Quotes about few
page 39

“Voltaire once said: "Not to be occupied and not to exist are one and the same thing for a man." With those few words he captured the essence of a purpose in life: to work, to create, to excel, and to be concerned about the world and its affairs.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, World

“Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Children, Fear, School, Training

“Yours of yesterday is this instant come to hand & I have but a few minutes to answer it. I am sorry that your situation obliges you to listen to propositions of the nature you describe. My opinion is that a reservation of a right to withdraw if amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification, that it does not make N. York a member of the New Union, and consequently that she could not be received on that plan. Compacts must be reciprocal, this principle would not in such a case be preserved.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

1780s, Letter to Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Nature, Time

“And so it went on, day after day. This was not the first time that those who had at first smiled at him turned their backs on him and began to think of themselves isntead of thinking of him. Sometimes it was as if you understood people's souls; a few days later, you understood nothing. One day you were kissed, and it meant everything; next day, you were not kissed.... He consoled himself by looking at his exercise books with the poems approaching the thousand total soon, and more. Perhaps the world would some day understand that the heart existed. Some day.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

People, Books, World, Smile

“We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfillment?”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 376)

Life, Death, World

“Every one knows that the fine phrase "God geometrizes" is attributed to Plato, but few know where this famous passage is found, or the exact words in which it was first expressed. Those who, like the author, have spent hours and even days in the search of the exact statements, or the exact references, of similar famous passages, will not question the timeliness and usefulness of a book whose distinct purpose it is to bring together into a single volume exact quotations, with their exact references, bearing on one of the most time-honored, and even today the most active and most fruitful of all the sciences, the queen-mother of all the sciences, that is, mathematics.”

Robert Edouard Moritz (1868–1940) German mathematician

Robert Edouard Moritz. On Mathematics and Mathematicians https://archive.org/details/onmathematicsmat00mori, 1914, 1942, 1958; p. v; Preface, lead sentence

God, Books, Search, Mathematics

“Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?… The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Postscript to letter to critic, poet and translator Ivan Kashkin (19 August 1935); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life, Pleasure, Idea, Drink

“But that’s why I’m here. In this room, all of you, all of us, can do so much more together than any one person can do alone. And I hope that thought bolsters you as much as it does me. I hope the workshops you’ll go to over the next few days give you strength. Because I can only imagine that there are days—when you’ve worked longer hours than your boss realizes or cares about, just to help a kid you know can make it. Days where you feel completely alone. Undermined. Or hopeless.”

Ellen Page (1987) Canadian actress

Coming Out Speech (2014)

Hope, Feeling, Imagination, Help

“Well they have taken a few steps. They have arrested few persons and they are being tried by court in Pakistan but India feels that isn't enough. I think they will have to do more on this front.”

S. M. Krishna (1932) Indian politician

CNN interview, where he was questioned about Pakistan that if they have took any steps which could satisfy India, Feb 17, 2010. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/transcript-cnnibns-interview-with-sm-krishna/110305-3.html

Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“It was the normal working of the antisuccess mechanism. In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Geller Phenomenon (1976), p. 28

Hostility, People, Books, World

“Quite a few of us get pissed with liver crippling draughts of prison hooch, that last vestige of herbal medicine still available to cons.”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

As quoted in Exclusive: Dennis Nilsen: My Prison Life of Drink and Drugs http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/exclusive-dennis-nilsen-prison-life-555104, Mirror.co.uk (27 August, 2005)

