Quotes about finding
page 67

“[In response to "We have not been greeted as liberators."] "Well, I think we have by most Iraqis. I think the majority of Iraqis are thankful for the fact that the United States is there, that we came and we took down the Saddam Hussein government. And I think if you go in vast areas of the country, the Shia in the south, which are about 60 percent of the population, 20-plus percent in the north, in the Kurdish areas, and in some of the Sunni areas, you’ll find that, for the most part, a majority of Iraqis support what we did.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Meet The Press with Tim Russert. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/ (Sept. 14, 2003) 2000s, 2003

Support, Thinking, Parting, Country

“I was quite surprised to find out all the places that he knew
And so I asked the townfolk if his stories were true
They said— Old John was born here, he's lived here all his life
He's never had a woman, let alone a wife.
And very soon you'll find out as you check around
That no one named Corey's ever lived in this town
So I chided the old man 'bout the truth that I had heard
He smiled and said— Reality is only just a word.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Corey's Coming
Song lyrics, On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976)

Life, Truth, Smile, Reality

“Sixteen months before the attacks on America, our organisation [Signit Automation Research Center – Sarc] was running a new method of finding terrorist networks that worked on focusing on ‘smart collection’. Their plan was rejected in favour of a much more expensive plan to collect all communications from everyone.”

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

Communication

“After lengthy struggles I now find myself here [Dr Kohnstamm's sanatorium in Königstein, in Taunus] for a time to put my mind into some kind of order. It is a terribly difficult thing, of course, to be among strangers so much of the day. But perhaps I'll be able to see and create something new. For the time being, I would like more peace and absolute seclusion. Of course, I long more and more for my work and my studio. Theories may be all very well for keeping a spiritual balance, but they are grey and shadowy compared with work and life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter from Königstein, Taunus to Dr. Karl Hagemann, January 1916 (friend and patron in Leverkusen and collector of his art); as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos Kirchner suffered then a serious mental breakdown and was also afraid for being drafted once more in the German army, so back in the war 1916 - 1919

Life, Peace, Time

“An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals.”

Edward Hall Alderson (1787–1857) Lawyer and jurist

Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 365.

Imagination

“A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Said of Benito Mussolini while comparing him to Hildebrand (i. e. Pope Gregory VII), as quoted in "The Pearl of Great Price" by Robert Royal, his Introduction to "The Resurrection of Rome" by G. K. Chesterton in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (1990) by Vol. XXI, p. 274

“Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government … The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done.”

Peter Benenson (1921–2005) English human rights activist

Benenson (1961), in: The Observer, 28 May 1961.
Opening of article, which gave birth to Amnesty International.

World, Religion, Feeling, Sense

“Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence, is forever out of place.”

Nehemiah Adams (1806–1878) Massachusetts clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 268.

Wisdom, God, Justice, Law

“It would be an attempt to define the role, responsibility, and path of the performing musician. Our simple job is to bring beauty and inspiration to others and to do this through the most honest and humble search to find these qualities within our unique selves and then within our unique work; to painstakingly increase our knowledge and to refine and re-refine our results until we are certain that until some new enlightenment falls to us, we have done the best that we possibly can; and that as in any human endeavour which attempts to transcend its mortal bounds, we always know that we still do not know.”

Martin Berkofsky (1943–2013) American classical pianist

The Cristofori Foundation, cristofori.org http://www.cristofori.org

Beauty, Search, Knowledge

“Not one species of any creature which flourished before the tertiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now exists; and of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent additions to the previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate—a constant shifting as well as advance—is a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention. A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 152

Idea

“I find playing with form allows me to play with ideas.”

Anne Simpson (1956) Canadian poet

Loop Annual Award.com Interview (February 2010)

Idea

“The odors perceived by the ant seem to lead to a highly standardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus, such as an odor, for conveying information depends not only on the information conveyed by the stimulus itself but on the whole nervous constitution of the sender and receiver of the stimulus as well. Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage who cannot speak my language and whose language I cannot speak. Even without any code of sign language common to the two of us, I can learn a great deal from him. All I need to do is to be alert to those moments when he shows the signs of emotion or interest. I then cast my eyes around, perhaps paying special attention to the direction of his glance, and fix in my memory what I see or hear. It will not be long before I discover the things which seem important to him, not because he has communicated them to me by language, but because I myself have observed them. In other words, a signal without an intrinsic content may acquire meaning in his mind by what he observes at the time, and may acquire meaning in my mind by what I observed at the time. The ability that he has to pick out the moments of my special, active attention is in itself a language as varied in possibilities as the range of impressions that the two of us are able to encompass. Thus social animals may have an active, intelligent, flexible means of communication long before the development of language.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 157.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Intelligence, Communication, Learning, Memory

“On the whole, there is one thing that is very common; you can find it in each and in everyone, in yourself just as I find it in myself: sin and sins. There is one thing that is very rare: true sorrow over one’s sin, which no doubt is why it is made necessary every holy day to pray in the opening prayer in the church service “that we might learn to sorrow over our sins.””

