Quotes about finding
page 78

“I view life as a fortuitous collaboration ascribable to the fact that one finds oneself at the right place at the same time.”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, p. 9.

Life, Time

“We take for granted that the organism does not learn to grow arms or to reach puberty… When we turn to the mind and its products, the situation is not qualitatively different from what we find in the case of the body.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Source: Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Rules and Representations (1980), p. 2-3 as cited in: Jerry Fodor (1983) Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. p. 4.

Learning

“For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 3

Happiness, People, Justice, Soul

“I had a very pleasant evening, however, though you will probably find out that there was no particular reason for it; but I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1799-01-21) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Thinking, Waiting

“The Ayatollah of Iran died today and they're desperately trying to find the next Ayatollah. I suggested they pick that guy they just kicked out of the Oak Ridge Boys. Ayatollah Oom Papa Mow Mow!”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

You Can't Fix Stupid

Guy, Boy

“This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?”

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

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool, Nothin' Fancy Cafe, Roswell, New Mexico — Whitehouse Transcript http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040122-5.html, Office of the Press Secretary, January 22, 2004. 2000s, 2004

Money, Food, Question, Business

“When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think — what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this; early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous — a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

Liam, Cathal (2006). Blood on the Shamrock: A Novel of Ireland's Continued Struggle for Freedom 1921-1924. St. Padraic Press, p. 194.

Death, Dreams, Thinking, Time

“Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

Lovers

“Two distinct ethnic groups, with quite different cultures and religious beliefs, were … put together in the same islands. Colonial policy largely kept them apart and there was, therefore, little assimilation. This racial separation and segregation became a defining feature of our country. The two communities have co-existed, without finding a sense of unified nationhood.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Communication, Sense, Country

“The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

To Djuna Barnes, in an interview published in Vanity Fair (March 1922)

Books, Way

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this. "Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015) Lectures

Children, People, Pleasure, World

“Dance on, dance on, we see, we see
Youth goes, alack, and with it glee,
A boy the old man ne’er can be;
Maternal thirty scarce can find
The sweet sixteen long left behind.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Youth and Age http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/youthage.html, st. 1.

Youth, Boy, Dance, Maternity

“Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

“The question is: How bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated.”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Good to be King (2004)

War, World, Question

“We find a set of data that strongly implies the presence of complex organic molecules in the outer solar system.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

“Other people snap up the riskless profits pretty fast and bid the price of calculable risk opportunities to near their fair values. Things get a lot less crowded if you go for the incalculable risks, leaps of faith that cannot be inspected carefully before takeoff. So that is where you find extraordinary opportunities.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 1, The Art of Uncalculated Risk, p. 2

People, Faith

“I do not understand your silence you know all the same how interested I always am in what you are doing. you also know that there are not many of us who understand each other we have always got on well together. I have seen and I see every day how little people like us[. ] Between ourselves there are things we cannot say to others…. you cannot imagine how little I find myself in sympathy with other people….- I do not want to lose another day, one hour this year I have no hope I have lost it and you know how unlike me that is. at the moment I have several studies to do at the Louvre order[s] which are going to bring me many others [p. 2] as soon as this time has passed I want to do two large pictures for the Salon[. ] I think of nothing else… I am becoming more and more the Fantin of the old days you know here I am today but neither discouraged nor bored. I have my own views now nothing can distract me..”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris, July/September 1868, to James Whistler in London; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1085&nameid=Fantin_Latour_IH&sr=0&rs=76&surname=&firstname= - System Number: 01085; Call Number: MS Whistler F 16.

People, Hope, Imagination, Understanding

“[On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation — that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview on matthewsplace.com (October 2009) http://www.matthewsplace.com/2009/10/interview-with-jennifer-beals/.

People, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then finds it absolutely impossible that there be objects in this space or that processes occur during this time…. the source of this kind of logic lies in excessive confidence in the so-called laws of thought.”

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) Austrian physicist

S. Rajasekar, N.Athavan, "Ludwig Edward Boltzmann"
Attributed

Law, Confidence, Time

“2001. Find out thy own Mistakes, and Failings, in order to amend them. A Disease known is half cured.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Disease

“I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter's spent.”

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) Poet and historian

Delia (1592), Sonnet XXXIII.

