Quotes about fall
page 19

“The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Saturday Pioneer (20 December 1890)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

Love, War, Age, Education

“If he suddenly falls in love with someone else, a husband may not start wanting a divorce; but if he suddenly makes a lot of money, he usually will.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love, Money

“He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

L'imitazione del male supera sempre l'esempio; comme per il contrario, l'imitazione del bene è sempre inferiore.
Storia d' Italia (1537-1540)

Evil

“Socioeconomic equality and legal equality both fall short of the radicalism of Lockean equality. For neither of those forms of equality calls into question the authority of those who administer the legal system. … Both forms of equality call upon that power structure to do certain things; but in so doing, they both assume, and indeed require, an inequality in authority between those who administer the legal framework and everybody else.”

Roderick Long (1964) American philosopher

"Equality: the Unknown Ideal" (2001)

Question

“It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 162

Law, Nature

“Tell me, George, if you had it to do all over, would you fall in love with yourself again?”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

Oscar Levant, as recounted by Levant in A Smattering of Ignorance (1940); quoted in "Books and Things" by Lewis Gannett, in The New York Herald Tribune (January 13, 1940), p. 11

Love

“If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)

Love, Wedding

“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man... All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied... No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

(76-77) [ellipsis added]
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love, Life, God, School

“My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

transcript of Örn's speech to the Laborers
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature
Essays (1625)

Angels, Knowledge

“Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

John Fletcher The Honest Man's Fortune

Epilogue. Compare: "Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2, memb. 1, subsect. 2.
The Honest Man's Fortune, (1613; published 1647)

Fate, Angels, Soul, Star

“The principles of strategy are written down here in terms of single combat, but you must think broadly so that you attain an understanding for ten-thousand-a-side battles.
Strategy is different from other things in that if you mistake the Way even a little you will become bewildered and fall into bad ways.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“More stars fall from the loosened sky.”
Pluraque laxato ceciderunt sidera caelo.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 145

Star

“The hardest thing that enny man kan do iz tew fall down on the ice when it iz wet, and get up and praze the Lord.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“The rain
Never falls upwards.
When the wound
Stops hurting
What hurts is
The scar.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Poems Belonging to a Reader for Those who Live in Cities" [Zum Lesebuch für Städtebewohner gehörige Gedichte] (1926-1927), poem 10, trans. Frank Jones in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 148
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Hurt

““The media have gone berserk.”
“The media always go berserk. A kid falls off a bike in Montana, they’re all over it. Until something else happens.””

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 32 (p. 292)

“The Watchman falls "into" the trap of looking. The "spy" is a different person.... The spy must be ready to "move", must be aware of his entrances and exits. The watchman leaves his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember & must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs himself to be overlooked. The watchman "serves" as a warning. Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named SPY, will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe the watchman. If the spy is a foreign object, why is the eye not irritated? Is he invisible? When the spy irritates, we try to remove him. "Not spying, just looking"”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Watchman. Somewhere here, there is the question of "seeing clearly". Seeing what? According to what?
Book A (sketchbook), c 1965: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 60
1960s

Question, Painting, Personality

“Could what's coming be worse than the Roman persecution, Spanish inquisition, and the purges under Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Castro, Saddam Hussein and all others who have killed Christians throughout history COMBINED? Will THAT make many fall away? Jesus warned us it would come. He wants us to endure.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 131

History

“Ultimately, in its collapse, Laos was important because it proved the validity of the so-called domino theory, which preached that communism--once victorious in South Vietnam--would metastasize throughout the region. Laos, like Cambodia, proved the domino theorists correct. On August 23, 1975, just four months after Saigon's fall, communist Pathet Lao (meaning "Land of Lao") guerrillas entered the Laotian capital of Vientiane and seized control of the nation. It was an event that, while clearly destructive to American interests in Asia, served as something of a wake-up call to those American isolationists who had downplayed the regional threat of communism. It also ushered in a horrid era for this nation's 4.8 million people.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Let's Not Forget Laos," The World and I, September 1995, by Michael Johns: The 'Domino Theory' Proved Right

People, Communication, Victory

“Its berries are red as a maiden's lip,
Its leaves are of changeless green;
And any thing changeless now, I wis,
Is somewhat rare to be seen.
The holly, which fall and frost has borne,
The holly's the wreath for a Christmas morn.”

