God and the unique mission of the people of Israel. This elevated awakening corresponds to the ram's horn, a horn that recalls Abraham's supreme love of God and dedication in Akeidat Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac. It was the call of this shofar, with its holy vision of heavenly Jerusalem united with earthly Jerusalem, that inspired Nachmanides, Rabbi Yehuda HaLevy, Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura, the students of the Vilna Gaon, and the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov to ascend to Eretz Yisrael. It is for this "great shofar," an awakening of spiritual greatness and idealism, that we fervently pray. There exists a second Shofar of Redemption, a less optimal form of awakening. This shofar calls out to the Jewish people to return to their homeland, to the land where our ancestors, our prophets and our kings, once lived. It beckons us to live as a free people, to raise our families in a Jewish country and a Jewish culture. This is a kosher shofar, albeit not a great shofar like the first type of awakening. We may still recite a blessing over this shofar. There is, however, a third type of shofar. The least desirable shofar comes from the horn of an unclean animal. This shofar corresponds to the wake-up call that comes from the persecutions of anti-Semitic nations, warning the Jews to escape while they still can and flee to their own land. Enemies force the Jewish people to be redeemed, blasting the trumpets of war, bombarding them with deafening threats of harassment and torment, giving them no respite. The shofar of unclean beasts is thus transformed into a Shofar of Redemption. Whoever failed to hear the calls of the first two shofars will be forced to listen to the call of this last shofar. Over this shofar, however, no blessing is recited. "One does not recite a blessing over a cup of affliction."”

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine

1933 Sermon: The Call of the Great Shofar https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13794

Love, God, War, People

“It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The World After September 11th", AFSC Conference at Tufts University, Massachusetts, December 8, 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20011230091612/http://www.zmag.org/chomskyafter911.htm. <br class="br">Quotes 2000s, 2001

Children, World, Evil

“When we place all these extraordinary achievements together, however we can see where we have failed: by bringing together all the elements of progress into a meaningless and inhuman system of life.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 3, The three futures, p. 30

Life

“Well, now the American people have returned the Republican party to power; and the question is, what will it do? … For a dozen years and more the Republican party has seemed in a measure paralyzed in the presence of high-handed fraud and brutal violence toward its newly-made citizens. The question now is, will it regain its former health, activity, and power? Will it be as true to its friends in the South as the Democratic party has been to its friends in that section, or will it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies? … Not only the negro but all honest men, north and south, must hold the Republican party in contempt, if it fails to do its whole duty at this point. The Republican party has made the colored man free; and the Republican party must make him secure in his freedom, or abandon its pretensions.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Men, People, Health, Color

“I am for the legal government of Republican Spain against Franco, since Spain herself, at a properly conducted election, chose that Government and rejected the party which now supports Franco. I am also against Fascism; the reforms of Diocletian were a work of genius and made many people temporarily happy, but failed in the end and added greatly to human misery. I see no reason why this inferior modern copy of them should succeed.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War" (1937), edited by Nancy Cunard, reprinted in The Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War (1986), edited by Valentine Cunningham

People, Support, Happiness

“Many people fail to grasp this point, apparently because they think of "scientific" evidence as only that produced in laboratories by controlled experiments. This leads them to treat field studies, however careful, thorough and well-documented, as "anecdotal"--mere preparation for the real thing, therefore properly ignored till it bears fruit entitled to be considered by learned persons. This attitude was much like that of cavalry generals in the First World War, waiting patiently for the infantry to clear the ground so that they could make the dashing charges that alone they thought entitled the name of warfare. Because these creatures are complex, only a tiny fraction of important truths about them can ever be seen in laboratories of expressed in control experiments. The same, of course, is true of the human race.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 224.

War, People, Truth, World

“The Musalman invasion of the Brahmaputra valley was repeated on several occasions during the next five centuries of Muslim rule over north India, but most of these expeditions ended in disaster and Islam failed to make any inroads into the valley.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to Mexico, China and other countries all around the world. It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people. I'm doing this for the people and the movement and we will take back this country for you and we will make America great again. I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.”

