Quotes about figure
page 8

Philo photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“At least the state figure should have a head.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

In response to Hillary Clinton's comment that Putin has 'no soul'. http://ria.ru/politics/20080507/106744531.html
2006- 2010

Perry Anderson photo
Stephen Colbert photo

“I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)

Kate Beckinsale photo
Shaun White photo

“It was so gnarly, dude, and I'd been on his show a couple times, so I basically figured we were homies. I yelled over to him, and I was like, 'Yo, Reg, what up?' And then get this: He called me the Red Onion! Dude, it was so epic. It was totally rad.”

Shaun White (1986) American snowboarder and skateboarder

Saslow, Eli (2006). "For Fun, White Is on Board" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901248.html Washington Post (accessed July 17, 2006).
On sitting next to Regis Philbin at a Knicks game.

Gerald Durrell photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Amartya Sen photo
Marc Chagall photo
Donald J. Trump photo
George Eliot photo
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan photo

“The disciples surrounded with cheap marvels and wonders the lonely figure of that serene Soul, simple and austere in his yellow robes, walking with bared feet and bowed head towards Benares.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

His views on why the role of Buddhism diminished in India
Eminent Indians (1947)

Mitt Romney photo

“So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn't get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church's pension fund to invest, but I didn't. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we'd ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
[2012-08-30, gopconvention2012, Mitt Romney: Introduction (video), YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cGyPwt5UI]
2012

Tom McCarthy (writer) photo
Niall Ferguson photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Francis Crick photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
Jane Roberts photo
Francis Bacon photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Robert Solow photo
Pat Conroy photo
Aristide Maillol photo

“A [figure] interests me when I can bring architecture out of it.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

as quoted in ’A sculpture of interior Solitude’, by Angelo Carnafa, Associated University Presse, 1999, p. 167

Calvin Coolidge photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Colin Wilson photo
Tom Clancy photo
Claudette Colbert photo

“It took me years to figure out that you don't fall into a tub of butter, you jump for it.”

Claudette Colbert (1903–1996) French-American actress

Unknown

Marino Marini photo
African Spir photo

“Place (or put) a spider on top of a mountain, it will only try to catch flies; alas, they are many those who, in the figurative meaning, have spider's eyes.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 52.

“A good night for the fireplace to be
crackling with flames - or so he figured,
Crumpling the papers he could only see
As testimonials to long plateaus of emptiness.”

Weldon Kees (1914–1955) American artist

The Heat in the Room (Jarkko Laine: Amerikan Cowboy. Helsinki: Otava, 1981. ISBN 951-1-06597-1

Tim Cook photo
Davey Havok photo
Maurice Denis photo

“Think of late paintings where Christ is the central figure... Remember the large mosaics of Rome. Reconcile the employment of large-scale decorative means and the direct emotions of nature.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote, March 1895, from Denis' Journal; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [23]
1890 - 1920

Kin Hubbard photo
Michael T. Flynn photo
Chris Matthews photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
William Shatner photo

“They said I was this William Shatner character, and I figured I had to be it, pompous, takes himself seriously, hardheaded. So I played it. But I didn’t see it. That character doesn’t seem like me to me. I know the real William Shatner.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

"The Many Iterations of William Shatner" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05Shatner-t.html?_r=0 Pat Jordan, Sept. 3, New York Times, 2010

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“By involving all men in all men, by the electric extension of their own nervous systems, the new technology turns the figure of the primitive society into a universal ground that buries all previous figures.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 25

Jesper Kyd photo
Cesar Chavez photo
Andy Warhol photo
David Gerrold photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Raymond Carver photo

“At that second exhibition I had to peer into them and look through the grayed color and wonder what it would be like not gray and then wonder what the forms would be like not crabbed by the figures and trees.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1974), as quoted in: Joseph J. Rishel et al. (2009) Cézanne and beyond. p. 94: Talking about the work of Cezanne.
1970s

John Updike photo

“Depersonalization is a concept difficult to delineate. It can be regarded as a symptom or as a loosely associated group of symptoms that occurs in psychiatric patients. It can be induced experimentally and also occurs spontaneously in normal subjects. A major obstacle to clearer definition of this concept lies in the fact that it refers to exceedingly private events in the individual's experience. These prove very difficult to describe by a language geared to the description of public (consensually validated) events or private events, such as pain, that occur usually in clearly defined social settings. When it comes to describing and conveying something as ineffable as depersonalization or derealization, the subject resorts to metaphors, "as if" expressions, and figures of speech. The result is semantic confusion. Different authors mean different things when they use the term depersonalization.
The concept of depersonalization merges by imperceptible degrees with the concept derealization, the concept of altered body image and self, deja vu, jamais vu, altered time and space perception and so on - the whole gamut of phenomenological description of the experiences of mental patients. Therefore, it is rather difficult to evaluate and to review objectively the psychiatric literature on the phenomena of depersonalization.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Depersonalization, (1970), p. 171

Philip K. Dick photo

“If it hurt me to have to give up a painting I figured it had to hurt them to write the check. That's how I came up with the price for my work.”

Keariene Muizz (1977) American artist

Associated Press (2008); from an interview conducted by John Rogers.