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

(1st January 1831) Christmas Carol
The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Christmas

“The snow fell solemnly, enlarging the silence; it came straight down from heaven, bringing an inexplicable mystery. Now and again a flake or two would alight on the windowpane, and those flakes were like little stars filled with light; other snowflakes would fall on the windowsill, slowly covering the crumbs that had been put out for the birds. I would ask: "Grandmama, would you tell me some things about heaven too?" And Grandmother would say: "Why do you say 'too'?"”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

"Because the snow comes from there, and it seems to be telling me that everything in heaven is white."
Les Tilleuls, p. 21
My Early Years (1968)

Star, Bird, Light, Silence

“The aggregation of the spiritual life from the practical life is a curse that falls impartially upon both sides of our existence. A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Faith for Living (1940)

Life

“I am running (for president) because I think the world is falling apart.”

Lindsey Graham (1955) United States Senator from South Carolina

As quoted in "Lindsey Graham announcing at CBS “This Morning” interview his presidential bid" https://www.yahoo.com/politics/lindsey-graham-i-am-running-because-the-world-is-119274762516.html (18 May 2015), by Dylan Stableford, "YAHOO Politics" <br class="br">2010s

World, Thinking

“The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence — and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.”

Carl David Anderson (1905–1991) American scientist

As quoted in Carl Anderson. Some notes about his life and work at Caltech. The first of a series of biographical sketches of Caltech faculty members. Engineering and Science, Vol. 15:1 (October 1951) http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:15.1.0

Study

“I don't celebrate Halloween because of what it means. Because it is a Satanic holiday, it is a pagan holiday, and while people are going around getting free candy, people are falling victims to human sacrifices and things like that. That's the reality of what's going on on Halloween.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

1999-10-29
Television series
Politically Incorrect
ABC
2010-09-20
Profile: Christine O'Donnell, Delaware Senate candidate
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11378369
2010-10-20
TV appearances

People, Reality, Holiday

“If the wind murmurs then they seem to hear
His voice; and when night falls, the shadows round
Seem the dark foldings of his sweeping robe.
At noon, when life sees only the clear sky,
Feels only the bright sun, the fated one
Whom Death hath called, upon the distance marks
The heavy shade so soon to shroud
All nature from their eyes.”

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

Translations, From the French

Life, Death, Fate, Feeling

“We tend today to exaggerate the effectiveness of persuasion as a means of inculcating opinion and shaping behavior. …Actually the fabulous effects ascribed to propaganda have no greater foundation in fact than the fall of the walls of Jericho ascribed to the blast of Joshua's trumpets.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 83
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

Behavior

“He [Chomsky] has now been impeached by his own standards, since scrutiny of the evidence does not bear him out on Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. It didn't bear him out on Cambodia either, though he was never a "Holocaust denier" or anything like it. And he has, I think, ceased to be of any use to young people who might pardonably doubt the official story. The position he took, comparing the attack on the World Trade Center to an admittedly criminal Clintonian strike on Sudan (and virtually concluding that the latter was worse!) showed the absolute exhaustion of the glib "double standards" school, as I point out extensively in Love, Poverty and War. But his decline and fall is a loss, and you miss the point by denying it.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29): On Noam Chomsky <br class="br">2000s, 2004

Love, War, People, World

“the streams buck like rams in a tent
whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed
shadows of the shepherds.
black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees.
thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys.
wings brush against flowers.
fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dada poetry lines from his poem 'Der Vogel Selbdritt', Jean / Hans Arp - first published in 1920; as quoted in Gesammelte Gedichte I (transl. Herbert Read), p. 41
1910-20s

Fools, Spring, Flowers, Tree

“You must make your choice whether to hold on to some thing which cannot save you, or let go, and fall into the hands of the Lord.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 53.