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

Closing argument for America (4 November 2016)
Source: 2010s, 2016, November, Lines recycled from Trump's campaign rally in West Palm Beach, FL (10/13/2016)

Money, People, World, Decision

“I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. It will not fail through its inherent weakness. It may fail because of poverty of response. Then will be one time for real danger. The high-souled men, who are unable to suffer national humiliation any longer, will want to vent their wrath. They will take to violence.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

1920s, The Doctrine Of The Sword (1920)

Men, School, Peace, Soul

“Why did the generals who have been so ready to term me a complaisant and incompetent yes-man fail to secure my removal? Was that all that difficult? No, that wasn't it; the truth was that nobody would have been ready to replace me, because each one knew that he would end up just as much a wreck as I.”

Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946) German general

Excerpt from "The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel" - Page 52 - by Wilhelm Keitel - 1966

Truth

“The earth cracks and
is shriveled up;
the wind moans piteously;
the sky goes out
if you should fail.”

William Carlos Williams book Al Que Quiere!

"Chicory and Daisies"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)

“The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954) <br class="br">1950s

Love, World, Soul, Problem

“But what kept them on their feet when there was no sane reason for hope were the bonds between them, loyalty to one another, theknowledge others depended on them even as they depended on those others. And sometimes, all too rarely, it came down to a single person it was simply unthinkable to fail. Someone they knew would never quit on them, never leave them in the lurch.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", The Honor of the Queen (1993)

Hope, Dependency, Personality, Loyalty

“Westminster Review – a man, who although, through failing health and failing voice, he had virtually passed out of public life, yet retained to the last the affectionate veneration of the Canadian people as no other man of the time can be said to have done. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 651, The Westminster Review Volume 137)”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

His Character

Life, People, Health, Time

“Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external or internal, which occurred during this period - neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and the slaves - constituted of itself a mighty danger necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet the state had in all these struggles well-night fought for its very existence. The reason was that the tasks were left everywhere unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them. It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief Sertorius and his Spanish guerrillas, and that it was only the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour[sic] of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less an honour[sic] to have confronted them in equal strive for years. Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush to the cheek of the honourable[sic] Roman, when he reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age. Then the (the Roman) Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success, but always with honour, not it was difficult to find among all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency. Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired, merely that they might be able to defend themselves against the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian Straights, beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with a blockade; the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti. Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories over insurgents and robber-chiefs?”

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

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Chapter 2. "Rule of the Sullan Restoration"
The Government of the Restoration as a Whole
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Life, War, Age, Democracy

“Chen is not only ahead of Steve Jobs in terms of turnaround speed, he has done something that both HP and Sun failed at: turned a hardware company into a software and services company, arguably something Jobs couldn't have done. … Jobs smartly decided to kill the process at Apple to transition that company to software and services. Jobs didn't understand how to do that and would have likely failed because he was just a hardware guy.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

BlackBerry's John Chen: Beating Jobs by Doing the Impossible in Three Years http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/blackberrys-john-chen-beating-jobs-by-doing-the-impossible-in-three-years.html in IT Business Edge (26 January 2017)

Guy, Understanding, Sun, Speed

“Poincaré wrote, "If a phenomenon admits of a complete mechanical explanation it will admit of an infinity of others which will account equally well for all the peculiarities disclosed by experiment." This was the statement made by Phædrus in the laboratory; it raised the question that failed him out of school.”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 22; the quote is from Poincaré's The Foundations of Science, ch. 12, "Optics and Electricity".

School, Question

“He shows Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence;
Not as He is in His nature,
But in images and similitudes,
And in the degree in which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him.
And the wise reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly
And without error in images of the understanding
All that she has heard of God,
Of faith, of truth, according to her longing.
But that image which is God Himself,
Although it is held before her, she cannot comprehend;
For the eyes of her understanding
Must fail before that Incomparable Light.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

God, Truth, Faith, Error

“The important thing was that I had never behaved inappropriately toward any woman, and I had no intention of letting my enemies hang that age-old charge of sexual impropriety around my neck. Those who wished only to exploit my past failings, not forgive them, would get no help from me.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 229
2000s, (2008)