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

Source: 1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850, P. 152

Learning

“In fact I am beginning to see a way to provide a place for my line. I am at last finding my way out of the dead-end of ornament where I found myself one day in 1907! With new strength from my naturalistic études [studies], I may dare to give form to enter my prime real of psychic improvisation again. Bound only very indirectly to an impression of nature, I may again dare to give form to what burdens the soul. To note experiences that can turn themselves into linear compositions even in the blackest night. Here a new creative possibility has long since been awaiting me, which only my frustration resulting from isolation interfered with in the past. Working in this way, my real personality will express itself, will be able to emancipate itself into the greatest freedom.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 840, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html 1903 - 1910

Way, Soul, Nature, Study

“Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To a Butterfly (Stay Near Me), st. 1 (1801).

Art, Time, Heart, Dead

“You must not believe anyone in the search for truth; you have to find out for yourself. But although you are on your own, help will come when it is really needed.”

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

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Truth, Search, Help

“Fame is but a fruit tree:
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.
Forgotten while you're here,
Remembered for a while.
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Fruit Tree
Song lyrics, Five Leaves Left (1969)

Men, Way, Tree, Time

“An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth. There are many… passages in the books of the prophets expressing the same idea.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Maimonides provides examples here from (Ps. cxliv. 4), (Job xxv. 6 & iv. 19) and (Isa. xl. 15).
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12

Truth, Books, Idea, Universe

“This conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a powerful incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call: There is the problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in mathematics there is no ignorabimus.”

David Hilbert Mathematical Problems

Mathematical Problems (1900)

Mathematics, Problem

“Tom Strong and the rest of the ABC bunch leave me cold for a lot of reasons. First—and I realize this is purely subjective, but what isn’t?—I find a smugness, a condescension that reads to me as nostalgia being done by someone who is not in the least bit nostalgic. Almost as if Moore sits down to write and flips his brain 180°, so he’s not really writing what he feels or what he likes, just the exact opposite of what he would usually write.

Also, there is the whole pastiche/homage/whatever thing. I find this really annoying. Not just when Moore does it. I can look back on elements of my own work and be annoyed at myself for going down that path. I only did it on rare occasions, tho. Moore has turned it into a career. So much so, that in the post-Watchmen era I have trouble calling to mind much that he has done that was not based on someone else’s previous work. I am not the most original guy on the block, but at least when I do Superman, I do Superman.

I suppose a lot of this could simply be the bad taste his earlier work left for me. All that tearing down and “deconstructionism.””

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

All that revealing of the flaws and feet of clay, not a bit of which has served the industry in any positive way, and, in fact, has left huge scars across it, like the ones left in the landscape by open pit mining.
Alan Moore

Way, Guy, Feeling, Tear

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love, People, Music, Guy

“Finding happiness should not be seen as finding a needle in a haystack. Happiness is within. Each day is a blessing that brings an abundance of happiness. Therefore, finding happiness should be like finding a gift in a stack of gifts.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 94

Happiness

“But you don't have a chance if you can't find a job. I don't think it penetrates the minds of this Administration what it must be like for a factory worker to arrive home to his family with the news that he's been laid off. What it must be like not to know what the future holds for your children, because you don't know what the future holds for you. What it must be like to see the government take hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to fund job training, unemployment benefits, or jobs programs — and instead to send that money off to people who have such staggering wealth that the new money won't make the tiniest improvement in their lifestyle. What it must be like to be told that tax cuts for the rich are necessary to create jobs for working people, and then to see jobs fall month after month for more than 30 months. If that doesn't break your heart, you don't have a heart.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Jobs Plan speech (24 September 2003) http://www.clark04.com/speeches/002/

Money, Children, People, Family

“Living a plant based life isn’t just about your food choices nor is it a “diet”; it is about living a healthy life while causing the least amount of harm to animals and our environment. You need to find your reasons for choosing this lifestyle and remember them if and when you think you might stray. Once you learn the real affects animal products have on your health and the environment, it will be an easy choice.”

Jayde Nicole (1986) Canadian model, Playboy's Playmate of the Month January 2007 and Playmate of the Year 2008

"Starting Your Plant Based Lifestyle", in her official website JaydeNicole.com (30 November 2017) https://jaydenicole.com/blog-1/2017/11/30/starting-your-plant-based-lifestyle.