“A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2

Life, Flowers, Fight

“In the first four centuries A. D. the world was full of Gnostics peddling special revelations, and, of course, Christ was only one of the Saviors: others were Baruch, Gamaliel, Tat (= the Egyptian god Toth), Seth (Egyptian god), Balaam, Ezechiel, Adam (whose books had just been discovered), Moses, Enoch, Marsanes, Nicotheus, Phosilampes, Mithra, Zoroaster, Zervan, et al., et al. In the early centuries of our era, the Near East was a Bedlam filled with the insane ravings of fakirs peddling their Saviors and their forged Gospels, and at this distance it is impossible to tell the difference between madmen, hallucinés who got visions of god from eating the sacred mushroom, Amanita muscaria, and shysters fleecing the yokels with mystic gabble. One cannot read much of the gibberish without feeling queasy and dizzy, but for a quick survey of the stuff that our holy men want to sweep under the rug, see Jean Doresse, Les livres secrets des Gnostiques d'Égypte, Paris, 1959, which surveys the books found at Chenoboskion a few years before. The one significant thing is that the peddlers of all forms of Gnosticism (including Christian cults before the Third Century) were almost all Jews. If you will look in your Scientific American for January 1973, pp. 80-87, you will note that the author has to admit that "it becomes increasingly evident that much of Gnosticism is probably of Jewish origin." He is naturally cautious, wary of offending God's Peculiar People. Although I admit that one cannot identify the race of some of the more prominent Salvation-hucksters, I think it significant that those whom one can identify racially always turn out to be Jews, and I would delete "much of" and "probably" in the author's statement.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men, God, People, Secret

“he took a few, the tribe of Abraham. He established a perfect despotism—with no schools, with no philosophy, with no art, with no music—nothing but the sacrifices of dumb beasts—nothing but the abject worship of a slave. Not a word upon geology, upon astronomy; nothing, even, upon the science of medicine. Thus God spent hours and hours with Moses upon the top of Sinai, giving directions for ascertaining the presence of leprosy and for preventing its spread, but it never occurred to Jehovah to tell Moses how it could be cured. He told them a few things about what they might eat—prohibiting among other things four-footed birds, and one thing upon the subject of cooking. From the thunders and lightnings of Sinai he proclaimed this vast and wonderful fact: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.””

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

Some Reasons Why (1881)

God, School, Art, Music

“Few things infuriate the ordinary citizen more than liberal attitudes to crime and criminals. And not only infuriate, but offend against justice, common sense, and fair play. The ordinary citizen is neither a brute nor a sadist; he is humane (as most liberals are not), he is compassionate when it is called for, leans over backwards to be fair, and is ready to give a second chance. But he knows the difference between right and wrong, and has an instinctive sense of the difference between right and mere legality. He believes that wrongdoing should be punished with appropriate degrees of severity; deep in his understanding lies a feeling that eye for eye and tooth for tooth is not without merit, and that the punishment should fit the crime.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Crime and Punishment. p. 142.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Justice, Feeling, Understanding, Sense

“Now let acknowledge the fact that to explain the meaning of painting is difficult. And when the form and the content are really new, there is not even a vocabulary with which to attempt to explain the new work. This is a problem for critics and a difficult problem. I think it is about time for the critics to face this problem, as well as the fact that there are a few new forms and ideas in modern painting, that these have validity, that they are here to stay and will be developed whether opposed or not… They should investigate the serious ideas underlying the painting which they malign.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Gottlieb's quote on the attacks of critics on abstract art, 1948
Quote from Gottlieb's Lecture, given at 'Forum: the Artist Speaks', museum of Modern Art, New York, May 5, 1948.
1940s

Art, Quotes, Idea, Problem

“Jews are one of the few ethnic groups where learning is equivalent to praising God, which brings results. One Jewish Nobel Prize winner, when asked where his passion for science came from, explained that when his friends were returning home, they were asked what the teacher was asking about today. Me, said the Nobel Prize winner, mother asked: What did you ask the teacher today? He was taught to ask, not to answer.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Borejza, Tomasz (January 2018): Trochę bakterii nie zaszkodzi https://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/troche-bakterii-zaszkodzi/. Przegląd (4/2018): pp. 54–55.

God, Home, Learning, Teachers

“He loved his kind, but sought the love of few,
And valued old opinions more than new.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Infatuation.