Age, Forgiveness, Past, Help

“Psychologically speaking, what such findings seem to mean is that an achievement is not only more frequently present in stories from more rapidly developing countries but when it is present, it is more apt to be “means” oriented rather than goal oriented. The achievement sequence more often dwells on obstacles to success and specific means of overcoming them, rather than on the goal itself, the desire for it, and the emotions surrounding attaining or failing to attain it. The adaptive quality of such a concern with means is obvious: a people who think in terms of ways of overcoming obstacles would seem more likely to find ways of overcoming them in fact.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 104-5

People, Way, Thinking, Success

“The fall of France must have been a bitter pill to Calvé. She had a poor opinion of Germans, both as people and as artists. It is sad to imagine what her last days may have been in her "robber-baron's castle" as Peggy Wood calls it. But one thing is certain; when death came, Calvé met it with spirit. No one who knew so well how to greet life could possibly fail to know how to greet death.”

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

Emma Calvé (1942).

Life, Death, People, Sadness

“It might be easier
To fail with land in sight,
Than gain my blue peninsula
To perish of delight.”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 69
Collected Poems (1993)

“History will record that the two biggest deficits of the Obama administration were the failure to create a robust economy and the president's retreat from the terrorist battlefield. For years, Talking Points has been telling you the Obama administration has no strategy to defeat the ISIS threat. But President Obama somehow does not seem to understand that the civilized world is losing the fight against ISIS. Just hours before the Paris attack the president said 'we have contained' ISIS. Obviously that is not true. They are a threat worldwide, they continue to kill people with impunity. Nevertheless, the president is unrepentant and unwilling to admit that his strategy has failed. At a press conference today in Turkey he said, 'The strategy we're pursing is the right one.' The Republican Party is taking note. Senator Ted Cruz says 'Barack Obama does not wish to defend the country,' and Senator Lindsey Graham warns, 'There's a 9/11 coming, and it's coming from Syria if we don't disrupt their operations inside of Syria.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

It is long past time that we the people demand ISIS be defeated, not contained. <br class="br"> The O'Reilly Factor http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=4059&destinationpage=/mobile/tvshow.jsp (16 November 2015)

People, World, History, Failure

“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)

“Western intellectuals fail to understand and appreciate the form of society that has given us the ability to alter those defaults. They believe both that the most productive human cultures are almost totally dysfunctional, and that evolved, successful societies may be re-drawn at will by intellectuals with political and cultural power. They write as if relative pockets of Western poverty should occasion our astonishment, when in fact the term, until recently, for almost infinitely worse levels of poverty, was simply "human life."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Life, Understanding, Success

“The third category of which I come now to speak is precisely that whose reality is denied by nominalism. For although nominalism is not credited with any extraordinarily lofty appreciation of the powers of the human soul, yet it attributes to it a power of originating a kind of ideas the like of which Omnipotence has failed to create as real objects, and those general conceptions which men will never cease to consider the glory of the human intellect must, according to any consistent nominalism, be entirely wanting in the mind of Deity.”

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

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.62
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Men, Soul, Idea, Reality

“As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, toward each other approached the heroes.—As two dark streams from high rocks meet, and mix and roar on the plain; loud, rough and dark in battle met Lochlin and Innis-fail. Chief mixed his strokes with chief, and man with man; steel, clanging, sounded on steel, helmets are cleft on high. Blood bursts and smokes around. … As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high; as the last peal of the thunder of heaven, such is the noise of battle.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book I
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