Life, Health, Food, Thinking

“Lemony Snicket: (narrating) Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage.”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

Secret, Way, Feeling, Reading

“It's a sort of infantile thing, painting. Paint in a sense is a certain infantile thing. I mean in the handling. I start out using a brush but then I can't take the time because the idea doesn't correspond, it gets stuck when the brush goes out of paint in a certain length of time. So I have to go back and by then I might have lost the rest of it. So I take my hand and I do it. Or I have those wonderful things that came in later: paint sticks... So I had to find things that I could use, like my hands or the paint sticks... And I did those charts, big palettes... two or three paintings with palettes and all of the colours – pink, flesh, brown, red for blood. And I think with most painters you can think and it can change very fast, the impetus of what something is. It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 179

Feeling, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“All strangers love her, will always find her fair,
Because such elegance, such happiness,
Will not be found in any town but this:
Paris is beyond compare.”

Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) French poet

Tuit estrangier l'aiment et ameront,
Car pour deduit et pour estre jolis,
Jamais cité tele ne trouveront:
Riens ne se puet comparer a Paris.
"Quant j'ay la terre et mer avironnée", line 17; text and translation from Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi (eds.), David Curzon and Jeffrey Fiskin (trans.) Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems (London: Routledge, 2003) pp. 62-63.

Love, Happiness

“Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words. And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter, — a power which we are apt to call repartee, which is in truth the readiness which comes from continual practice. You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his own against the latter. In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius. But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all. It is, — as is style to the writer, — not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried. Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer? Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send.”

Anthony Trollope book The Duke's Children

Source: The Duke's Children (1879), Ch. 26

Men, Truth, Parting

“Strength of our culture to some extent has compensated the lack of formal education. That is how people could vote wisely in these massive elections. After all, it was the ordinary, illiterate people who exercised the votes in the general elections we have had. And they seem to have voted with sufficient knowledge of affairs, of their interests, and this is remarkable indeed. But that is no substitute for education, and we have to have a full formal education for all our people and what I find sad is that it is an eminently practicable thing to do; in a matter of 5 years, India could be made literate.”

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

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

People, Education, Sadness, Exercises

“Thou shalt be—what? You cannot fill it in. You cannot tear asunder the cloud that separates you from tomorrow. You do not know what is in store for you. Thou shalt be—let him fill it in for you. Thou shalt be—pure, honest, true, reverent, unselfish, loving, loyal, victorious, filled with divine discontent with mere material and physical pleasures, eager to be of service to thy fellows, willing to deny thyself, take up the cross and follow me. …Thou art—yes. …You shall be—but only as you turn to Jesus Christ. …And when you find him you will discover that he is the key to vaults of hidden treasures in your own life.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 38

Love, Life, Pleasure, Art

“Personally, I find the concept of a "final theory," or a "theory of everything," rather limiting. The fun of discovery will most likely last as long as the human race continues.”

F. J. Duarte (1954) Chilean-American physicist

in [F. J. Duarte, Laser Physicist, Optics Journal, 2012, 978-0-9760383-1-3, 154]

Personality

“The proximate goal of all perception is what we can get our hands upon. If we traverse the distance that separate us from that which we see or hear and find nothing for the hand to manipulate, the experience is an illusion or a hallucination. The world of perceptual reality, the world of physical things, is the world of our contacts and our manipulations, and the distance experience of the eye and the ear means first of all these physical things. Physical things are not only the meaning of what we see and hear; they are also the means we employ to accomplish our ends.”

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist

George Herbert Mead (1926). "The Nature of Aesthetic Experience." International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Jul., 1926), pp. 382-393; p. 382

World, Reality

“Thoughts are given us, not only to chew over for ourselves, but to communicate to others. And if we can find a man that is ready to receive them, and a suitable occasion, there is nothing more pleasurable than giving them.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Preface.
Everyday Wisdom (1927)

Pleasure, Communication

“The regular media caricature of Iraqi society is not even a parody. It is very common indeed to find mixed and intermarried families, and these loyalties and allegiances outweigh anything that can be mustered by a Jordanian jailbird who has bet everything on trying to ignite a sectarian war. Second, it means in the not very long run that the so-called insurgency can be politically isolated and militarily defeated. It already operates within a minority of a minority and is largely directed by unpopular outsiders.”

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

"It's Curtains for al-Qaida" http://www.slate.com/id/2134378/, Slate (2006-01-16): On Iraq 2000s, 2006

War, Family, Loyalty

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.
"Control of Human Behavior", item 145
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

People, Way, Imagination, Science

“For anyone seeking meaning for his life a figure from Greek mythology comes to mind. It is that of Atlas, bearing with endless perseverance the weight of the heavens on his back. — Atlas, resolutely bearing his burden and accepting his responsibility that gives us the example we seek. To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life — these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.
And finally, the man who knows his purpose in life accepts praise humbly. He knows whatsoever talents we has were given him by the Lord and that these talents must be developed and used. In this way man renders thanks for the Lord's gift — and finds meaning in his life.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Way, Idea, Courage

“The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. … But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. … It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