Love, World, Faith, Art

“The law,” he said, “is above the criminal and the judge, and rules them both. The law is inescapable, for an action is either lawful or unlawful. The law, indeed, may be said to have a life of its own, an existence quite apart from the finite lives of the beings who administer it. The law governs every aspect of human behavior; therefore, to the same extent that humans are lawful beings, the law is human. And being human, the law has its idiosyncrasies, just as a man has his. For a citizen who abides by the law, the law is distant and difficult to find. For those who reject and violate it, the law emerges from its musty sepulchers and goes in search of the transgressor.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 15 (p. 65)

Life, Law, Behavior, Search

“Early findings from the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease are challenging much of American dietary dogma. The [Cornell–Oxford] study, being conducted in China, paints a bold portrait of a plant-based eating plan that is more likely to promote health than disease. The study can be considered the Grand Prix of epidemiology.”

Jane E. Brody (1941) American writer

"Huge Study Of Diet Indicts Fat And Meat", in The New York Times (8 May 1990) http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/08/science/huge-study-of-diet-indicts-fat-and-meat.html

Health, Disease, Study, Painting

“We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 232

God

“Santo Domingo is fertile, and upon its soil may be grown just those tropical products of which the United States use so much, and which are produced or prepared for market now by slave labor almost exclusively, namely, sugar, coffee, dyewoods, mahogany, tropical fruits, tobacco, etc. About 75 per cent of the exports of Cuba are consumed in the United States. A large percentage of the exports of Brazil also find the same market. These are paid for almost exclusively in coin, legislation, particularly in Cuba, being unfavorable to a mutual exchange of the products of each country.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Eighth State of the Union Address (1876)

Coffee, Country

“That there is a common cause, an that it is either what we call material progress or something closely connected with material progress, becomes more than an inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class together and speak of as industrial depression are but intensifications of phenomena which always accompany material progress, and which show themselves more clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized—that is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed — we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Introductory : The Problem
Progress and Poverty (1879)

Wealth

“National weakness — real or perceived — can tempt aggression and thus cause war. That's why the United States cannot neglect its military strength. We must and we will remain strong. But with equal determination, the United States and all countries must find ways to control and reduce the horrifying danger that is posed by the world's enormous stockpiles of nuclear arms.
This has been a concern of every American president since the moment we first saw what these weapons could do. Our leaders will require our understanding and our support as they grapple with this difficult but crucial challenge. There is no disagreement on the goals or the basic approach to controlling this enormous destructive force. The answer lies not just in the attitudes or actions of world leaders, but in the concern and demands of all of us as we continue our struggle to preserve the peace.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)

War, World, Peace, Way

“O my love my dear lady
The world is not very big
There is only room for our wonder
And the light leaning winds of heaven
Are not more sweet or pure
Than your mouth on my throat
O my love there are larks in our morning
And the finding flame of your hands
And the moss on the bank of the river
And the butterflies
And the whirling-mad
Butterflies!”

Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) American writer and poet

"'O My Love the Pretty Towns'"

Love, World, Light, Madness

“Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort but I do not think they will find God.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

God, Thinking

“Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Question, Summer, Personality

“For many things we can find substitutes, but there is not now, nor will there ever be, a substitute for creative thought.”

Crawford Greenewalt (1902–1993) American chemical engineer

In Chemical and Engineering News, November 10, 1952, as quoted by Alan Tower Waterman in Research for National Defense, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March 1953), Vol. 9, No. 2,ISSN 0096-3402, published by Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc., p. 39.

“My mother saw me being attacked. She cried when I left engineering for this cause. She understood my fight, encouraged me. I remember all those who were with me in this struggle, including two colleagues who were killed. Whenever I free children from slavery and take them back to their mothers, the tears of happiness in their eyes are like blessings of God. When I see the faces of liberated children, I find their smile of freedom divine and it gives me divine strength. I never feel I'm liberating them, rather it feels like they're giving me freedom.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Times of India interview (2014)

God, Happiness, Children, Smile

“I think it right to warn my reader, that there are more passages than one in the book, which are of that nature, which will be perfectly understood by my Masonic friends, but which my engagements prevent me explaining to the world at large. My Masonic friends will find their craft very often referred to. I believe, however that they will not find any of their secrets betrayed; but I trust they will find it proved, that their art is the remains of a very fine ancient system, or, perhaps, more properly, a branch of the fine and beautiful system of WISDOM which, in this work, I have developed.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Preface to Vol. I.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Wisdom, Secret, Books, World