Autumn

“Beyond the cloud-wrapt chambers of western gloom and Aethiopia's other realm there stands a motionless grove, impenetrable by any star; beneath it the hollow recesses of a deep and rocky cave run far into a mountain, where the slow hand of Nature has set the halls of lazy Sleep and his untroubled dwelling. The threshold is guarded by shady Quiet and dull Forgetfulness and torpid Sloth with ever drowsy countenance. Ease, and Silence with folded wings sit mute in the forecourt and drive the blustering winds from the roof-top, and forbid the branches to sway, and take away their warblings from the birds. No roar of the sea is here, though all the shores be sounding, nor yet of the sky; the very torrent that runs down the deep valley nigh the cave is silent among the rocks and boulders; by its side are sable herds, and sheep reclining one and all upon the ground; the fresh buds wither, and a breath from the earth makes the grasses sink and fail. Within, glowing Mulciber had carved a thousand likenesses of the god: here wreathed Pleasure clings to his side, here Labour drooping to repose bears him company, here he shares a couch with Bacchus, there with Love, the child of Mars. Further within, in the secret places of the palace he lies with Death also, but that dread image is seen by none. These are but pictures: he himself beneath humid caverns rests upon coverlets heaped with slumbrous flowers, his garments reek, and the cushions are warm with his sluggish body, and above the bed a dark vapour rises from his breathing mouth. One hand holds up the locks that fall from his left temple, from the other drops his neglected horn.”
Stat super occiduae nebulosa cubilia Noctis Aethiopasque alios, nulli penetrabilis astro, lucus iners, subterque cavis graue rupibus antrum it uacuum in montem, qua desidis atria Somni securumque larem segnis Natura locavit. limen opaca Quies et pigra Oblivio servant et numquam vigili torpens Ignauia vultu. Otia vestibulo pressisque Silentia pennis muta sedent abiguntque truces a culmine ventos et ramos errare vetant et murmura demunt alitibus. non hic pelagi, licet omnia clament litora, non ullus caeli fragor; ipse profundis vallibus effugiens speluncae proximus amnis saxa inter scopulosque tacet: nigrantia circum armenta omne solo recubat pecus, et nova marcent germina, terrarumque inclinat spiritus herbas. mille intus simulacra dei caelaverat ardens Mulciber: hic haeret lateri redimita Voluptas, hic comes in requiem vergens Labor, est ubi Baccho, est ubi Martigenae socium puluinar Amori obtinet. interius tecti in penetralibus altis et cum Morte jacet, nullique ea tristis imago cernitur. hae species. ipse autem umentia subter antra soporifero stipatos flore tapetas incubat; exhalant vestes et corpore pigro strata calent, supraque torum niger efflat anhelo ore vapor; manus haec fusos a tempore laevo sustentat crines, haec cornu oblita remisit.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 84 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Love, Death, God, Pleasure

“If I get to Heaven, which I very much doubt, I will ask of God just one thing, and that is to send Shakespeare back down to earth, and make him sit a University of Madras examination in Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of watching him failing the exam.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Ancient and Modern : A Journey through the Twentieth Century, 1935-45 BBCTV

God, Pleasure, Universe

“Propaganda, [the White Paper] said, "is a work which is peculiarly liable to miscellaneous criticism, since most men are apt to consider themselves born propagandists and are only too willing to point out where the official department fails."”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), On Politics and Propaganda, p. 166

Men

“O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Indian Serenade

The Indian Serenade (1819), st. 3

Love, Kiss, Grass, Heart

“In September 1979, on Defence of Pakistan Day, there was a long article in the Pakistan Times on Bin Qasim as a strategist. The assessment was military, neutral, fair to the soldiers of both sides. It drew a rebuke from the chairman of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research.
“Employment of appropriate phraseology is necessary when one is projecting the image of a hero. Expressions such as ‘invader’ and ‘defenders,’ and ‘the Indian army’ fighting bravely but not being quick enough to ‘fall upon the withdrawing enemy’ loom large in the article. It is further marred by some imbalanced statements such as follows: ‘Had Raja Dahar defended the Indus heroically and stopped Qasim from crossing it, the history of this sub-continent might have been quite different.’ One fails to understand whether the writer is applauding the victory of the hero or lamenting the defeat of his rival?””

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Naipaul, V. S. (1981). Among the believers: An Islamic journey. New York: Knopf.

History, Understanding, Time, Victory

“Postumus was clever: he guessed that this would make Cato angry enough to forget himself. And Cato rose to the bait, shouting out with a string of old-fashioned curses that in the days of his ancestor, whose memory this stammering imp was insulting, woe betide any child who failed in reverence to his elders; for they dealt out discipline with a heavy hand in those days. Whereas in these degenerate times the leading men of Rome gave any ignorant oafish lout (this was for Postumus) or any feeble-minded decrepit-limbed little whippersnapper (this was for me) full permission—
Postumus interrupted with a warning smile: "So I was right. The degenerate Augustus insults the great Censor by employing you in his degenerate family. I suppose you have told the Lady Livia just how you feel about things?"”

Robert Graves book I, Claudius

Source: I, Claudius (1934), Ch. 5.