“If we do not depart from God, and disunite by that departure, and fall into disunion among ourselves, I am confident, we doing our duty and waiting upon the Lord, we shall find He will be as a wall of brass round about us till we have finished that work which he has for us to do.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech to his army officers (23 March 1649)

God, Confidence, Departure, Waiting

“The higher a statue is raised, the harder and more dangerous the impact when it falls.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#269
The Furrow (1986)

“If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. Besides, a reckless king will easily fall into the hands of his enemies. Hence the king shall ever be wakeful.”

Chanakya book Arthashastra

Book I : "Concerning Discipline" Chapter 19 "The Duties of a King"
Arthashastra

“The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some -- those who cannot leave on their own -- should be counted among the innocent victims. If the media were to adopt this "continuum," it would be informative to learn how many of the "civilian casualties" fall closer to the line of complicity and how many fall closer to the line of innocence. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

"'Civilian casualty'? That's a gray area", Los Angeles Times, 2006-07-22

Death, War, Learning

“Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Jotted (in German) on the margins of a letter to him (1933), p. 56
Unsourced variants: Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. / You can't blame gravity for falling in love.
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Love, People, Stupidity, love

“Man’s tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence.... It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam’s fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present—namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,’ and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.’ Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory’ of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.237 (John S. Whale: Christian Doctrine. 1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 52)

Life, Men, God, History

“Your system of producing wealth, factories, mines, cooperatives will fall apart, like everything else, under the attacks of the people, in the delirious, popular boulimia.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

101
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

People, Wealth

“Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone

World, Art, Science

“A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713), Line 21. Pope also uses the reference, "Like Cato, give his little Senate laws", in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), Prologue to Imitations of Horace.

Fate, Law, Country

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!’ And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Men, God, World, Communication

“Even as the light that shifts and plays upon a lake, when Cynthia looks forth from heaven or the bright wheel of Phoebus in mid course passes by, so doth he shed a gleam upon the waters; he heeds not the shadow of the Nymph or her hair or the sound of her as she rises to embrace him. Greedily casting her arms about him, as he calls, alack! too late for help and utters the name of his mighty friend, she draws him down; for her strength is aided by his falling weight.”
Stagna vaga sic luce micant ubi Cynthia caelo prospicit aut medii transit rota candida Phoebi, tale iubar diffundit aquis: nil umbra comaeque turbavitque sonus surgentis ad oscula nymphae. illa avidas iniecta manus heu sera cientem auxilia et magni referentem nomen amici detrahit, adiutae prono nam pondere vires.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 558–564

Light, Water, Help, Drawing

“Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you’re never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 100
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

Love, Marriage, Parent

“What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”

Bobby Robson (1933–2009) English association football player and manager

Source: " It's the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging": What does NUFC mean to you? http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sir-bobby-robson-quote-tell-6260751" at Evening Chronicle, November 1, 2013.

Love, People, Feeling, Boy

“Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don't know, and we don't really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Life, World

“In one respect, however, I agree that monetarism was wrong, namely, to the extent that it failed to recognize the need to allow inflation to occur to the extent that it was solely due to falling output or productivity—a case I have argued, along with the symmetrical one for letting prices fall as productivity improves, in my IEA pamphlet Less Than Zero.”

George Selgin (1957) economist

In Defense of Monetarism (2008)

“The League of Nations fell, not because its principles were wrong, but because they were not practised. A new world organization must be created. Its nucleus was in the United Nations, and its foundation stone the close cooperation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the United States, and the U. S. S. R. … They wanted an organization embracing small as well as great nations, but on the three, on account of their strength, the greatest responsibility for preserving the peace of the world must fall. A world organization to preserve peace must have power at its disposal. So long as there was a danger of wolves the sheep-dog must have strong teeth. It was time that the nations of Europe should settle down as good citizens in a world of States. In the British Commonwealth of Nations it was shown how freedom was compatible with unity. If peace was to be preserved there must be some cession of sovereignty, but membership of a large organization did not conflict with the reasonable claims of nations to live their own lives.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Caxton Hall, London (12 December 1944), quoted in The Times (13 December 1944), p. 2.
War Cabinet

World, Peace, Dogs, Freedom

“Unborn eternity does not die; existence is dying and falls asleep in the eternity beyond existence.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Eternity and Existence,” p. 31
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

“For war is never some cosmic accident descending upon a people with all the chance and inevitability of asteroids falling like fire out of the heavens, but only the will and work of man.”