“When the year was completed, I began to examine and compare my observations, and having pretty well satisfied myself as to the general laws of the phenomena, I then endeavored to find out the cause of them. I was already convinced that the apparent motion of the stars was not owing to the nutation of the earth's axis. The next thing that offered itself was an alteration in the direction of the plumb-line with which the instrument was constantly rectified; but this upon trial proved insufficient. Then I considered what refraction might do, but here also nothing satisfactory occurred. At length I conjectured that all the phenomena hitherto mentioned, proceeded from the progressive motion of light and the earth's annual motion in its orbit. For I perceived that, if light was propagated in time, the apparent place of a fixed object would not be the same when the eye is at rest, as when it is moving in any other direction than that of the line passing through the eye and the object; and that, when the eye is moving in different directions, the apparent place of the object would be different.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

As quoted by W. S. Eichelberger, "The Distances of the Heavenly Bodies," http://www.jstor.org/stable/1639343 Science New Series, Vol. 43, No. 1110 (Apr. 7, 1916), pp. 475-483.

Law, Star, Light, Time

“We Jews in this century have been victims of destruction and mass slaughter on an unprecedented scale. We have seen every norm of humanity violated as we were treated like cattle rather than human beings. Our response to this memory is surely a complex and multitextured one. But as we overcome the understandable first reactions to the events, some of us feel our abhorrence of violence and bloodshed growing so strong that it reaches even beyond the borders of the human and into the animal kingdom. We Jews, who always looked upon killing for sport or pleasure as something alien and repulsive, should now, out of our own experience, be reaching the point where we find even the slaughter of animals for food morally beyond the range of the acceptable. If Jews have to be associated with killing at all in our time, let it be only for the defense of human life. Life has become too precious in this era for us to be involved in the shedding of blood, even that of animals, when we can survive without it. This is not an ascetic choice, we should note, but rather a life-affirming one. A vegetarian Judaism would be more whole in its ability to embrace the presence of God in all of Creation.”

Arthur Green (1941) American rabbi and theologian

Seek My Face, Speak My Name: A Contemporary Jewish Theology (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992), p. 89.

Life, God, Pleasure, Food

“I have made a great study of the spine ever since I had my spine trouble, and now I know what to do and it doesn’t involve doctors, operations or anything like that. Why, in Puerto Rico last winter I helped 29 people who had back trouble and one of them was a doctor who couldn’t get medical relief. Ask Willie (Stargell), ask Danny Murtaugh what I did for them. They had back trouble and I fixed them, not by any tricks or anything, but because I know how to manipulate and bring relief. A lot of people think if you have a pain or tightness here, it can be worked out by rubbing that area. It can’t. The way to do it is to know the trigger points. Sometimes you have to manipulate a few inches from the spot that’s hurting because that's maybe where the muscle that controls the soreness is. It’s all very complicated, but believe me, it works.

I was suffering so bad I could hardly walk [in 1957]. All the x-rays and medical doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong. Then a man in St. Louis, a chiropractor, called me and offered to help. The ballclub was against it and said they wouldn’t be responsible, but I was desperate and the pain was driving me crazy. But the man, who told me I had a curvature of the spine, was able to fix me up. It was after that I became interested in studying the human back and ever since I’ve never had trouble I couldn't take care of. Back trouble is a painful thing and people who don’t have the problem don’t know how lucky they are.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente a Doc" by Red Foley, in The New York Daily News (October 10, 1971), pp. 69, 75
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Pain, People, Way, Problem

“If the statistics of any of our cities could be taken on this subject you would find that a vast multitude of women not only support themselves, but masculines also. A great legion of men amount to nothing, and a woman by marriage manacled to one of these nonentities needs condolence. A woman standing outside the marriage relation is several hundred thousand times better off than a woman badly married.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 102.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894

Women, Men, Marriage, Support

“It's useless to advise people not to see Independence Day, so I'll issue a warning instead: curb your enthusiasm and don't expect much. With suitably low expectations, you're likely not to be too disappointed, unless you make the mistake of actually thinking about what's taking place on-screen while it's going on. The last half hour is built on a series of contrivances and implausibilities that even a six-year old could find serious flaw with, so be prepared to use the "brain off" switch. But Independence Day isn't about logic and intelligence. It's about space battles, mass destruction, and a laughably "rousing" speech by the President. This is a spectacle, pure and simple. Unfortunately, because the filmmakers mistakenly tried to inject a load of weak dramatic elements, Independence Day turns out to be overlong, overblown, and overdone. For alien invasions this summer, give me The Arrival instead.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/i/id4.html of Independence Day (1996). Two star reviews