Women, Children, People, World

“Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion," said Merlyn with the deepest sincerity, "are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth. Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think. If ever a true politician really thinks a subject out dispassionately, even Homo stultus will be compelled to accept his findings in the end. Opinion can never stand beside truth. At present, however, Homo impoliticus is content either to argue with opinions or to fight with his fists, instead of waiting for the truth in his head. It will take a million years, before the mass of men can be called political animals.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Men, Truth, Stupidity, Thinking

“Sandinistas are a democratically elected government which originally led a popular revolution to overthrow a dictatorship based on slavery…
US foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I'll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that. It can hardly be said to be a complicated foreign policy. What is interesting about it is that it is so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do. I find the ignorance in this country, Britain, and certainly the US, really quite deep. It is not only the Republican Party and government in the US which are responsible for this state of affairs, but I see the Democrats as only differing by degrees. While they say "no more military aid to the Contras"… they are still referring to an innate and deeply embedded assumption that they are talking about a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian dictatorship; gangsters, thugs, instructed from Moscow.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Quoted in an interview http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_america.shtml, conducted by Andrew Graham-Yooll, South Magazine (May 1988)

Money, Kiss, Success, Country

“People who are serious about something always make room for it in their schedules. If prayer is important to you, then you'll find time to do it.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

People, Time

““It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
“What’s that?” Carmody asked.
“It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
“I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
“I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
“What’s that?”
“Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 13 (pp. 88-89)

Women, God, War, Peace

“I am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term "artist" rather embarrassing.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953

Soul, Heart

“On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Radio interview (November 2008)

Hell

“We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, 1952), p. 157
1950s

Money

“As you become more awake you actually find yourself with less and less choice about what you do in any given situation. And you have less choice because you see more clearly. This is a very important point. Clarity doesn’t create more options. It eliminates options because you see that they aren’t appropriate or they don’t work.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Then and Now http://www.unfetteredmind.org/jewel-ornament-buddhahood#sect12. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (2008-07-08) (Topic: Awareness)

“In [18]35, I made a study trip about Utrecht and Nijmegen to Dusseldorf, Cologne and [w:Koblenz|Coblentz]], together with Samuel Verveer, who had already left the studio of van Hove. My painting 'View of the Moselle Bridge in Coblentz' – exhibited in the same year here - was bought by Schelfhout and, in addition to the satisfaction it gave me, I was allowed to find a counselor in him from then on; he became and remained my friend since then.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

origineel citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in Nederlands: In [18]35 maakte ik met gekocht en, behalve de voldoening, die daarin voor mij was gelegen, mocht ik van toen af een raadsman in hem vinden, die mij sinds ook een vriend is geworden en gebleven.
p. 9
1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder

Study, Painting

“Here as elsewhere human reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Die menschliche Vernunft hat hier, wie allerwärts in ihrem reinen Gebrauche, so lange es ihr an Kritik fehlt, vorher alle mögliche unrechte Wege versucht, ehe es ihr gelingt, den einzigen wahren zu treffen.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Way

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Life, God, Truth, Age

“There is nothing so unusual, they tell me, about coming back to your car and finding the radio aerial torn off, the windshield wipers bent up in the air like spaghetti, and all the windows smashed… for no particular reason except to make sure you know just exactly where it's at these days. Where indeed?”

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

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

Cars

“You find yourself staring, looking at, casually glancing at a woman, but you know that it's now socially taboo. You shouldn't be doing it. And you think everybody is noticing you doing it and condemning you in their minds. You shouldn't — so you walk up to the woman and say, "Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?"”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Libs Want Men to Stop Looking at Women
The Rush Limbaugh Show
2013-12-09
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/12/09/libs_want_men_to_stop_looking_at_women, quoted in * The Rush Limbaugh Guide To Sexual Harassment
Media Matters for America
2013-12-09
http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/12/09/the-rush-limbaugh-guide-to-sexual-harassment/197197

Thinking

“It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy (2013)

Learning, Time

“I love the joy of mountains
Wandering free with no concerns
Every day I find food for this old body
There's leisure for thinking, nothing to do
Often I carry an ancient book
Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion
To look down a thousand foot precipice
Overhead are swirling clouds
A cold moon chilly cold
My body feels like a flying crane”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Love, Books, Food, Feeling

“I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Pour ce qui est des connaissances non-écrites qui se trouvent dispersées parmi les hommes de différents professions, je suis persuadé qu’ils passent de beaucoup tant à l'égard de la multitude que de l'importance, tout ce qui se trouve marqué dans les livres, et que la meilleure partie de notre trésor n'est pas encore enregistrée.
Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et de l'art d'inventer pour finir les disputes et pour faire en peu de temps de grands progrès (1688–1690)

Men, Books, Knowledge, Parting

“[R]elative lack of popularity is not as important as the lack of popularity of a president in South Korea, where there is no bedrock state support to keep people patriotic even when they dislike a leader. But we Americans are more like the North Koreans in that regard. Does our patriotism rise and fall depending on who is in the White House? If we don’t like a president, do we start finding America’s enemies more likeable? No. We should therefore not assume that Kim Jong Un’s relative lack of stature means that support for the state is weakening.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

People, Support, Housing, Dependency

“…a reluctance to recognise that today's safety and comfort were bought fifty years ago by means which today's intelligentsia find unacceptable, and from which they wish to distance themselves.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. xxiii-xxiv.

