Quotes about finding
page 82

“Her heart and lip were music, albeit one
Who marvell'd at what her sweet self had done;
Who breathed for Love, and pined to find that Fame
In answer to her lute's soft summons came;
See, the eye droops in sadness, as to shun
That which it dared not gaze on, Glory's sun.”

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

(1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Erinna
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Sadness, Music, Sun

“The task of finding a purpose in life also calls for perseverance. I have seen many young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find out how deaf the wold is, they withdraw to wait and save their strength. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little peak from which they can make themselves heard. Each thinks that in a few years he will have gained a standing, and then he can use his power for good. Finally the time comes, and with it a strange discovery: he has lost his horizon of thought. Without perseverance, ambition and a sense of responsibility have evaporated.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Men, World, Thinking

“Feyerabend's Dadaesque rhetoric concealed a deadly serious point: the human compulsion to find absolute truths, however noble, too often culminates in tyranny. Feyerabend attacked science not because he truly believed that it had no more claim to truth than did astrology. Quite the contrary. Feyerabend attacked science because he recognized—and he was horrified by—its power, its potential to stamp out the diversity of human thought and culture. He objected to scientific certainty for moral and political, rather than for epistemological, reasons.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 48

Truth, Science

“In highlighting the role of the unconscious in organization, there is a danger that many will now want to find ways of managing the unconscious as well. This, of course, is impossible, because the unconscious is, by nature, uncontrollable.”

Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 231

Way, Nature

“The orders resting on BATS were typically just the 100-share minimum required for an order to be at the front of any price queue, as their only purpose was to tease information out of investors. The HFT firms posted these tiny orders on BATS—orders to buy or sell 100 shares of basically every stock traded in the U. S. market—not because they actually wanted to buy and sell the stocks but because they wanted to find out what investors wanted to buy and sell before they did it. BATS, unsurprisingly, had been created by high-frequency traders.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 73

“You'll find, young Jim, that there are two measures of a man. Only two. What he will die for…and what he will kill for. You made your choice aboard the Hispaniola.”

Arthur M. Jolly (1969) American writer

Squire Trelawney, Act II, Scene 6
Long Joan Silver (2013)

“To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"The Blind Who Would Lead", essay in The Roving Mind (1983); as quoted in Canadian Atheists Newsletter (1994)
General sources

God, People, Books, School

“A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only defenders of Islam. They will have to give a special meaning to it if they want the Arab nation to have a good reason for survival.”

Michel Aflaq (1910–1989) Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist

Source: In Memory of the Arab Prophet (1 April 1943)

“True, he had been living a lively interior life today: he had dreamed something, he had awoken with an erection, and while shaving he had been dogged by a feeling that today he needed to decide, though he could not see clearly what it was he needed to decide, besides which he was all too aware of his own inability to make any decisions.
Despite that, the thought did cross Kingbitter's mind that he ought to do something about finding a theater to do the play, the comedy (or tragedy?) "Liquidation."
He was now in the ninth year of considering that.
Indeed, Kingbitter was now in the ninth year of considering whether he was handling the literary estate with due diligence.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Liquidation (2003)

Life, Dogs, Dreams, Feeling

“Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"The Seeing Eye", in Christian Reflections (1967), p. 167

God, Hope, Sense, Reading

“I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

As quoted in "Ingmar Bergman Confides in Students" http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/08/movies/ingmar-bergman-confides-in-students.html New York Times, May 7, 1981.

Decision

“demons and fishhooks
he exclaimed
i am losing my personal
identity as a worm
my individuality
is melting away from me
odds craw i am becoming
part and parcel of
this bloody robin
so help me i am thinking
like a robin and not
like a worm any
longer yes yes i even
find myself agreeing
that a robin must live
i still do not
understand with my mentality
why a robin must live
and yet i swoon into a
condition of belief”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

the robin and the worm

Understanding, Thinking, Help, Parting

“The world is not a box, there’s no lid, no doors, no cardboard flaps or locks, and everything in nature from the clouds to the rocks is a piece of the puzzle of the purpose of mankind, it's a piece of the peace that we’ll find.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The People of The Boxes"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

World, Peace, Nature, Box

“Planning is undoubtedly necessary to ensure progress. If Nations and Peoples are finding it difficult to fulfil their own Plans, then who is going to be so presumptuous as to plan for the whole world? In these times of Cold Wars and Bamboo and Iron Curtains do we suppose one Nation will sit idly by and let another take the initiative in this respect? Even suppose the impossible does occur do you think the other Nations will accept the Plan of another with whom they are outwardly in peaceful contact?”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World

War, People, World, Peace

“…freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation… in the face of tyranny, cruelty, oppression, extremism, sometimes there is only one choice. When the world looks to America, America looks to you, and you never let her down… I have never lost faith in America's essential goodness and greatness… I have 35 years of experience, fighting for real change… the American people and our American military cannot want freedom and stability for the Iraqis more than they want it for themselves… we should have stayed focused on wiping out the Taliban and finding, killing, capturing bin Laden and his chief lieutenants… I also made a full commitment to martial American power, resources and values in the global fight against these terrorists. That begins with ensuring that America does have the world's strongest and smartest military force. We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working… We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war… We've got to be prepared to maintain the best fighting force in the world. I propose increasing the size of our Army by 80,000 soldiers, balancing the legacy systems with newer programs to help us keep our technological edge… I'm fighting for a Cold War medal for everyone who served our country during the Cold War, because you were on the front lines of battling communism. Well, now we're on the front lines of battling terrorism, extremism, and we have to win. Our commitment to freedom, to tolerance, to economic opportunity has inspired people around the world… American values are not just about America, but they speak to the human dignity, the God-given spark that resides in each and every person across the world… We are a good and great nation.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kansas City, Missouri, August 20, 2007 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/21/clinton-iraq-tactics-wo_n_61272.html Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