Men, Family, Smile, Feeling

“And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, what it remains to us to do. We need to restate our programme: Tone has stated it for us:
"To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."
I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish nationalism, all the teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. Ireland one and Ireland free—is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone pledged himself—and in this sacred place, by this graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge—we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest either by day or night until his work be accomplished, deeming it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight not in despondency but in great joy hoping for the victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or tittle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his blood.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard, Co. Kildare, 22 June 1913

People, Faith, Hope, Freedom

“When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course; where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honor; and where rape victims are treated as criminals; it doesn't take a genius to know that you're going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it. And that's something we've spectacularly failed to do in Europe. Indeed, we've encouraged it by fostering separatism and ghettoization in the guise of our old friend, Multiculturalism. And as a consequence, Islamic violence against women and girls is an ugly reality in Europe. And for anyone to use the law to try and suppress discussion of it is not enlightened or tolerant or liberal. It's shameful and stupid and cowardly and unforgivable.”

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

"The Criminal Truth" (28 January 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=IEkelAsmcf4 <br class="br">2011

Women, People, Stupidity, Law

“I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

On unilateral nuclear disarmament. (The Guardian, 15 September 1981).
1980s

Change, Fight

“It represents a conscious rejection of the failed experience of the entire boomer generation, one that exalted tackiness above beauty, and sexual freedom above the liturgy of courtship.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Saved by Swing" by Jeff Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, August 1998, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1998aug-00004,

Beauty, Freedom

“Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"The Bush League" (9 September 2003)
2000s

Time, Country

“Moral judgments may conflict with one another. Two conflicting moral judgments cannot both be right. This does not mean that the moral intuition itself is subject to error, but merely that we may fail to disentangle the intuition itself from irrelevances, or may unconsciously pretend to have an intuition when we actually have it not. The intuition itself is infallible; but we can never be sure that we have it, or that we have not confused it, or expressed it falsely in words. In the same way sense-experience is infallible, but we may unconsciously pretend to have it when we have, it not, and we may misdescribe it, and so on.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Philosophy and Living (1939)

Way, Error, Sense, Falseness

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

Quoted in Rothschild, Michael. Bionomics: Economy as Business Ecosystem. Washington, D.C.: BeardBooks, 1990, p. 115.

People

“It is natural for government and business leaders to want to make the best of a bad situation. For example, articles on Watergate postulated that we are now better off because the crisis demonstrated the strength of a democracy. Some contend that the Exxon Valdez oil spill had a good side in that there were many "lessons learned". THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I do not subscribe to the "I have to fail to learn and improve" theory. A set-back leading to "experience and growth" is one thing; total failure is another. Few corporations could sustain as much bad press as Exxon, not to mention the opportunity cost of billions of dollars that could have been applied more profitably elsewhere. An organization's most precious resources are its time, energy (individual and corporate) and capital. They should be directed toward increasing profit, providing better service and improving the organization's reputation. They should not be wasted on damage control. Yet we continue to hear stories of crisis situations that drain organizations of that valuable energy and focus.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 4-5

Democracy, Failure, Business, Nature

“At the same time, we will not continue to pour taxpayers' money into schools that do not teach and will not change. My plan will give every failing school a fair chance to improve, but there will be a deadline, a moment of truth when parents are given better options and their children are given a way out. There are some honest differences of opinion in Congress about what form these options should take. I have my own plan which would help children in persistently failing schools to go to another public, private or charter school. Others suggest different approaches, and I am willing to listen. But all reform must be based on a principle: Children and parents, who have had only bad choices need better choices. And it is my duty as President to help them. In sending my plan to Congress, I ask that we act before this summer, when schools begin planning for the next school year. I hope to have the support of Republicans and Democrats alike, and I hope to have your support, as well. Thank you for listening.”

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

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (January 2001)

Money, Children, Truth, School

“The US large-scale surveillance plan failed. It had to be abandoned in 2005. Checks afterwards showed that communications from the terrorists had been collected, but not looked at in time.”

William Binney former U.S. intelligence official and cryptoanalyst; whistleblower

Snooper's charter' will cost British lives, MPs are warned ' http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/snoopers-charter-will-cost-british-lives-mps-warned, published by The Guardian on 6th January 2016.