Love

“It would be wonderful if we could just tuck in a few loose ends and change a handful of details of present systems to have them work properly. Unfortunately, we have learned that the GUI concept has fundamental flaws that cannot be corrected by small changes. These flaws have to do with incompatibilities between the designs of both GUIs and command-line interfaces and the way our brains are wired. As we cannot change the way our minds work, we must change the interface design.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

Sourceforge.net article "THE Is Not An Editor... So What Is It?" (2003)

Way, Guy, Learning, Change

“Their gaze met for a few seconds. The exchange was as warm and friendly as a pair of automated range finders getting a mutual target lock.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

[Dan Abnett, First & Only, Games Workshop, 2000, ISBN 0671783750]

“Frankly, despite my distaste of the press, I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

Love

“The General Theory is at once both a book of economic theory and a font of economic prejudices—there are probably few academics in economics and political science who do not have an opinion of it, whether they have read it or not. It has reached the status—which it obtained almost immediately—where the fact of its existence is as important, if not more important, than what it actually says.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Books, Science, Reading

“I want, if I may, to address a few words to the Opposition [Labour Party]… Whatever may be said of this Parliament in years to come and whatever may be said of the right hon. Gentleman's party, I believe that full tribute will be given to him and to his friends. As I and those on these benches who take part in the daily work of the House so well know, the Labour party as a whole have helped to keep the flag of Parliamentary government flying in the world through the difficult periods through which we have passed. They were nearly wiped out at the polls. Coming back with 50 Members, with hardly a man among them with experience of government, many would have thrown their hands in. But from the first day the right hon. Gentleman led his party in this House, they have taken their part as His Majesty's Opposition—and none but those who have been through the mill in opposition know what the day-to-day work is—with no Civil Service behind them, they have equipped themselves for debate after debate and held their own and put their case. I want to say that partly because I think it is due, and partly because I know that they, as I do, stand in their heart of hearts for our Constitution and for our free Parliament, and that has been preserved in the world against all difficulties and against all dangers.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1935/may/22/defence-policy in the House of Commons (22 May 1935). This speech reduced the Labour leader George Lansbury to tears (Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 149.) 1935

World, Thinking, Help, Heart

“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman — I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 235
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Art

“Since the late 1960s macroeconomic debates in the United States have centered on the competing interpretations of the new classical and new Keynesian macroeconomics. The initial new classical model developed in the early 1970s by Robert E. Lucas, Jr., combined market-clearing, imperfect information, and rational expectations. After much testing, it was eventually rejected in the late 1970s for failing to explain why business cycles lasted on average four years while information delays lasted only a few weeks. It was soon replaced by a second new classical approach, the Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, which was also based on continuous market clearing and competitive equilibrium, but now generated the business cycle through serially correlated procyclical technology shocks.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Robert J. Gordon, Are Procyclical Productivity Fluctuations a Figment of Measurement Error? (1992).

Business

“We know that most of the wealth and income of the country is owned by a few large corporations, that these corporations in turn are owned by an infinitesimally small number of people and that the profits from the operation of these corporations go to a very small group with the result that the new opportunities for new enterprise, whether corporate or individual, are constantly being restricted. The committee therefore recommends the vigorous and vigilant enforcement of the antitrust laws, confident that an awakening business conscience will realize the necessity of complete cooperation in the elimination of monopolistic practice.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 166

People, Law, Confidence, Business

“(The processes are) doubly ruinous: they impoverish the earth by hastily removing, for the benefit of a few generations, the common resources which, once expended and dissipated, can never be restored; and second, in its technique, its habits, its processes, the paleotechnic period is equally inimical to the earth considered as a human habitat, by its destruction of the beauty of the landscape, its ruining of streams, its pollution of drinking water, its filling the air with a finely divided carboniferous deposit, which chokes both life and vegetation.”

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

"The Theory and Practice of Regionalism" in The Sociological Review, vol. 20, nos. 1 and 2, 1928.