People, Disappointment, Intelligence, Thinking

“There are always “class or prestige” gaps between various levels of management. There are also functional gaps between working units of the organization. If we superimpose the management gaps on top of the functional gaps, we find that companies are made up of small operational islands that refuse to communicate with one another for fear that giving up information may strengthen their opponents. The {[w|project manager}}’s responsibility is to get these islands to communicate cross-functionally toward common goals and objectives.”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (1979), p. 4 (2e ed. 1984)

Fear, Communication

“Trapped in the blood, athirst for air,
Christ, who once was employed as single Son of God
Now finds Himself among three billion on a billion
Brother sons, their arms thrown wide to grasp and hold
and walk them everywhere
Now weaving this, now weaving that in swoons…”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

God, Christ

“Otherwise it was quiet—that eerie, not-quite-comforting quiet one finds in small towns before dawn.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 20 “Life” (oil study) (p. 364)

“We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 137.

Understanding, Nature, Knowledge, Problem

“Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this cafe [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward …” and on and on. If you could interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in this cafe, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers, and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes these very, very simple-minded instructions—”Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number”—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1980s

Thinking, Appearance, Time, Parting

“There is a common response from people when they hear that in the absence of evidence to convince me otherwise I don’t have any particular belief in ghosts, psychic powers or an afterlife. It normally runs something along the lines of ‘So you think we just live, die and that’s it? Come on…’ There’s a clear implication there that this earthly life – the wonder of being human – is somehow worthless. That it’s cheap and disappointing enough to warrant that ‘just’ and the accompanying incredulous tone, which are usually reserved for sentences like ‘After all that it was just a little spider? Come on…’ I live, I am sure, in a fairly narrow band of life, and make an embarrassingly pitiful attempt to explore the world I find myself upon. I ache with guilt and conflict when I hear of people living as adventurers, abandoning mainstream lives and living each day with abandon. But I really hope I have a brighter vision for this life and a greater curiosity for its richness than one who can say, and mean, ‘You think we just live, die and that’s it?”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Life, People, World, Hope

“I'm trying to find a man to share my life with, but it's not been easy. I'm a 35-year-old woman with two small children!”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

In an interview in early 2004 Dame Magazine http://www.damemagazine.com/entertainment/f384/TheWitandWisdomofNicoleKidman.php

Life, Children

“In the end theologians are jealous of science, for they are aware that it has greater authority than do their own ways of finding “truth”: dogma, authority, and revelation. Science does find truth, faith does not.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" William Lane Craig defends his ridiculous claim that animals don’t suffer http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/william-lane-craig-defends-his-ridiculous-claim-that-animals-dont-suffer/" February 9, 2013

Truth, Faith, Way, Science

“When you have a planned economy and when you abolish private property, someone must make the decision "Plan in what ways? What do people need?" They now must make those purchase decisions for you. What should you really buy and what shouldn't you buy? Removing choice in the interest of a collective pursuit, those central planners who are one and the same time your schoolteacher, your landlord, your employer, and your police, that's an extraordinary concentration of power, ladies and gentlemen. That is an extraordinary concentration of power. They must get people of what we are planning for and you see this in the history of every communist society. Which means in the final analysis, they must govern the culture, they must control values. Its why religion or any independent thinking is such an enemy. They must control the values, the preferences, the culture, and the education and they must find ways to repress those who are urging different paths and elections don't take care of that because if you're planning an entire economy. If you're planning the allocation of all goods and services and human choices. You can't every four years turn around and say "Oh, lets abandon 'A' and do 'B'." Elections don't get you out of that dilemma.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

People, Education, Religion, Way

“And when we look closely, we find a system of morals which any civilised person today should surely find poisonous.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Personality

“The IWW's affirm as a fundamental principle that the creators of wealth are entitled to all they create. Thus they find themselves pitted against the whole profit-making system. They declare that there can be no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury. They insist that there can be no peace until the workers organize as a class, take possession of the resources of the earth and the machinery of production and distribution and abolish the wage system. In other words, the workers in their collectivity must own and operate all the essential industrial institutions and secure to each laborer the full value of his product.
It is for these principles, this declaration of class solidarity, that the IWWs are being persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, murdered. If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and the world to gain.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

What is the IWW? (1918)

Men, World, Peace, Sense

“The time for work is while the sun's light shines,
but every living thing finds peace at night.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Tempo è da travagliar mentre il sol dura;
Ma nella notte ogni animale ha pace.
Canto VI, stanza 52 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Peace, Light, Time, Sun

“Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 39, Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction

Love, Life

“I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.”