“I, like every other stupid American, assumed the kangaroos would meet us at the airport and they would want to hug us as much as we wanted to hug them. … [In Sydney's zoo] I did find out about the koalas and how eucalyptus makes them high and why they sleep all day. They're little druggies.”

Kristen Bell (1980) American actress

On her impressions of Australia, as quoted in "US Star Disappointed no Kangaroos at airport", in The Sydney Morning Herald (15 October 2009) http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/us-star-disappointed-no-kangaroos-at-aussie-airport-20091015-gyw5.html

Stupidity, Sleep

“When I still find some parts of my body that I have not found before, I tell myself, yes I am progressing scientifically… I don't stretch my body as if it is an object. I do yoga from the self towards the body, not the other way around.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: BBC News "India yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies"

Way, Parting

“Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.”

Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) English ballerina

Source: Margot Fonteyn : Autobiography‎ (1975), p. 81

Life, People, Art, Way

“But this I thought was the meaning of life, that the individual shook off the habit of accepting the favors of difference, should that be tempting, steeled himself against its humiliation, should that weigh down on him, in order to find the universal, what is common to all human beings, to concern oneself only with that. Oh! How beautiful to lose oneself in this way. But then I thought again that in the having of this concern the meaning of life was to be concerned for oneself as if the particular individual were all there was. Oh! How beautiful thus to find oneself in the universal! If the universal is the rule then the individual is the paradigm [corrected from demand]; if the universal is the demand then the universal is the fulfillment; if the universal is everything, if the universal says everything, then the particular individual believes that the everything is said about him-him alone. So if the place and context here did not require signature, none would be needed, for again it is infinitely inconsequential who has said it (as though the favored one said it, the one who was wronged being in no position to say it, since after all they all have it in them to do it).”

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

S. Kierkegaard 1846 Journals, Hannay 1996, VII IB200, p. 252
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Life, Beauty, Way, Universe

“Well, they're taking kids out of the country and sending them over there, National Guard kids and Army Reserve. They're sending kids who are barely prepared for this, and they're sending them over there to kill people, which is a serious thing. And to kill not terrorists, but to kill insurgents. I sort of find myself in agreement, uncomfortably, with Patrick Buchanan, who writes about this in his book, Where The Right Went Wrong. And writes that great powers, the way they skidded off the road, was getting involved in wars. That it's the role of great powers to stay out of wars.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Real Time with Bill Maher (15 October 2004)

War, People, Books, Way

“Seriously! Acting in films is not my cup of tea. The joy I find in being a pucca musician is unparalleled.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

About acting in films http://web.archive.org/web/20161005115944/https://twitter.com/shreyaghoshal/status/114406431003914240

Joy, Tea

“William I’m sorry I let my brother hoist you up the mast in that crappy jury-rigged bosun’s chair while everybody laughed! William I’m sorry I could build better fires than you could! I’m sorry my stack of Christmas cards was always bigger than yours! … William I’m sorry I invented bop jogging which you couldn’t do! I’m sorry I loved Antigua! I’m sorry my mind wandered when you talked about the army! I’m sorry I was superior in argument! I’m sorry you slit open my bicycle tires looking for incriminating letters that you didn’t find! You’ll never find them! … William! I’m sorry I looked at Sam but he was so handsome, so handsome, who could not! I’m sorry I slept with Sam! I’m sorry about the library books! I’m sorry about Pete! I’m sorry I never played the guitar you gave me! I’m sorry I married you and I’ll never so it again!”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Apology”.
Great Days (1979)

Love, Books, Christmas

“The further we move our main force to the westward, and still be within supporting distance of this garrison, the better, both for the preservation of the provision and forage of this State, as well as to les sen the general expense of transportation. And the greater stock of provision and forage we can leave in this State, and upon the communications, the less difficulty we shall find in giving support to this place, should the enemy approach it. I should re commend, therefore, to quarter the army as far wesir ward as Morristown or Baskingridge. The country is strong, secure from a surprise, happily situated to receive supplies of provisions and forage, and not very inconvenient for giving protection and cover to the inhabitants. It is true, it is considerably removed from this place. But were we to take a position at Suffern's or Pompton, the consumption of forage would be so great that it would destroy the possibility of keeping up a communication with the Western States, however pressing the necessity, before the grass sea son. Suppose the enemy should move up, early in the spring, and lay siege to West Point, and the supplies of this State prove unequal to our support, should we not be obliged to abandon it to its fate?”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Fate, Spring, Communication, Support

“Those who always take the same paths, usually see the same objects; it is rare that upon following different routes, one won't discover new topics worthy of our most serious attention. Similarly, various attempts give us a greater amount of knowledge. By trying different keys, we can hope to finally find some that open secure paths, short and easy, leading to the wealth of physics.”