Life, Beauty, Drink, Water

“In the last few days I have been thinking very intensively about my art and I believe that things are progressing for me. I even think that I'm beginning to have a liaison with the sun. Not with the sun that divides everything up and puts shadows in everywhere and plucks the image into a thousand pieces, but with the sun that broods and makes things gray and heavy and combines them all in this gray heaviness so that they become one. I'm thinking about all of that very much and it lives within me besides my great love. A time has come when I think that I shall again be able to say something [in her painting] one day; I am again devout and full of expectation..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her friend, the sculptress Clara Rilke-Westhoff, from Worpswede, 13 May 1901; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 201
1900 - 1905

Love, Art, Thinking, Time

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

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

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

Alcohol, Drink, Strong, Loss

“I've never gone on a diet to lose weight. I have taken a few things out of my diet, like pasta and white bread, which are not so necessary for the body. Right now I'm looking at apple strudel and brownies with whipped cream. Do I want to eat all that? Yes. I've been wanting it all day but I'm not going to do it. I'll have something else.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Interview by Kate Sullivan for Allure, April 2010

“Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn’t have a few pounds left.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

A soldier in Argos, speaking of the dead King Agamemnon, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: […].”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

XLIV
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Books, Exercises, Reading

“Two world wars have destroyed in a few years the material and spiritual capital accumulated by centuries of work. The nineteenth century had hoped to turn man, by virtue of education, into a reasoning being: a half-century of ferocity has proved that a cruel, primitive beast still resides in him.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

War, World, Education, Hope

“Having such a large family can be challenging. I won't deny that. But they're just great kids so you just deal with everything. There's very few things in my life that I regret. If I could change anything, maybe I wish I had learnt and done certain things earlier. I would have liked to have continued in school longer. I would have been interested in living in Africa and perhaps trained as a pediatrician.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

Reflections on her life, quoted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mia-farrow-my-faith-helps-me-through-hard-times-480665.html, 2006

Life, School, Family, Change

“I wonder how Feynman would feel if he had to be talking to not just a few nuts of this kind but e. g. to 2,500 similar nuts who would be moreover described by the media as good scientists, if not the best ones in the world.;-) Good for him that he managed to die in time.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/09/schellnhuber-west-has-exceeded-quotas.html The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

World, Feeling, Time

“Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

In response to a question during a congressional hearing about whether the U.S. should modify its Afghan strategy in response to six U.S. soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers between Feb. 23 and March 1. As quoted in Key commanders have their say on Afghanistan http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/key-commanders-have-their-say-on-afghanistan/2012/03/07/gIQAOukuxR_story.html (2012) by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

People

“The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the “meaning” of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 71

Secret, Behavior, Soul, Problem

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

William Foote Whyte book Street Corner Society

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

Men, Family, Home, Boy

“Why is it relatively easy for a few armament makers to persuade 'men to go to war, to give their lives; and quite impossible for the much larger group who would benefit by another form of general destruction to persuade men to destroy their property? It is broadly, of course, because the folly of burning down houses is plain; the folly of the policies which lead to war is not so plain.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Men, War, Housing

“[Footnote] The Phoenicians employed an alphabet of twenty-one consonants. They left no literature. You can't be literary without a few vowels.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

Literature

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

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

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

Cooking

“Today we are coming to realise that an epoch in history is over…For more than forty years that Iron Curtain remained in place. Few of us expected to see it lifted in our life-time. Yet with great suddenness the impossible has happened. Communism is broken, utterly broken…We do not see this new Soviet Union as an enemy, but as a country groping its way towards freedom. We no longer have to view the world through a prism of East-West relations. The Cold War is over.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Aspen Institute ("Shaping a New Global Community") (5 August 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108174 Third term as Prime Minister

Life, War, World, Way

“When people like Genghis Khan tried to speed up the rhythm and conquer and organize a continent in a few generations, they did not create a synthesis, they only courted disasters.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 4, Definition of Entopia, p. 52

People, Speed

“Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Hyperion

Hyperion, book iv. Chap. viii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Books, Light, Passion