Communication, Time

“Surely that little pseudo-gothic church on Broadway, hidden amongst the skyscrapers, is symbolic of the age! On the whole face of the globe the civilization that has conquered it has failed to build a temple or a tomb.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter I
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Age

“Brook Taylor… in his Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (1715), sought to clarify the ideas of the calculus but limited himself to algebraic functions and algebraic differential equations. …Taylor's exposition, based on what we would call finite differences, failed to obtain many backers because it was arithmetical in nature when the British were trying to tie the calculus to geometry or to the physical notion of velocity.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 427

Idea, Nature

“New vandals will destroy what former vandals failed to abolish.”

Dejan Stojanovic book Circling: 1978-1987

”New Vandals,” p. 65
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Warden with No Keys”

“Made in Sheffield, and guaranteed never to fail! Good slicer this is, real good. You can cut a man in half with one of these if you get the stroke right.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Daniel Fletcher, describing his 1796 light cavalry sabre, p. 207
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Triumph (1997)

“If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue. The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 121.

Men, Hope, Understanding, Effort

“I did not share the enthusiasm of certain politicians for the National Front leader, it was because I had noticed, in the past, some strange contradictions between Mossadeq's declared ends and his actions. Officially he defended nationalist anti-colonialism and was the most intransigent patriot who declared that no concessions or advantages should be granted to foreign powers. He described his doctrine as a "negative balance" and in fact his greatest failing was that he was negative.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 52-53
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

Past

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Love, Pain, Hate, People

“Every now and then its good to step back a little. When we let go a little and remove ourselves from the drama, we can see more clearly. So often we are caught up in the stress we fail to see what triggers our worries. When we are still and put distance between our problems we often discover the solutions”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Problem

“I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence.”

Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919–2013) Soviet and Russian small arms designer

As quoted in "AK-47 Inventor Says Conscience Is Clear" by Joel Roberts at CBS News (6 July 2007) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ak-47-inventor-says-conscience-is-clear/

Sleep

“Trump obviously never meant to impose a wealth test on his administration, or he would have failed it himself. He is proof that a fortune isn’t necessarily an obstacle to being a champion of an agenda of populist reform.”

Rich Lowry (1968) American journalist

No, the Swamp Won't Be Drained (December 01, 2016)

Wealth

“It is also true that without flashes of the absolute, which are granted to only a few, humanity would proceed in the dark, indeed it would not exist, because it would not acknowledge itself to itself! And as far as I know the flash as never preceded by explanations or preambles, and only a very small mind.... could fail to understand that eternal aspiration absolute and that the work is the relative, that to create is already to circumscribe; that to comment is to circumscribe the circumscribed, is to subdivide the divided; is to reduce to minimum terms, is to annihilate.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Boccioni's quote, from his lecture, Rome, May 1911, Boccioni's lecture 'La Pittura Futurista', 1911; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 55
1911

Understanding

“With regard to the Iranians, we know that by not talking to Iran the U. S. did not improve the situation. Today Iran is a nuclear power - it doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet, but in 2001 it was not yet able to convert uranium or uranium gas, it didn’t have a single centrifuge. Now it’s stockpiling highly enriched uranium. So the current approach of not talking hasn’t worked. There’s no guarantee that if you talk you’ll succeed, but if you don’t talk you will fail.”

Dennis Ross (1948) American diplomat

“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

The Agnostic's Prayer from the novel Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969)

Way, Forgiveness

“People who avoid all criticism fail. It's destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

People

“The order of authority derives from God, as the Apostle says [ in Romans 13:1-7]. For this reason, the duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it. There are two ways in which the first may occur. Either because of a defect in the person, if he is unworthy; or because of some defect in the way itself by which power was acquired, if, for example, through violence, or simony or some other illegal method.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

God, Way, Personality

“People fail to achieve goals not because of lack of abilities, but because of lack of determination. (any ability can be learned).”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Chorninky Notes (January 2010 - )

People, Learning

“It can be argued that the lack of accountability about Iraq led Cameron on to committing many of the same blunders on a smaller scale in Libya in 2010. In Libya the UK spent thirteen times as much bombing the country as reconstructing it and the human chaos and bloody carnage of a failed state now moves like the tide across the Mediterranean.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Time, Country