Pierre Polinière (1671–1734) French physicist

Ceux qui passent toujours par les mêmes chemins, voyent ordinairement toujours les mêmes objets; il est rare qu'à force de suivre différentes routes, on ne découvre de nouveaux sujets dignes de nos attentions les plus sérieuses. De même les différentes tentatives nous font avoir un plus grand nombre de connaissances. En essayant donc différentes clefs, on peut espérer d'en rencontrer enfin qui nous ouvriront les passages assurés, courts et faciles pour arriver aux richesses de la Physique.
[Pierre Polinière, Expériences de physique, Charles Moette, 1728, http://books.google.com/books?id=phE5AAAAcAAJ&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=&f=false, vii]

Hope, Knowledge, Wealth

“That's always the hardest question. Lately I've been listening to Derek and the Dominos, the Bar-Kays. I really like the first Patti Smith. I'm just starting to discover the Cure. I keep trying to find things to open myself up to. I enjoy Soundgarden. The singer [Chris Cornell] just buries me. The guy sings so great. On the club circuit, I like Saigon Saloon a lot.”

Axl Rose (1962) American singer-songwriter and musician

Guy, Question, Singing

“[The consequences of] beliefs that go against the providence of a perfectly good, wise, and just God, or against that immortality of souls which lays them open to the operations of justice…. I even find that somewhat similar opinions, by stealing gradually into the minds of men of high station who rule the rest and on whom affairs depend, and by slithering into fashionable books, are inclining everything toward the universal revolution with which Europe is threatened, and are completing the destruction of what still remains in the world of the generous Greeks and Romans who placed love of country and of the public good, and the welfare of future generations before fortune and even before life.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain (1704)

Love, Life, Men, God

“Everything is conditioned by necessity of one kind or another; and if it were actually possible to find a person in conditions of total freedom, he would be like some deep water fish that had been dragged up to the surface. It's curious to reflect that Rublyov worked within the strictures of the canon! And the longer I live in the West the more curious and equivocal freedom seems to me. Freedom to take drugs? To kill? To commit suicide?”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 180

Fish, Suicide, Freedom, Water

“…the French are on the point of making a great effort in Portugal…which Lord Wellington…will find himself unable to resist. But even if such an effort could not take place or should not succeed, I am convinced the period when we shall be obliged to give up the contest from an absolute inability to support the expense, is fast approaching.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Lord Grenville (1 September 1811), quoted in Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (Yale University Press, 1996), p. 157.
1810s

Support, Effort

“For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Source: Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1; The Works of Francis Bacon (1857) p. 232, https://books.google.com/books?id=HloJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA232 Vol. 3.

Life, Men, Truth, Business

“I have to say that I find Ali’s argument truly revolting—not just because it’s intellectually weak and actually deceptive, but because it debases the entire realm of university scholarship of which I’m a member. When I see pieces like hers—lame apologetics that are meant from the outset to reinforce an opinion already held—I thank Ceiling Cat that I am a scientist: a member of the guild in which using your scholarship to reinforce emotional commitments is considered a sin.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" At last it happens: a professor blames ISIS’s sex slavery on the West https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/at-last-it-happens-a-professor-blames-isiss-sex-slavery-on-the-west/" August 23, 2015

Cats, Universe

“Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Academy of Achievement Address, published by Corporate Valley (12 August 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54xWQPq0fuk 2010s

Happiness, Pleasure, Motivation, Joy

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they’d never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice. It's also amusing to see Jefferson Davis represented. Yes, Davis came to Georgia, once to try to settle disputes within the high command of the Army of Tennessee, not a rousing success, and once to rally white Georgians to the cause once more after the fall of Atlanta. But any serious student of the war knows that Davis spent much of his presidency arguing with Georgia governor Joseph Brown about Georgia's contribution to the Confederate war effort, and that the vice president of the Confederacy, Georgia's own Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was not a big supporter of his superior. Yet we don't see Brown or Stephens on Stone Mountain, either.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Brooks D. Simpson, "The Future of Stone Mountain" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-stone-mountain/ (22 July 2015), Crossroads, WordPress