“The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said, in future what are you going to tax when you will want more money? He also not merely assumed but stated that you could not depend upon any economy in armaments. I think that is not so. I think he will find that next year there will be substantial economy without interfering in the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy. The expenditure of the last few years has been very largely for the purpose of meeting what is recognised to be a temporary emergency. … It is very difficult for one nation to arrest this very terrible development. You cannot do it. You cannot when other nations are spending huge sums of money which are not merely weapons of defence, but are equally weapons of attack. I realise that, but the encouraging symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of, but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/jul/23/finance-bill on the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent to Serbia (23 July 1914); The "neighbour" mentioned is Germany. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Money, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Interview for French TV (1998)

“Today, I would like to provide the American people with an update on the White House transition and our policy plans for the first 100 days. Our transition team is working very smoothly, efficiently, and effectively. Truly great and talented men and women, patriots indeed are being brought in and many will soon be a part of our government, helping us to Make America Great Again. My agenda will be based on a simple core principle: putting America First. Whether it's producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here, in our great homeland: America – creating wealth and jobs for American workers. As part of this plan, I've asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs. It's about time. These include the following: On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country. Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores. On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs. That's what we want, that's what we've been waiting for. On regulation, I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated, it's so important. On national security, I will ask the Department of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America's vital infrastructure from cyber-attacks, and all other form of attacks. On immigration, I will direct the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker. On ethics reform, as part of our plan to Drain the Swamp, we will impose a five-year ban on executive officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the Administration – and a lifetime ban on executive officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. These are just a few of the steps we will take to reform Washington and rebuild our middle class. I will provide more updates in the coming days, as we work together to Make America Great Again for everyone.”

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

A Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xX_KaStFT8 (21 November 2016) 2010s, 2016, November

Women, Men, People, Disease

“Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood. For as long as anyone tries to hold on to the advantages of childhood—the freedom from responsibility, principally—while seeking to lay claim to the best parts of adulthood, such as independence, he is an adolescent. […] Eventually most people choose to be adults, or are forced into it. A very few retreat into childhood and never leave it again. A large number remain adolescents for life.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 2, Ch. 23
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

Life, People, Freedom, Parting

“What is the flesh and blood compounded of
But a few moments in the life of time?
This prowling of the cells, litigious love,
Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.”

Allen Tate (1899–1979) American poet, essayist and social commentator

I, from Collected Poems (1970).

Love, Life, Time

“The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

Source: More Is Different (1972), p. 393 of [More is different, Science, 177, 4047, 4 August 1972, 393–396, https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf]

Behavior, Understanding, Nature, Thinking

“It is wrongly held by many that to be happy one must have the admiration and respect of a great many people; but the esteem of one's own circle is essential. Stéphane Mallarmé, deeply beloved by a few disciples, was far happier than a celebrated man who knows that his reputation is questioned by those whom he admires. The monastery had brought peace to innumerable souls through its singleness of thought and purpose.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Happiness, People, Peace, Soul

“Greek historians who accompanied and followed Alexander tell us that before this adventurer led his short-lived raid against the republics on the Punjab and Sindh, only two other foreign invaders had had the courage to cast covetous eyes on India. Queen Semiramis of Babylonia in the 8th Century and Cyrus the Great of Iran in the 6th Century BC attacked India with vast armies but were defeated at the borders and made to flee with very few survivors. Plutarch leaves us in no doubt that Alexander himself had to beat a hasty retreat from the banks of the river Beas which, baffled by the brave resistance from a series of small republics, his armies refused to cross. And his successor in East Asia, Seleucus Nicator, was soon humbled and not only made to cede conquered Indian territory but also pay homage to the Indian emperor by a matrimonial alliance. But the wheel of time turns. The Hindus lost some of their vigour and vitality and vigilance, and neglected the art of warfare which was acquiring new dimensions in neighbouring lands. The Scythians, the Kushanas and the Hunas who stormed in after the disintegration of the Mauryan and the Gupta empires did succeed in conquering and ruling over large parts of northern and western India. This spell of foreign rule, however, was rather short-lived.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

Art, Courage, Time, Parting

“The best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

"The Office of the People in Art, Government and Religion" (1835), p. 421
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)

People, Personality

“Independence is the central concept of probability theory and few would believe today that understanding what it meant was ever a problem.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 3, The Search For The Meaning Of Independence, p. 48.