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

Harry Hubbard, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

Love, God, Courage, Loss

“You may recall that a few weeks ago, President Obama came to this chamber, and he addressed the chamber on health care before a joint session of the House and the Senate. During that session I was privileged to be here, and I saw my colleagues on the far side of the aisle, the Republicans, waving pieces of paper during his speech, and I was wondering what they were. I couldn’t imagine — it almost seemed like they wanted President Obama’s autograph. I just didn’t get it. I heard from one of my colleagues that this is what they called the Republican health care plan. I went over, after the speech was over, I picked up a copy that was lying down on the Republican side, and it turns out that the Republicans’ health care plan was a blank piece of paper. I inquired further, trying to find out exactly what the Republicans’ health care plan is. And it’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America.”

Alan Grayson (1958) American politician

2009

Health, Imagination, Lying, Housing

“I find if you're targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later… Writing code that is cross-platform from the start requires more discipline, but I find it is worth the effort.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Luboš Doležel, "Interview: Ryan C. Gordon" http://www.abclinuxu.cz/clanky/rozhovor-ryan-c.-gordon-icculus?page=1 AbcLinuxu.cz (2011-03-08)

Effort

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

People, Religion, Dreams, Communication

“Where does your responsibility begin here? Wiping away the nebula from your sight, you struggle to find where you really are. You're trying to find the direction of the flow, struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But you can't locate the borderline separating dream and reality. Or even the boundary between what's real and what's possible. All you're sure of is that you're in a delicate position. Delicate-and dangerous. You're pulled along, a part of it, unable to pin down the principles of prophecy, or of logic. Like when a river overflows, washing over a town, all road signs have sunk beneath the waves. And all you can see are the anonymous roofs of the sunken houses.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 29, A Boy Named Crow

Dreams, Reality, Time, Parting

“The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges? … we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia as an independent state… I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The Sunday Correspondent (21 October 1990), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 933
1990s

Men, World, Evil

“By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 10–23

Death, Happiness, Feeling, Silence

“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.”

J. G. Ballard book Crash

Crash (1973)

“[on his father's last wishes before dying] "I want to be cremated. Then I want to you to take the ashes, I want you to put them in a douche bottle, find a hooker, and run me through one more time." [groans and disgusted laughs] On my children, I did not write that. I am repeating it.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

Children, Time

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Question

“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find that far more, and far more hideous, crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”

C. P. Snow (1905–1980) British writer

Public Affairs (London: Macmillan, 1971) p. 195

History, Thinking

“The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Man: The Dwelling Place of God (1992)

Men, People, Search, Heart

“As a magician works with the unique compressibility of doves, finding some, losing others in the same silk foulard, so the rebels fold scratchy, relaxed meanings into their smallest actions.”

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

“The Crisis”.
Great Days (1979)

“I think that the American people are never going to elect a president who insults Mexicans, who insults Muslims, who insults women, who insults African-Americans. And let us not forget that several years ago, Trump was in the middle of the so- called birther movement, trying to delegitimize the president of the United States of America. You know, I find it very interesting, Karen, my dad was born in Poland. I know a little bit about the immigrant experience. Nobody has ever asked me for my birth certificate. Maybe it has something to do with the color of my skin.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (9 March 2016)

Women, People, Color, Birth

“For the translator of poetry, there is no activity that brings you into a closer, more intimate contact with language, both the second language and your own language, which translation allows you to experience freshly. Of course, translation is the impossible art which is why it attracts often the best minds, at least those driven by difficulty. The best metaphor I know for translation is from my friend Eamon Grennan, who translated the poems of Leopardi. It's like walking in a clear mountain stream, looking at colorful stones in the water. You find one so gorgeous, you put it in your pocket, take it home and put it on a shelf. In the morning you are surprised that the stone looks so dull and without luster. You have the stone, but you have removed it from the water of its home language so it has lost its luster.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Art, Color, Home, Mountain