Men, War, Home, History

“I have to report that this motion picture is arguably the worst piece of cinematic crap I have ever experienced theatrically. Hyperbole, you wonder? I looked through my list of zero-star movies and couldn't find one entry (except the immortal Zombie vs. Mardi Gras, which was a straight-to-video release) that ranked as more difficult to endure. Words like abomination and travesty don't do this movie justice. Sitting through Freddy Got Fingered was one of the most depressing experiences in my 10 years of reviewing films. It's not even enjoyable on a campy level. It's just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad - Directed By Tom Green.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1485 of Freddy Got Fingered (2001). Zero star reviews

Justice, Star

“And if the immortality of the soul had been unable to find vindication in rational empiricism, neither is it satisfied with pantheism. To say that everything is God, and that when we die, we return to God, or more accurately, continue in Him, avails our longing nothing; for if this indeed be so, then we were in God before we were born, and if we die we return to where we were before being born, then the human soul, the individual consciousness, is perishable. And since we know very well that God, the personal and conscious God of Christian monotheism, is simply the provider, and above all the guarantor, of our immortality, pantheism is said, and rightly said to be merely atheism disguised; and in my opinion, undisguised.”

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

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

God, Soul, Personality

“Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.”

Fay Weldon (1931) English author, essayist and playwright

The Guardian, October 28, 2006. http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/homes/story/0,,1933478,00.html

Life

“Where the need is greatest let us be found gladly obeying the MASTER’S command. For it is in the harvest-field, it is among the reapers, that we shall find Him.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Ribband of Blue and Other Bible Studies. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 94).

“Europe should be grateful by President Trump, because thanks to him we have got rid of old illusions. He has made us realise that if you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm.”

Donald Tusk (1957) Polish politician, current President of the European Council

'Capricious': Donald Tusk condemns Trump administration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/16/donald-tusk-condemns-donald-trump-transatlantic-trade-war, The Guardian, (16th May 2018)

Help

“One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal – to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

Men, World, Hell, Problem

“Having reached the rare age of 100 years, I find myself in a unique position: I'm the last survivor of the golden age of the Evolutionary Synthesis. That status encourages me to present a personal account of what I experienced in the years (1920s to the 1950s) that were so crucial in the history of evolutionary biology.”

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) German-American Evolutionary Biologist

Ernst Mayr (2004) " 80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery http://www.sciencemag.org/content/305/5680/46.full" Science (2 July 2004) Vol. 305 no. 5680 pp. 46-47

Age, History, Personality

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real… for a moment at least… that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever, somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

The Faces of Fantasy (1996)

Love, Dreams, Color, Thinking

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

Wisdom, War, Angels, Way

“I have never been a supporter of or an apologist for Saddam Hussein. Indeed, I recall many lonely occasions in the House when I spoke against Saddam Hussein, his genocide against the Kurdish people and the way that the British Government were financing the re-arming of Iraq. Indeed, the chemical weapons being manufactured in Iraq largely comprise chemicals made in western Europe and north America. Some £1 billion was loaned to Saddam Hussein by British banks, with the agreement of the British Government. His power is largely the creation of western Europe and north America. I do not support him and I do not think that he was right to invade Kuwait…The only purpose of sending troops to the region is to defend and guarantee oil supplies. I find it difficult to accept that the United States is merely defending a small country against a larger country. If that were true, why were Grenada and Panama invaded? What was the Vietnam war about, other than a powerful United States wishing to extend its control and influence throughout the world? …If the shooting starts and there is war in the Gulf, the retaking of Kuwait will not be a clean, clinical operation—it will be a filthy and long war with hundreds of thousands of dead, and at the end of that war there will still have to be negotiations on the future order and the future government of that area and those countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/07/first-day in the House of Commons (7 November 1990). 1990s

War, People, World, Way

“When you call people we you find it easy to be unfair to them, since you yourself are included in the condemnation.”

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

"Five Poets," The Yale Review (Autumn 1956) [p. 263]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

People

“I do recall one particular night shoot… We were called to the set at four o'clock in the afternoon. As usual, nothing was ready. They'd built a set of Tiberius's grotto, on three acres, and were assembling all of the extras and background. The producers worriedly asked if I would go into Peter's trailer (he was playing Tiberius) and go through the lines with him, which we did few times.
And then he told me the most remarkable story – whether it is true or not I have no idea – about his grave-robbing Etruscan tombs. He said the best way to find Etruscan jewellery and artefacts was to find the drains in the tombs, and very gingerly sift through them with your fingers because, as the bodies decompose, all of the artifacts deposit themselves into the channels. The thought of Peter O'Toole on his hands and knees in an Etruscan catacomb makes for a lovely image.
We spent hours and hours in this trailer. He was smoking … it certainly wasn't tobacco. By the time we got onto the set, 12 hours had passed. We couldn't believe our eyes: the set was covered with people engaging in every sexual perversion in the book. We were totally bemused.
Peter would start off his speech, "Rome was but a city…" then pause, look around, and say to me: "Are they doing the Irish jig over there?"”