“As stated in the book, the First Penguin award went to students who went out on a limb and failed! This came "from the notion that when penguins are about to jump into water that might contain predators, well, somebody's got to be the first penguin." So, even if there are failures, it brings experience. Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

Source: The Last Lecture (2008), Chapter 39: Be the First Penguin, p. 149

Books, Failure, Water

“I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

Patience

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2004-07-03 speech to Congress opposing House resolution celebrating 40th anniversary of Civil Rights Act, quoted in * Civil Rights Act
RonPaul.com
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/civil-rights-act/
2000s, 2001-2005

Color, Business, Country

“They die and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn't I? Sometimes they're driving home from their mistress's apartment and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Delores, can be an unhappy woman's best friend.”

Stephen King book Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne (1992)

Money, Home

“No single… If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2015

“The whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one's passions, or in self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this, but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the other religions).

One can understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not happened with Nietzsche´s books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into the theory of the Übermensch, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise: self-renunciation and love—virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty, sanctioning the idea of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they live.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

Love, Life, Men, People

“1920
The Times
London, Saturday, May 8, 1920.
“The Jewish peril.”
A disturbing pamphlet
Call for inquiry.
(From a correspondent.)
The Times has not as yet noticed this singular little book. Its diffusion is, however, increasing, and its reading is likely to perturb the thinking public. Never before have a race and a creed been accused of a more sinister conspiracy. We in this country, who live in good fellowship with numerous representatives of Jewry, may well ask that some authoritative criticism should deal with it., and either destroy the ugly “Semitic” body or assign their proper place to the insidious allegations of this kind of literature.
In spite of the urgency of impartial and exhaustive criticism, the pamphlet has been allowed, so far, to pass almost unchallenged. The Jewish Press announced, it is true, that the anti-semitism of the “Jewish Peril” was going to be exposed. But save for an unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ and for an almost equally unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of contribution to the ‘’Nation’’ of March 27, this exposure is yet to come. The article of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ is unsatisfactory, because it deals mainly with the personality of the author of the book in which the pamphlet is embodied, with Russian reactionary propaganda, and the Russian secret police. It does not touch the substance of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The purely Russian side of the book and its fervid “Orthodoxy.” Is not its most interesting feature. Its author-Professor S. Nilus-who was a minor official in the Department of Foreign Religions at Moscow, had, in all likelihood, opportunities of access to many archives and unpublished documents. On the other hand, the world-wide issue raised by the “Protocols” which he incorporated in his book and are now translated into English as “The Jewish Peril,” cannot fail not only to interest, but to preoccupy. What are the these of the “Protocols” with which, in the absence of public criticism, British readers have to grapple alone and unaided?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret, Books, World, Religion

“The cookie-cutter education system has failed both genius kids and special-needs children. Status quo stifles creativity.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Children, Education

“Being encouraged by… success, beyond expectation; I afterwards ventured on many others and scarce missed of any, that I undertook, for many years, during our civil Wars, and afterwards. But of late years, the French Methods of Cipher are grown so intricate beyond what it was wont to be, that I have failed of many; tho' I have master'd divers of them. Of such deciphered Letters, there be copies of divers remaining in the Archives of the Bodleyan Library in Oxford; and many more in my own Custody, and with the Secretaries of State.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

War, Success

“What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the results of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature, which on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

II. Progress and Entropy. p. 46
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

World, History, Communication, Nature

“In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system…The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Speech in Potsdam (13 October 1926), quoted in Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92-93.
1920s

History, Nature

“If the assembled company rags you for a failing, you can usually play up to it for comic effect: it's the failing they don't mention that you have to watch out for.”