“I work like a gang of slaves; the day seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture and have all sorts of projects in my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is! I rush there at the end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened. I don't know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other.... we don't know their language, that is all; but I am quite sure of this - they do not make puns!.... Send [me] 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw ditto, 3 Naples's yellow, 1 burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 1 bottle of raw oil.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet, in his letter from Barbizon, c. 1850 to fr:Alfred_Sensier in Paris; as cited by Arthur Hoeber in The Barbizon Painters – being the story of the Men of thirty https://ia902205.us.archive.org/30/items/barbizonpainters00hoeb/barbizonpainters00hoeb.pdf – associate of the National Academy of Design; publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1915, p. 38 In 1850 Millet entered into an arrangement with Alfred Sensier, who provided him with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings (source: Murphy, Alexandra R. Jean-François Millet. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984, p. xix), see: Wikipedia, Millet 1835 - 1850

Beauty, Idea, Tree, Winter

“One Australian tradition is to cut down the elite and the successful. It had its roots in the era of convicts who naturally opposed those in authority. This levelling or egalitarian tradition continued to flourish on the goldfields in the 1850s when the unusual mining laws gave everyone an opportunity to find gold, and the tradition was accentuated around 1900 by the rising trade unions. The attitude was one of the spurs to Australian democracy.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

Law, Democracy, Nature, Success

“This is the sort of advice and counsel you might find yourself delivering one day to a future President or Secretary of Defense. When you do, make sure it your best, most independent military opinion—neither constrained nor contaminated by personal politics. Part of the deal we made when we joined up was to willingly subordinate our individual interests to the greater good of protecting national interests. The military as an institution must remain a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway. We give our best advice beforehand. If it's followed, great. If it's not, we have only two choices. Obey the orders we have been given, carrying them out with the professionalism and loyalty they deserve or vote with our feet. That's it. We don't get to debate those orders after the fact. We don't get to say, "Well, it's not how I would have done it," or "If only they had listened to ME." Too late at that point … and too cowardly. Few things are more damaging to our democracy than a military officer who doesn't have the moral courage to stand up for what's right or the moral fiber to step aside when circumstances dictate.”

Michael Mullen (1946) U.S. Navy admiral and 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

USNA Commencement Address in Annapolis, MD (23 May 2008) http://www.jcs.mil/chairman/speeches/USNACommencementAddress2008.html

Democracy, Courage, Future, Parting

“By trying to do what is right will often entail you having to disagree with others, and this is not easy. Once you start doing it more often, you will find it easier.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.89

“I find, by your Excellency's letter to General Sullivan, that you expect the enemy are going to evacuate New York, and that it is probable they are coming eastward. I can hardly think they mean to make an attempt upon Boston, notwithstanding the object is important; and, unless they attack Boston, there is no other object worthy their attention in New England. I am rather inclined to think they mean to leave the United States altogether. What they hold here now, they hold at a great risk and expense. But, suppose they actually intend to quit the Continent, they will endeavour to mislead our attention, and that of our allies, until they can get clear of the coast. The Admiral is fortifying for the security of his fleet; but I am told his batteries are all open in the rear, which will be but a poor security against a land force. General Heath thinks there ought to be some Continental troops sent here : but the Council will not turn out the militia; they are so confident the enemy are not coming here. If your Excellency thinks the enemy really design an attack upon Boston, it may not be useless for you to write your opinion to the Council Board, for I suspect they think the General here has taken the alarm without sufficient reasons. The fortifications round this place are very incomplete, and little or nothing doing upon them. I have given General Heath my opinion what parts to take possession of, if the enemy should attempt the place before the Continental army gets up. From four to five hundred troops have arrived at Halifax; their collective strength will make a formidable army.”

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

Letter to George Washington (September 1778)

Confidence, Thinking, Parting

“If I had to choose between having someone physically faithful to me or having him committed to my preservation, I would opt for the latter because there is no doubt in my mind when I see couples at parties selling each other out which is the worst offense. Physical fidelity is a lovely thing if someone feels that way about you willingly, but relatively meaningless of you exact it for a price. And while it is easy enough to be faithful for the first five or ten years, it is more difficult by twice each year after that, so women as well as men are finding it hard to do.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Love, Women, Men, Faith

“If you spend your life looking in vain for the Loch Ness Monster, stalking the lake with a camera, sounding it with sonar, and sending submersibles into its depths, and yet still find nothing, what is the more sensible view: to conclude provisionally that the monster simply isn’t there, or to throw up your hands and say, “It might be there; I’m not sure?””