Malcolm McDowell (1943) English actor

I'd look over and there would be two dwarves and an amputee dancing around some girls splayed out on a giant dildo. This went on quite a few times. As quoted in "Malcolm McDowell on Peter O'Toole: Caligula, catacombs and chicken gizzards" https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/dec/17/malcolm-mcdowell-peter-otoole-caligula-graves, The Guardian (17 December, 2013)

Love, People, Books, Way

“From the nature and purpose of civil institutions, all the lands within the limits which any particular society has circumscribed around itself are assumed by that society, and subject to their allotment only. This may be done by themselves, assembled collectively, or by their legislature, to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and if they are alloted in neither of these ways, each individual of the society may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds vacant, and occupancy will give him title.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Way, Nature

“We often think, naïvely, that missing data are the primary impediments to intellectual progress—just find the right facts and all problems will dissipate. But barriers are often deeper and more abstract in thought. We must have access to the right metaphor, not only to the requisite information. Revolutionary thinkers are not, primarily, gatherers of facts, but weavers of new intellectual structures.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"For Want of a Metaphor", p. 151
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

Problem, Thinking

“These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (January 1912), # 905, quoting his "Munich Art Letter" in the journal Die Alpen
1911 - 1914

Wisdom, Children, Age, Disease

“Give me a big enough sandbox to play in, and I'll find the part of it not being used as kitty litter.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part VII, The Margin Surplus, Industrial Economists, p. 237.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Parting

“In the writings of such "pagan" philosophers as Plutarch and Porphyry we find a humanitarian ethic of the most exalted kind, which, after undergoing a long repression during medieval churchdom, reappeared, albeit but weakly and fitfully at first, in the literature of the Renaissance, to be traced more definitely in the eighteenth century school of "sensibility." But it was not until after the age of Rousseau, from which must be dated the great humanitarian movement of the past century, that Vegetarianism began to assert itself as a system, a reasoned plea for the disuse of flesh-food.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Humanities of Diet

Age, School, Food, Literature

“I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

Communication, Country

“I think I understand. Before there can be disdain, there must be pride.
One day I will find something to be proud of, and then I will find this taste of disdain, and see if it suits me. Should I not think this, being my father's son?
And yet, I do not. Pride needs no claws, no scaled armour about itself. Not every virtue must be a weapon.
These thoughts are my own. I will not crush them.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Understanding, Thinking

“The success with which we have met in all of these undertakings is a matter of universal knowledge. We are at peace with all the world. Those of this generation who passed through the World War have had an experience which will always cause them to realize what an infinite blessing peace is. We are in an era of unbounded prosperity. The financial condition of our National Government is beginning to be more easy to be borne. While many other nations and many localities within our own country are struggling with a burden of increased debts and rising taxes, which makes them seek for new sources from which by further taxation they can secure new revenues, we have made large progress toward paying off our national debt, have greatly reduced our national taxes, and been able to relieve the people by abandoning altogether many sources of national revenue. We are not required to look altogether to the future for our rewards and find in our lot nothing but sacrifices for the present. Now, here, to-day, we are all able to enjoy those benefits which come from universal peace and nation-wide prosperity.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

War, People, World, Peace

“Different ways of writing the same equation can suggest very different things, even if they are logically equivalent…. In Einstein's original 1905 paper, you do not find the equation E = mc2. What you find is m = E/c2…. the title of the paper is a question: "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?" …If we can explain mass in terms of energy, we'll be improving our description of the world. We'll need fewer ingrediants in our world-recipe.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces (2008), Ch. 3, p. 19.

World, Way, Question, Dependency

“Only once in Chopin's music is there a direct reference to Bach, and that is, appropriately, at the beginning of his only educational work, the two sets of Etudes, Op. 10 and 25, and the three Nouvelles Etudes for Moscheles. In the first Etude, Op. 10, in C major, we find a modernized version of the Prelude no. 1 of the Well-Tempered Keyboard…”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Education, Music

“How nauseating in view of all this to see Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, reduce this to a game of scrabble... to a matter of finding the right words. We now know that Fianna Fáil ministers see nothing wrong with a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests as long as there is no proof that any specific favours were done.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/higgins-lashes-nauseating-backtrack-by-pds-71587.html

Money, Game, Business, Personality

“We simply must find ways to see each other more clearly. And part of that has to involve collecting and sharing better information about encounters between police and citizens, especially violent encounters.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Way, Parting

“The requirements of information retrieval, of finding information whose location or very existence is a priori unknown.”

Calvin Mooers (1919–1994) American computer scientist

Calvin Mooers (1947); cited in. Eugene Garfield (1997) "A Tribute To Calvin N. Mooers, A Pioneer Of Information Retrieval." The Scientist, Vol:11, #6, p. 9, March 17, 1997