Understanding, Problem

“It seemed that fundamental physics was stuck. The particle physicists were smashing particles into each other with ever increasing force, trying to figure out how many quarks could dance on the head of a pin. The cosmologists were working with very few facts… on what seemed to me to be mainly religious grounds. And most of physics was still focused on pushing and pulling, on the material properties… rather than on its informational properties. …those that relate to order and disorder.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

Dance

“.. I have painted a few studies of the figure… I send you [Theo] two sketches. The painting of the figure appeals to me very much, but it must ripen - I must learn to know the technique better - that which is sometimes called "la cuisine de l'art". In the beginning I shall have to do much scraping, and often to begin anew, but I feel that I learned from it and that gives me a new fresh view on the things.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in a letter of Vincent to Theo, from The Hague (Netherlands), August 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 226), catalogus-page: Oil Paintings -Dutch Period: 'Scheveningen, Fisherwoman' 1880s, 1882

Feeling, Study, Learning, Painting

“It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

How ISIS is winning: The long reach of terror http://nypost.com/2015/02/05/how-isis-is-winning-the-long-reach-of-terror/, New York Post (February 5, 2015). New York Post

Life, World, Feeling, Thinking

“It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people.”

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

Heretics and Heresies (1874)

Men, God, People, Books

“[A] peculiar pattern has repeated itself every few weeks or so since Moon took office. It goes like this. First the Blue House is caught in some statement or act of disloyalty to the spirit of the alliance — like appointing an unrepentant former enforcer of North Korean copyrights to the second most powerful post in the government. (I don’t mean the prime minister.) South Korean conservatives then shout in chorus, “The Americans won’t stand for this!” Whereupon the White House rushes to say, in effect, “Oh yes we will!””

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

It seems to revel in making pro-American, security-minded South Koreans look foolish.
2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)

Housing

“If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Slate, 6 February 1997; as cited by Orrin Judd at brothersjuddblog http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/014839.html, 14 August 2004

God, Error

“Rao Mandalik saw that his fate was sealed. He fled at night to the fort and gave him a battle. When the warfare continued for some time provisions in the fort became scarce. He requested the Sultan in all humility to save his life. The Sultan agreed on condition of his accepting Islam. Rao Mandalik came down from the fort, surrendered the fort’s keys to the Sultan. The Sultan offered recitation of the word of Unity to him to repeat. He instantly recited it. The fort was conquered in the year 877, eight hundred and seventy-seven… In a few days, he populated a city which can be called Ahmedabad and named it Mustafabad. Rao Mandalik was given the title of Khan Jahan with a grant of jagir. He gave away as presents the gold idols brought from the temple of Rao Mandalik to all soldiers…”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Junagadh (Gujarat) Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp 47-52

Life, Fate, Time, Night

“Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement — they have only tried to be men and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to John Stuart Mill (12 September 1860), published in Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education (2003) edited by Lynn McDonald

Women, Men

“The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

Beauty, Perfection

“Perhaps you should have asked President Barack Obama if he had read the Constitution — undoubtedly you would agree we have witnessed a few unconstitutional actions from him. And while you were at it, Mr. Khan, perhaps you could have asked Hillary Clinton about handling classified information — since I’m quite sure your son, Captain Khan, had at a minimum a secret clearance.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Open letter to Khizr M. Khan (31 July 2016)

Secret, Reading

“Though it eats up my savings, I’ve just got to ride the biggest waves I can find in this world. The big waves may scare me, but with my new big gun boards, I fancy I can ride a few of them.”

Bob Pike (surfer) (1940–1999) Australian surfer

“With Your Whole Heart Jumping”

World

“'And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations' (Revelation 2:26). I see myself on a throne. Why should a throne be made of gold and velvet? Can it not as well be the few planks of a prisoner's bed? Men have given a certain kind of chair the name of "throne." I can give this name to any other object I please. From this my throne I decide about nations.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Men

“Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Juvenal, Satire X (1693), lines 1–2.