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Most people would give the first response—unless they’re talking about God.
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 95

Life, God, People

“In the world of music, it is a rarity to find a person who is both a gifted composer and a top conductor. So it is in economics as well. Paul is that rarity. When Paul is writing, the sun is always out. His writing—ever eloquent, ever stirring—is done with the kind of verve that one seldom finds today.”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

10.Paul Samuelson is a Great Maestro.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

World, Music, Sun, Personality

“After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

World, Way, Error, Thinking

“If history is the judge to which we appeal, then it can also find against us. It can highlight our mistakes by reminding us of those who, at other times, faced similar problems but who made different, perhaps better decisions.”

Margaret MacMillan (1943) Canadian historian

p.22

History, Problem, Decision, Time

“The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.”

I. F. Stone (1907–1989) American investigative journalist and author

The Haunted Fifties (1963)

“The idea of sin and retribution is just an attempt to hide behind the shield of superstition. You are trying to find rational causes where there aren’t any.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 11 (p. 166).

Idea

“God's Agape is a love that makes a mockery of all attempts at rational motivation. But if the rationalising tendency will not allow even God's love to retain spontaneity, but insists on finding a motive for it in the value of its object, then it is only to be expected that it should insist even more strongly on treating the Christian's love for his neighbour in a similar way. For Jesus, on the other hand, it is beyond question that God's love is unmotivated and spontaneous; and therefore it also also beyond question for Him that a man's love for his neighbour should be spontaneous and unmotivated. There is no occasion to look behind our neighbor's actual condition for any hidden valuable quality that will explain and justify our love for him. God's love is explanation and sanction enough.”

Anders Nygren (1890–1978) Swedish bishop

Source: Agape and Eros (1930), p. 99

Love, God, Way, Motivation

“In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

The Photographer’s Wife
Gigi (1945)

“For the Government, it is quite hard for them to find media faces – to find people to head up campaigns – because they are all so weird-looking, aren't they? They all look like Muppets who have been left too close to a radiator. I don't like to mock the afflicted, but how did anyone know that Willie Whitelaw had had a stroke? What genius spotted that? I mean, with most people it's quite a dramatic change, isn't it? But what happened? Someone thought 'Oh, Willie's dribbled an extra pint today. What's going on? We'll run a few tests.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

People, Affliction, Change

“We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy…One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldn't rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant…I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the media's prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still.”

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

The Great Liberal Death Wish, lecture at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA, March 1979. Transcript in Imprimis http://imprimisarchives.hillsdale.edu/file/archives/pdf/1979_05_Imprimis.pdf May 1979 (pdf).

Food, Fools, Way, Imagination

“I find it remarkable that Saudi Arabia, which borders Iraq and is controlled by a multi-billion dollar family, is demanding that U. S. combat troops have ‘boots on the ground’ against ISIS. Where are the Saudi troops? With the third largest military budget in the world and an army far larger than ISIS, the Saudi government must accept its full responsibility for stability in their own region of the world. Ultimately, this is a profound struggle for the soul of Islam, and the anti-ISIS Muslim nations must lead that fight. While the United States and other western nations should be supportive, the Muslim nations must lead.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

[Piccoli, Sean, Sen. Bernie Sanders Rips Saudis for Demanding US Troops Fight ISIS, http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bernie-Sanders-ISIS-US-troops/2015/03/06/id/628788/, 6 March 2015, NewsMax, 17 March 2015]
[Diamond, Jeremy, Sen. Bernie Sanders: 'I'll be damned' if Americans lead ISIS fight, http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/30/politics/bernie-sanders-middle-east-quagmire/, 6 March 2015, CNN News, 17 March 2015]
[Sanders, Bernie, Sanders Calls Saudi Demand for U.S. Ground Troops ‘Offensive’, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-calls-saudi-demand-for-us-ground-troops-offensive, March 6, 2015, US Senate, March 17, 2015]
2010s, 2015

World, Family, Soul, Support

“Some people, myself included, advocated foreign intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo while opposing our adventure in Iraq. Sam Moyn might find this inconsistent, but (on this occasion at least) it is the world that is inconsistent, not us. During the Balkan wars individuals’ rights were under ascertainable threat in real time. Outside intervention could make a difference, and it did. This was not the case in Iraq. We should always be suspicious of the invocation of universal “rights” as a cover for sectional interests. But it doesn’t follow from this that talk of rights is “really” always about something else. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. How, then, should we adjust our response? Well, there is a serviceable Keynesian answer to that: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?””