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

Source: Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006), p. 190

“Americanization today is little more than an impulse, and its context, as popularly conceived, is both narrow and superficial. As French has been the language of diplomacy in the past, so English is to be the language of the reconstruction of the world. English is the language of 90,000,000 people living in America. The English language is a highway of loyalty; it is a medium of exchange; it is the open door to opportunity; it is a means of common defense. It is an implement of Americanization, but it is not necessarily Americanization. The American who thinks that America is united and safe when all men speak one language has only to look at Austria and to study the Jugo-Slav and Czecho-Slovak nationalistic movements. The imposition of a language is not the creation of nationalism. A common language is essential to a common understanding, and by all means let America open such a line of communication. The traffic that goes over this line is, however, the vital thing, and what that shall be and how it is to be prepared are matters to which but little thought has been given. Even those who urge the abolition of all other languages are indefinite about the restriction. Shall a man after he has learned English be allowed to get news in a foreign language paper and to worship in his native tongue; and if not, what becomes of the liberty which he is urged to learn English in order to appreciate? Are foreign languages to be encouraged as an expression of culture and to be denied as a means of economic and political expression? The English language campaigns in America have failed because they have not secured the support of the foreign-born. Men must have reasons for learning new languages, and America has never presented the case conclusively or satisfactorily. Furthermore, wherever the case has been presented, it has not been done with the proper facilities and under favorable conditions. The working day must not be so long that men cannot study.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men, People, World, Communication

“We are always obliged to think about the larger system. If we fail to do this, then our thinking becomes fallacious.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 27

Thinking

“The revolution has failed. Fascism has temporarily succeeded under the guise of reform. The only way we can destroy it is to refuse to compromise with the enemy state and its ruling class.”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 120

Way

“Divorces led to bodies of men (called legislatures) protecting women collectively as other men (called husbands) failed to protect women individually.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 238.

Women, Men

“Terrorism conjoins with neoliberalism to heighten a sense of insecurity and even a sense that the nation state now fails to provide for the security of the people. That said, the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack remain very low in the order of possible dangers that a human being can face. A person is more likely to be killed by their own furniture than by a terrorist. So, we have fear and panic about improbable yet dramatic and unpredictable dangers, which is how terrorism works. It is supposed to make you frightened in a routine way by non-routine events, and it’s effective in that sense.”

Wendy Brown (1955) American political theorist

Neoliberalism Has Eviscerated the Fabric of Social Life http://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/neoliberalism-has-eviscerated-the-fabric-of-social-life/, interview with Wendy Brown by Adam Ostolski, Green European Journal, March 2017

People, Fear, Way, Sense

“In Uttar Pradesh, caste politics is deep-rooted. But there is a negative side of it. When something is deep-rooted, it takes time for people to realise its ill effects, that’s natural. When a political culture takes shape, it takes time for it to fail.”

Amit Shah (1964) Indian politician

"Exclusive Amit Shah Interview: People are waiting to vote for Modi," 2013, "Sunday Interview: We had 450 video raths with GPS and I’d get feedback on my mobile, says Amit Shah", 2014

People, Nature, Time

“The Prime Minister said…that where I failed, for all my brilliant gifts, was in the faculty of judging. I will gladly submit my judgement about foreign affairs and national defence during the last five years, in comparison with his own. … In February the Prime Minister said the tension in Europe had greatly relaxed. A few weeks later Nazi Germany seized Austria. I predicted that he would repeat this statement as soon as the shock of the rape of Austria passed away. He did so in the very same words at the end of July. By the middle of August Germany was mobilising…which…ended in the complete destruction and absorption of the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. … in November…he told us that Europe was settling down to a more peaceful state. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the Nazi atrocities on the Jewish population resounded throughout the civilised world.”

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

Speech in Chingford (9 December 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 1025
The 1930s

World, Peace

“Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,
Slipped from my hold—thus plenty comes and goes.
One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand
(Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"The World Well Lost".

Housing, Wealth

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 54
Collected Poems (1993)

Love, God

“A nation that fails to take pride in its past achievements or to take inspiration therefrom, can never build up the present or plan for the future. A weak nation can never attain greatness.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Past, Future

“A genuine taradiddle of the gross and palpable kind never fails for want of vouchers. Hundreds know it to be true—hundreds more were all but eye-witnesses of the fact related—some actually were; all can attest it on their personal responsibility. Upon that point everybody has a reputation for veracity to stake—though the same stake had been forfeited fifty times; and everybody can contribute to the original story an unquestionable incident of his own coinage "to make assurance doubly sure." So it goes round, until the first projector hardly recognizes his own lie; and ends by believing ten times more absurdity than he had palmed upon others.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That what Everybody Says must be True".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Lie, Time, Personality