World

“The first act in the tragedy took place in September 1941, a few weeks after the Germans captured Kiev. One day they ordered all Jews to report at the Lukyanovka district and bring their valuables with them. Thousands of men, women, and children marched out to Lukyanovka, thinking they probably would be evacuated. Instead, Nazi SS troops led them to Babii Yar.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Blood at Babii Yar - Kiev's Atrocity Story (1943)

Women, Men, Children, Thinking

“There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Plutonian Fire" http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/243/ The Voice of the City (1908)

Men

“Not long ago only a few artistic periods were thought suitable for museums. Then they were joined by exhibitions of Coptic and early Christian art, Greek terracotta's and vases, Persian and Islamic art. But why is Indian, Chinese and Javanese art still classified under ethnology or anthropology? And why is the art of primitive peoples not considered art at all?”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

4.
1900 - 1920, On Primitive Art – Emil Nolde, 1912

People, Art

“And now we get down to two magic words that tell us how to accomplish just about anything we want to accomplish, two powerful words that can change any situation, two dynamic words that all too few people use. And what are these two amazing words? Do it!”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)

People, Change

“«From the Prestige come a few little glazes with the appearance of plasticine.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

5 June 2002, statement of the Prestige situation, a shipwreck on the coasts of Galicia that produced a massive oil spill. As Spokesman of the Government of Spain, 2002Á Source: Libertad Digital https://tv.libertaddigital.com/videos/2013-11-12/rajoy-en-2002-del-prestige-salen-unos-pequenos-hilitos-con-aspecto-de-plastilina-6040740.html

Appearance

“Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change."”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

People, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The day is not far distant on which Europeans – the few Europeans who will still remain – will suddenly become painfully aware of their lack of formal concepts. Then will these unhappy people bewail their wretched state and become seekers after form. They will not seek the new form in the past, in the outward world, or in the stylized appearances of nature, but they will build up their form from within themselves, in the light of their new knowledge that turned the old world fable into a world form, and the old world view into a world insight. [written at the front of World War 1.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

near Verdun, 1915]
Source: 1915 - 1916, 100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915), pp. 445-446

War, People, World, Nature

“The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians.
The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

War, Children, People, Disease

“I just want them to know that it happened for a reason.”
“Look, Tyler, some things just happen.” This close, the stillness of the ghost plane was overwhelming.
“But why did they die instead of us?” the boy asked, with an air of patiently reciting a well-rehearsed argument. His gaze was unblinking.
“Because they were exposed to a certain virus, and we weren’t. You can look for reasons, and god knows a few people here have driven themselves half-crazy trying, but Tyler, that’s all there is.”
“What if we were saved for a different reason?”
“Saved?” Clark was remembering why he didn’t talk to Tyler very often.
“Some people were saved. People like us.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like us’?”
“People who were good,” Tyler said.”People who weren’t weak.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

“Look, it’s not a question of having been bad or...the people in there, in the Air Gradia jet, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 44 (pp. 259-260)

God, People, Boy, Question

“Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it — don't forget that! We will do that because they are wrong and we are right, and I will prove it to you in just a few minutes.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address to the Democratic National Convention (15 July 1948) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/33_truman/psources/ps_convention48.html; this has often been paraphrased as: "They are wrong and we are right and I'm going to prove it to you!"