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

"Double-Entry Moral Bookkeeping", The Nation (April 25, 2007)

War, People, World, Universe

“Whether what you manage is a business, hospital, university department, government agency or even a symphony orchestra or dancing school, we suspect you will find it advisable to try to prepare ahead for what might happen in the future.”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

Simon Ramo, Ronald Sugar, : A Structured Approach to Shaping the Future of Your Business. (2009), p. 8

School, Business, Universe, Future

“Previous research addressing market orientation from a cultural perspective typically has used behavioral measures of this construct. Drawing on literature in the fields of organizational theory and marketing, the authors develop a multilayer model of market-oriented organizational culture. They draw an explicit distinction among values that support market orientation, norms for market orientation, artifacts indicating high and low market orientation, and market-oriented behaviors. On the basis Of qualitative research and a subsequent survey, the authors develop scales for measuring the different layers of market-oriented culture and analyze relationships among the different components of market-oriented culture. Findings indicate that artifacts play a crucial role in determining behavior within organizations. Results also indicate that a market-oriented culture influences financial performance indirectly through market performance and that this relationship is stronger in highly dynamic markets.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A multiple-layer model of market-oriented organizational culture", 2000, p. 449 ; Abstract

Behavior, Literature, Support, Drawing

“We'll not be victims there'll be no victims of to speak

And only then will we be free

And up will rise the meek

And when we fall we will fall together

No one will catch us so we'll catch ourselves

And where we roam, we will roam forever

No one will understand what we meant

The beaten and the bruised, forsaken, the abused

Oh what a glorious day we'll have rising up and claiming all our dues

The day will come as sure as the ever-setting sun

All of those that self-impose will find themselves so indisposed

Now, with the line drawn in the wet sand

You need to tell us where you stand

Sitting waiting watching rotting everything they warned us of is true

Now tell me what we're all supposed to do

They're coming after all of us with everything they've got

With the fury of a soldier who will answer to his God

So how will we fight? All we have is logic and love on our side”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"We Will Fall Together" from "Somewhere In the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/01/

Love, God, Understanding, Waiting

“I notice in Kentucky a disposition to cry against the tyranny and oppression of our Government. Now, were it not for war you know tyranny could not exist in our Government; therefore any acts of late partaking of that aspect are the result of war; and who made this war? Already we find ourselves drifting toward new issues, and are beginning to forget the strong facts of the beginning. You know and I know that long before the North, or the Federal Government, dreamed of war the South had seized the U. S. arsenals, forts, mints, and custom-houses, and had made prisoners of war of the garrisons sent at their urgent demand to protect them 'against Indians, Mexicans, and negroes.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

War, Dreams, Strong, Housing

“Our goal is not to win the war, we have already done it. Our goal is to find a just solution, and we are unanimous on the ways to find it.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

President Serzh Sargsyan participated at the solemn event dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?pn=4&id=1366 (December 18, 2010)

War, Way

“Let me say quite categorically that there is no such thing as a fuzzy concept… We do talk about fuzzy things but they are not scientific concepts. Some people in the past have discovered certain interesting things, formulated their findings in a non-fuzzy way, and therefore we have progressed in science.”

Rudolf E. Kálmán (1930–2016) Hungarian-born American electrical engineer

Kálmán (1972), cited in: Lotfi A. Zadeh (2004) Fuzzy Logic Systems, origin, concepts and trends http://wi-consortium.org/wicweb/pdf/Zadeh.pdf November 10, 2004

People, Way, Science, Past

“Man is a maker of meanings in a world that sometimes seems without meaning. Few things help us find meaning more than a cause to believe in, better yet, about which to get excited. Renewing organizations seem to run on causes.”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Source: The Renewal Factor, 1987, p. 12

World, Help

“If, then, we focus our attention on the balanced relation, we shall be able to see unity in natural things. However, there it appears under a veil. But even though we never find unity expressed exactly, we can unify every representation, in other words, the exact representation of unity can be expressed; it must be expressed, for it is not visible in concrete reality.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Nature, Reality, Appearance

“As you grow spiritually, you will find yourself teaching more as you learn more. Your learning and your teaching will take place even in your sleep.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 26

Sleep, Learning

“I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Letter to Edward Blount (27 August 1714); a similar expression in "Thoughts on Various Subjects" in Swift's Miscellanies (1727): Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

Hope, Madness, Country

“Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren’t all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I’d light a match.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999 November 12.
After The Justice Department mailed 87 razor blade–laced threats to medical researchers studying news drugs on primates.
On animal research and activism against it

Idea, Light, Time, Animals