David Zindell (1952) American writer

Source: The Wild (1995), p. 523

War, People, Chance

“As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 408.

Communication, Sleep

“It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Dead

“With many misgivings, I accepted the mission to Hayti. I distrusted my qualifications for the office; but coming to me as it did, unasked, unsought, and unexpected, and with the earnest wish of the President that I would accept it in the interest of the peace, welfare, and prosperity of Hayti, I felt I could not decline it. I shall leave a comfortable house and a healthy climate, and shall probably have to occupy trying positions; but I go forth hopefully… Hayti is but a child in national life, and though she may often stumble and fall, I predict that she will yet grow strong and bright.”

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

1880s, Letter to Bowditch (1889)

Life, Peace, Strong, Housing

“The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

"The Good Guys Finally Won" http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=37 (21 December 1998), concerning accusations against Bill Clinton

Justice, Law, Business

“One falls in love through fame.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Canzone 53, st. 8
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Love

“I can pass days
Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,—
The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,—
Each tree a natural harp,— each different leaf
A different note, blent in one vast thanks-giving.”

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

The Ancestress (Spoken by Jaromir)
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Music, Nature, Tree

“Listeners should rejoice right now, because there are believers all across your listening area that are praying now. And I would say that if you can't attend the rally, you can pray. And God calls us to fall on our faces and our knees and cry out to Him and confess our sins. And I would just ask your listeners to do that now. Cry out to a Holy God. He wants to hear us, He will hear us if we will confess our sins and cry out to Him. Our children are worth it and obedience to God demands it.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Prophetic Views Behind The News
KKMS 980-AM
Radio
2004-03-06, hosted by Jan Markell
2000s

God, Children, Cry

“The following anecdote is related of Sultan Shamsuddin Iltutmish. He was greatly enamoured of a Turkish slave girl in his harem, whom he had purchased, and sought her caresses, but was always unable to achieve his object. One day he was seated, having his head anointed with some perfumed oil by the hands of the same slave girl, when he felt some tears fall on his head. On looking up, he found that she was weeping. He inquired of her the cause. She replied, “Once I had a brother who had such a bald place on his head as you have, and it reminds me of him.” On making further inquiries it was found that the slave girl was his own sister. They had both been sold as slaves, in their early childhood, by their half-brothers; and thus had Almighty God saved him from committing a great sin. Badaoni states in his work, “I heard this story myself, from the emperor Akbar’s own lips, and the monarch stated that this anecdote had been orally traced to Sultan Ghiyasuddin Balban himself.””

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Minhaj, 506, 526n. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 12

God, Girl, Sister, Tear

“Globalization -- and I think we share this conviction -- is that globalization needs to be shaped politically. It needs to be given a human face. But we cannot allow to fall back into pre-globalization times. So this conclusion of trade agreements that go beyond the scope of mere tariff agreements, customs agreements, are most important.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

2016, Joint press conference of 17 November 2016

Thinking, Time

“Well I don't know why I came here tonight.
I got the feeling that something ain't right.
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs.
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.”