Forgetting

“Pāṇini's grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so Pāṇini by definition lived at the end of the Vedic period. He notes a few special rules, marked chandasi ("in the hymns") to account for forms in the Vedic scriptures that had fallen out of use in the spoken language of his time. These indicate that Vedic Sanskrit was already archaic, but still a comprehensible dialect.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

An Analytical Study of 'Sanskrit' and 'Panini' as Foundation of Speech Communication in India and the World

Time

“But as old tradition tells,
There are other, deeper, spells
In the lone and mystic wells —
Spells of strange wild augury
Few have had the heart to try.”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Heart

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

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

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

Problem

“…old inhabitants of the bureaucratic jungle like (Secretary) Hull knew that Cabinet boards and committees were paper tigers. They made a fine show in a parade but soon dissolved in the rain…After attend a few meetings (of this board), the Secretary deputized me to 'explain his absence' and substitute for him.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

“A cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still life. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Life, Beauty

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

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

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

Exercises, Game, Understanding, Parting

“At Yale, I initially continued research on the problems which I brought from Poland. Within a few months, I made five papers and then published them in the leading American and British magazines. They liked me, they came to the conclusion that Ptak is good and efficient. The head of the Department of Pathology was then Richard K. Gershon, would-be Nobel Prize winner, in the third generation, a Polish Jew. He died of lung cancer in 1983, at the age of fifty. We were close friends; I spent the last months of his life with him. Sometimes he joked to me – „You're too inteligent not to be Jewish.””

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

Life, Age, Problem

“When I look at the world, I sometimes feel that here in Germany one may still be in some sort of lifeboat that can hope to keep afloat when the rest of the world goes bust. German and Switzerland and perhaps Austria and Belgium have the few relatively stable currencies in the world.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

World, Hope, Feeling

“Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data (for who needs proof of anything so obvious). And few intellectual activities can be more salutary than attempts to find out whether these rocks of ages might crumble at the slightest tap of an informational hammer.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), p. 212

Truth, Age

“My drawings [c. 1945 - 1955] were almost always figures, many pseudo-self-portraits, which I often set against a kind of sun or focus, as if the whole universe radiated from my head, from a point between my eyes. My few oils make even clearer this vision of an axial character, centrally placed, facing the spectator, or turned around, with symmetrical postures, as one in prayer; they show the influence of [medieval] Catalan Romanesque art. In general, molecular rays from the periphery appear to form the central figure and converge in his head, or come out of it, and give life to his surroundings.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

as quoted in 'Tàpies: From Within', June/November 2013 - Presse Release text, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 9
1971 - 1980, Memòria Personal', 1977

Life, Art, Universe, Appearance

“Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

As quoted in Communications and History : Theories of Knowledge, Media and Civilization (1988) by Paul Heyer, p. 125

Truth, Way, Idea

“The long-form endings have pushed away the short-form endings completely in the oblique cases. In the last few years, there are attempts in Croatia to bring back again the short forms in the usage. This attempts are the part of the new sociolinguistic politics to bring back the archaic words and forms in the usage and to construct new words, neologisms, in place of customary words - all that with the aim to make the language in the west of the Serbo-Croatian language community as different as possible from the language in the east of the Serbo-Croatian language community. Leaders of the new language politics proclaim as incorrect what was customary, and as correct what was rare, archaic or even did not exist in the usage, and then they carry it out in practice through the control of the media, text-books etc. Such inversion of the criteria for what is correct and what is not correct in the language usage makes the native speakers unsure and frustrated.”

Snježana Kordić (1964) Croatian linguist

[Kordić, Snježana, w:Snježana Kordić, Snježana Kordić, Serbo-Croatian, Languages of the World/Materials 148, Munich & Newcastle, Lincom Europa, 1997, 18, 3-89586-161-8, 37959860]

Books, Communication, Parting

“The reaction time studies conducted during the first few years of Wundt’s laboratory constitute the first historical example of a coherent research program, explicitly directed toward psychological issues and involving a number of interlocking studies.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology, 1980, p. 106

Study, Time

“I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be: and hereunto I might alledge many reasons: first the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.”

George Gascoigne (1525–1577) English politician and poet

"Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English", from The Posies; pp. 457-8.

Thinking

“Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed; now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ;
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy,
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.”
Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim. Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis. Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum; Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis, Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna
Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim.
Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis.
Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum;
Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis,
Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis
Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.
Bk. 1, ch. 11; p. 101.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Fate, Happiness, Time, Sea