Charles Dickens photo

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Mircea Eliade photo
Joan Robinson photo
Ramachandra Guha photo
Viktor Orbán photo
George Wallace photo
Phillis Wheatley photo

“When first thy pencil did these beaties give
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

To A young African painter from Poems on Various Subjects kindle ebook ASIN B0083ZJ7SU

Mariano Rajoy photo

“A historical figure gives up leaving an unpayable debt.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

2 June, 2014, after the announcement of the abdication of King Juan Carlos I.
As President, 2014
Source: El Confidencial http://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2014-06-02/rajoy-renuncia-una-figura-historica-que-deja-una-impagable-deuda_139969/

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Every innovation scraps its immediate predecessor and retrieves still older figures – it causes floods of antiques or nostalgic art forms and stimulates the search for museum pieces.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, The argument: causality in the electric world (1973)

Orson Scott Card photo
Edward Said photo
Morrissey photo

“I could never really make the connection between Christian and Catholic. I always imagined that Christ would look down upon the Catholic church and totally disassociate himself from it. I went to severe schools, working class schools, where they would almost chop your fingers off for your own good, and if you missed church on Sunday and went to school on a Monday and they quizzed you on it, you'd be sent to the gallows. It was like 'Brush you teeth NOW or you will DIE IN HELL and you will ROT and all these SNAKES will EAT you'. And I remember all these religious figures, statues, which used to petrify every living child. All these snakes trodden underfoot and blood everywhere. I thought it was so morbid. I mean the very idea of just going to church anyway is really quite absurd. I always felt that it was really like the police, certainly in this country at any rate, just there to keep the working classes humble and in their place. Because of course nobody else but the working class pays any attention to it. I really feel quite sick when I see the Pope giving long, overblown, inflated lectures on nuclear weapons and then having tea with Margaret Thatcher. To me it's total hypocrisy. And when I hear the Pope completely condemning working class women for having abortions and condemning nobody else… to me the whole thing is entirely class ridden, it's just really to keep the working classes in perpetual fear and feeling total guilt.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "All men have secrets and these are Morrissey’s", interview by Neil McCormick,Hot Press (4 May 1984)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Anita Dunn photo

“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers - Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?". You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices, they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, "How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?" And Mao Zedong said, you know, "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine." And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other peoples choices and paths. Ok? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war, you lay out your own path, you figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definition define how good you are internally, you fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.”

Anita Dunn (1958) American political strategist

Speech at the Washington National Cathedral for St. Andrews Episcopal High School's (of Bethesda Maryland) graduation on June 5, 2009. It was broadcast on the Glenn Beck Show, Oct 15, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi1zg2NOCn8 http://www.saes.org/academics/lower_school/newsletter.aspx?StartDate=6/2/2009

Linda McCartney photo
Phillip Guston photo
Marco Rubio photo

“And the last point I would make about it is, the billionaires and millionaires that are going to be impacted by higher rates, they can afford to hire the best lawyers, lobbyists and accountants in America to figure out how not to pay those higher rates.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

The Atlantic Washington Ideas Forum, , quoted in * 2012-11-15
2013-02-16
Marco Rubio On Tax Hikes For The Rich: Why Bother?
Elise
Foley
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/marco-rubio-tax-hikes_n_2136829.html
2010s, 2012

Roberto Clemente photo

“At the beginning of the season he told me he wanted more homers and more runs batted in. He even named the figures: 25 homers and 115 RBIs. I could have hit more homers before if I wanted to, but I never cared about hitting them. I think a.350 batting average does the same good for a team as 25 homers and 100 runs batted in. But of course, if Walker wants more homers, it's okay with me.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Voted Most Valuable In National League" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kRQhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GIwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7374%2C2380506&dq=beginning-sea-son-told-wanted by the Associated Press, in The Sarasota Journal (Wednesday, November 16, 1966), p. 20
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

Marshall McLuhan photo

“While Poe and the Symbolists were exploring the irrational in literature, Freud had begun to explore the resonant figure/ground double-plot of the conscious and unconscious.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 52

Thomas Little Heath photo
Tim Allen photo

“Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.”

Tim Allen (1953) American actor, voiceover artist and comedian

As quoted in Land Your Dream Job : High-Performance Techniques to Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Get Ahead (2007) by John Middleton, Ken Langdon, and Nikki Cartwright

Tejinder Virdee photo
Narendra Modi photo

“In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an ‘economist’ prime minister and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister. We all knew that the economy was in the doldrums but since we were not in government, we naturally did not have the complete details of the state of the economy. But, what we saw when we formed the government left us shocked! The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First)… Rajneeti, or playing politics on the state of the economy in 2014, would have been extremely simple as well as politically advantageous for us. We had just won a historic election, so obviously the frenzy was at a different level. The Congress Party and their allies were in big trouble. Even for the media, it would have made news for months on end. On the other hand, there was Rashtraneeti, where more than politics and one-upmanship, reform was needed. Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first. We did not want to push the issues under the carpet, but we were more interested in addressing the issue. We focused on reforming, strengthening and transforming the Indian economy. The details about the decay in the Indian economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over. In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment and pessimism.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi, Swarajya Interviews Prime Minister Modi, Interview, R Jagannathan- Jul 02, 2018 https://swarajyamag.com/economy/swarajya-interviews-prime-minister-modi-the-state-of-indian-economy
2018

Newton Lee photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
Karen Armstrong photo
John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell photo
Jimmy Kimmel photo
Jerry Siegel photo
James K. Morrow photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Karl Wolff photo