Gerry Rafferty (1947–2011) Scottish singer and songwriter

Stuck in the Middle with You, written with Joe Egan, from the Stealers Wheel album Stealers Wheel (1972).
Song lyrics, With Stealers Wheel

Feeling

“…I would suggest that the removal of the regime of Saddam Husain presents the US with a historic opportunity that is as large as anything that has happened in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the entry of British troops into Iraq in 1917. Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is rich enough and developed enough and has the human resources to become as great a force for democracy and economic reconstruction in the Arab and Muslim world as it has been a force for autocracy and destruction. But for the world to be able to see the challenge in this way, it is necessary to change the terms of the debate over this coming war with Iraq.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"A Model for Post-Saddam Iraq", American Enterprise Institute (October 3, 2002)

War, World, Way, Democracy

“There are those fallen who don’t get up so as not to fall again.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

“As an artist you have to fight and survive the wilderness to keep your creative freedom. Creativity is very fragile. It's like a leaf in the fall; it hangs and when it drops you don't know where it's drifting.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 91 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Freedom, Fight

“The Arithmetica… is deficient, sometimes pardonably, sometimes without excuse, in generalization. The book of Porismata, to which Diophantus sometimes refers, seems on the other hand to have been entirely devoted to the discussion of general properties of numbers. It is three times expressly quoted in the Arithmetica… Of all these propositions he says… 'we find it in the Porisms'; but he cites also a great many similar propositions without expressly referring to the Porisms. These latter citations fall into two classes, the first of which contains mere identities, such as the algebraical equivalents of the theorems in Euclid II…. The other class contains general propositions concerning the resolution of numbers into the sum of two, three or four squares…. It will be seen that all these propositions are of the general form which ought to have been but is not adopted in the Arithmetica. We are therefore led to the conclusion that the Porismata, like the pamphlet on Polygonal Numbers, was a synthetic and not an analytic treatise. It is open, however, to anyone to maintain the contrary, since no proof of any porism is now extant.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

Books, Quotes, Time

“Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees.”
Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur." Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur."
Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.
De Providentia (On Providence), 2.6; translation by John W. Basore
Moral Essays

Love, Men, God, Suffering

“I used to think that New York City
Fell from grace with God.
And innocence abroad
Waged a war for the underdog.
When the snow falls
And Central Park looks like a Christmas card,
I just looked beyond the bagman
And the madness that makes this city hard.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Song lyrics, Reg Strikes Back (1988)

God, War, Thinking, Christmas

“Aspiration, practiced as a familiar, respectful and loving conversation with God, is such an excellent method, that, by means of it, one soon arrives at the summit of all perfection, and falls in love with Love.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God
Variant: Aspiration, practiced as a familiar, respectful and loving conversation with God, is such an excellent method, that, by means of it, one soon arrives at the summit of all perfection, and falls in love with Love.

Love, God, Perfection

“Germany is the foundation for the mainstay for the whole of Europe, but if we become weak, the entire old world will fall apart.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. 1886, quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his court : Wilhelm II and the government of Germany

World

“To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Love, Age, Business, Change

“Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet… Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Things Have Changed (recorded 1999)

Love, Feeling

“What have the Aldermen, the Common-Council, or indeed all People of any Substance to do with the War, but to pay Taxes? The Hardships and Fatigues of War that are personally suffer'd, fall upon them that bear the Brunt of every Thing, the meanest Indigent Part of the Nation, the working slaving People.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark L, p. 120
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

War, People, Parting, Personality

“The problems of hunger and food, unemployment, a growing and crushing price rise in the commodities needed for one’s day-to-day subsistence have naturally found angry expressions, sometimes violent expression in many parts of the country. Corruption and falling standard in administration and public life have added to their dimension.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.83

Life, Hunger, Food, Nature

“Milk is a highly perishable commodity, which is in short supply in summer and in excess supply in winter. The market can not contract and expand according to supply, therefore, you need balancing facilities. And once you have these balancing facilities, which you enable to carry forward the winter production and capture the market, procurement falls into your laps. This was the objective and methodology of Operation Flood.”

Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) Indian founder of dairy-cooperative Amul

In p. 85
Quote, Our Leaders

Winter, Summer

“Antoine Meillet also noted that imperatives in European languages are typically the morphological root of the verb, and hypothesised that the imperative was the primitive form of a verb: “walk!” precedes “to walk” or “he walks”. This opens up the possibility of an alternative ontology, or pre-ontology, based on commandment rather than assertion, on “be!” rather than “is”. While philosophical or scientific statements would fall under the ordinary “is”-based ontology, fields like law, religion or magic would operate in the imperative mode: “let there be…””

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Giorgio Agamben, "What is a commandment?" http://bat020.com/2011/03/30/giorgio-agamben-what-is-a-commandment/ March 28, 2011

Religion, Law

“If God in his wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Wisdom, God, Lie, Water

“People say, "Dinosaurs on the Ark? Now, Hovind, they are kind of big aren't they?" The big ones were big, but the little ones were little. You see Noah was 600 years old when he built that big boat. He was probably smart enough to know that you do not have to bring the biggest dinosaurs. You bring two babies, be sure to bring a pink one and a blue one that will be important later, okay. There are all kinds of reasons for bringing babies on the ark. You bring babies because they are smaller. The biggest dinosaur egg is smaller than a football. You bring babies because they weigh less, they eat less, they sleep a lot more, and they are a lot tougher. Do you know that when kids fall they bounce and then they get up and keep running? Adults fall down and break or they lay there a while. Plus you bring babies because after the flood they will live longer to produce the offspring. And that's the whole reason that you are bringing them. Why on earth would you bring big elephants on the ark? That would be stupid, for multiple reasons. Why would you bring a big giraffe? Just bring babies of everything.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

People, Stupidity, Sleep, Football

“It occurred to me how very tired I sometimes feel as an outspoken feminist. … Trolls are trying to silence women, and I've installed a fiery declaration within myself to never give in, but it's incredibly hard, and gets harder as my platform as a writer grows. What didn’t occur to me initially is that West has spent years in the trenches fighting this endless, thankless fight, and maybe she needs a goddamn break. I had this revelation again, much more profoundly and emotionally, about my own mother while watching Greta Gerwig’s new film, Lady Bird. … Often, my mother and I clashed when she denied me freedom, but only because she had been harmed by the dangers she knew lay ahead for her daughter. I did so many risky, awful things, and then lied to her about them, because I never felt I could be honest with her. I should have known she wasn’t judging me. I should have known that she had done it all before, that even though she wouldn’t have used the word "feminist" to describe herself at the time, mostly she just didn’t want me to have to be so very tired. … Walking home from Lady Bird on the kind of night that New York fall fantasies are made of, I resisted the urge to call my mother, because I thought I might cry until the universe ripped apart at the seams. But then I called her anyway. I sobbed as I told her I had no idea how impossibly hard she had been trying.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Women, Feeling, Home, Idea

“I wanted something ephemeral, that would pass like a falling star and, most importantly, that would be impossible for museums to reabsorb. I didn't want it to be 'museumised'. The work had to pass by, make people dream and talk, and that would be all, the next day nothing would be left, everything would go back to the garbage bins.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Quote of Tinguely in a radio interview (1982), as cited in: 'Violand-Hobi', Heidi G. Jean Tinguely: Life and Work (NY: Prestel, 1995), p. 36 ; Talking about his Homage to New York; Cited in: John D. Powell. (2009, p. 31).
Quotes, 1980's

People, Dreams, Star

“Both parties to the dispute agree that one of the primary aims of the state should be to respect and preserve the liberty of its individual citizens. One side argues that the state can hope to redeem this pledge simply by ensuring that its citizens do not suffer any unjust or unnecessary interference in the pursuit of their chosen goals. But the other side maintains that this can never be sufficient, since it will always be necessary for the state to ensure at the same time that its citizens do not fall into a condition of avoidable dependence on the goodwill of others.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 119

Hope, Suffering, Time, Dependency

“I saw this dude, he was wearing a leather jacket, and at the same time he was eating a hamburger and drinking a glass of milk. I said to him "Dude, you're a cow. The metamorphosis is complete. Don't fall asleep or I'll tip you over."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Do You Believe in Gosh?

Drink, Time

“Macro-evolution would be defined as changing into a different kind of animal. There is no similarity between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Many evolutionists will use micro-evolution to try to prove that macro-evolution is true. We must guard ourselves not to fall for this false logic.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Change, Animals, Falseness

“The train of history makes sharp turns and those who are not skilled riders fall off the train.”

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

As quoted in Dorothy Healey, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (1993), p. 81.
Attributions
Variant: "When the train of history makes a sharp turn, said Lenin, the passengers who do not have a good grip on their seats are thrown off." Whittaker Chambers, The Revolt of the Intellectuals, TIME magazine, January 6, 1941.

History, Training

“My children, Allah's greetings of peace and supplications, His salams and salawats, resonate there in that water of divine knowledge. There you will find His representatives, His prophets, His olis, qutbs, auliya' and all those who know Him. Every second, every minute, they are praying and resonating with that beauty of Allah. Whoever falls into this water of divine knowledge will keep changing, until the taste of Allah is within him and he becomes the beauty of Allah.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

A Mystical Journey (1990)

Children, Peace, Beauty, Knowledge

“It is Fall. The leaves are being raked under the great elms darkening in the evening light. Slowly they become weighted with darkness. Across the river they are burning the grass on the Minnesota bluffs. Myriads of colored streamers reflect in the river blow..”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Source: 1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951, p. 230

Color, Light, Grass

“It is part of the task of linguistics to describe texts, and all texts, including those prose or verse, which fall within any definition of literature and are accessible to analysis by the existing methods of linguistics.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1950s–1960s, The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching, 1964, p. 1.

Literature, Parting

“Ultimately, all addictions are the same. What distinguishes one from the other is only that some are visible and socially unacceptable, whereas others fall into cultural blind spots and get applauded. The latter are the addictions society seems to need in order to keep the system and economy going.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 27–28
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

“…we easily fall into the habit of accepting compressed statements which save us from the trouble of thinking. Thus arises what I shall call ‘Potted Thinking’.”

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943) British philosopher

As quoted in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), p. 63

Thinking

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XXI Race Improvement

Marriage, Children, Health, World

“Those people you saw—the realborn—are born without a plan. They’re born because biology tells humans to make more humans; but it doesn’t consider what to do with them after that. Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they’re going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it. Sad. And inefficient.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 86)

Life, People, Sadness, Understanding

“If the British public falls for this, I think it would be stark, staring bonkers.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

"Tories to fight like fury, Party chairman says", The Times, 13 October 1964 (p. 12)
At a press conference on 12 October 1964 during the general election campaign, referring to the policies of the Labour Party.

Thinking

“As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, in the case of human beings this metaphysic is reversed: a person’s existence precedes his essence—he is a subject among objects. The danger, says Sartre, following Heidegger, is that he will “fall” into the world of objects, becoming ever after the prisoner of arbitrary strictures masquerading as universal principles.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 3 (p. 47)

World, Universe, Personality

“We are like soldiers who fall during the assault which leads to peace.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

The Divinisation of Our Activities, p. 85
The Divine Milieu (1960)

Peace

“People naturally aspire to the symbols and the ideals of our nation. Yet whether it is a political party, a church, a charity - any institution built by man can fail and can fall. The key thing is to aspire to be better. And, for our political institutions, to understand that self sacrifice - just like forgiveness - is at the centre of the order of things.”

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

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

People, Forgiveness, Understanding, Nature

“Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owned to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

World, Beauty, Nature

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Love, Life, People, Feeling

“We cannot traffic in our principles, we can make no compromise, no agreement with the ruling system. We must break with the ruling system and fight it to a finish. It must fall that socialism may arise, and we certainly cannot expect from the ruling class that it will give to itself and its domination the death blow.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Death, Fight

“Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal’s hands. Such is the only end to immortality.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 7 (p. 208)

God

“If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Practice (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 人们要想得到工作的胜利即得到预想的结果，一定要使自己的思想合于客观外界的规律性，如果不合，就会在实践中失败。人们经过失败之后，也就从失败取得教训，改正自己的思想使之适合于外界的规律性，人们就能变失败为胜利，所谓“失败者成功之母”，“吃一堑长一智”，就是这个道理。

World, Law, Idea, Failure