God, War, People, World

“This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, May 9, 1996, "FDR's memorial hides character" http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-05-09/news/1996130096_1_memorial-felix-frankfurter-cigarette-holder at baltimoresun.com 1990s

Age, Search, Sense

“Mr. Gibbon has much to learn concerning the gospel before he can be properly qualified to write against it. Hitherto he seems to have been acquainted with nothing but the corrupt establishments of what is very improperly called Christianity; whereas it is incumbent upon him to read and study the New Testament for himself. There he will find nothing like Platonism, but doctrines in every respect the reverse of that system of philosophy, which weak and undistinguishing christians afterwards incorporated with it.
Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the same reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Angels, Study, Learning, Reading

“[Jensen] does not believe that [heritability] estimates alone can decide the issue of genetic versus environmental hypotheses. However, he argues that the probability of a genetic hypothesis will be much enhanced if, in addition to evidencing high [heritability], we find we can falsify literally every plausible environmental hypothesis one by one. He challenges social scientists who believe in an environmental explanation of the IQ gap between the races to bring their hypotheses forward. Given his competence and the present state of the social sciences, the result is something of a massacre…. Far too many of Jensen's critics have not taken up the challenge to refute him in any serious way, rather they have elected for various forms of escape, the most popular of which has been to seize on an argument put forward by the distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard C. Lewontin.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), pp. 40, 54. Quoted from Nevin Sesardic, Making Sense of Heritability (2005), p. 136.

Way, Science

“I can't even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work but it ain't easy.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

Michael Specter, (April 8, 1993) "At Home With: Madeline Kahn; Funny? Yes, but Someone's Got to Be" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7D9153DF93BA35757C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1, The New York Times, The New York Times Company

Love, Truth, Feeling

“How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community, sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs, I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair.”

Franz Kafka book Investigations of a Dog

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)

Life, Fear, Dogs, Feeling

“All I cared about was finding answers, no matter who had them. When, later on, I began to associate with conservatives, it was because their ideas were closer to mine than liberals' ideas, not because I saw myself as one of them. I'd already noticed that it was liberals, not conservatives, who were most likely to condescend to blacks, but I assumed, like the good radical I once was, that liberals and conservatives were simply two different breeds of snake, one stealthy, the other openly hostile.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Pages 107-108
2000s, (2008)

Hostility, Idea

“I'm not a career filmmaker and by that I'm not tearing down people who are, but I'm not Wes Anderson who can rent out a floor at the Chateau Marmont for a month to write my new screenplay--I have a life outside of filmmaking and after Buffalo '66, I genuinely thought I was done with making movies. But they pulled me back in. This Brown Bunny, it had something in it for me that I just had to say. I had to express it, it was in me and it ate its way out of me. I wished that it didn't, but it did and I was surprised to find myself shooting again.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

Film Freak Central Interview

Life, People, Way, Tear

“Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there — which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

“Comparative theology is a two-edged weapon, and has so proved itself. But the Christian advocates, unabashed by evidence, force comparison in the serenest way; Christian legends and dogmas, they say, do somewhat resemble the heathen, it is true; but see, while the one teaches us the existence, powers, and attributes of an all-wise, all-good Father-God, Brahmanism gives us a multitude of minor gods, and Buddhism none whatever; one is fetishism and polytheism, the other bald atheism. Jehovah is the one true God, and the Pope and Martin Luther are His prophets! This is one edge of the sword, and this the other: Despite missions, despite armies, despite enforced commercial intercourse, the "heathen" find nothing in the teachings of Jesus — sublime though some are — that Christna and Gautama had not taught them before. And so, to gain over any new converts, and keep the few already won by centuries of cunning, the Christians give the "heathen" dogmas more absurd than their own, and cheat them by adopting the habit of their native priests, and practicing the very "idolatry and fetishism" which they so disparage in the "heathens."”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Comparative theology works both ways.
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter XI

God, Way, Cheating

“As mining became more difficult, as the claims became more difficult to find because there were more miners than there were workable claims, everyone competing and fighting for his smaller and smaller opportunity to strike it rich, you became, therefore… desirous of finding an excuse for your failure, or desirous of finding a way to get an advantage. Well one of the ways was to say, I'm an American; What are the Mexicans doing here? What are the Indians? We don't need the Indians, we can certainly get rid of them. What are the Chinese doing here? Those people shouldn't be here… This isn't their land, this is my land! This belongs to us!”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

The West (1996)

People, Way, Failure, Fight

“In the true, original, catholic, evangelical religion of Jesus Christ, and in this alone, all the divided religions of Christendom find their union, their repose, their support. Find out His mind, His character, His will; and in His greatness we shall rise above our littlenesses; in His strength we shall lose our weakness; in His peace we. shall forget our discord.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 149.

Peace, Religion, Support, Christ

“Work me, lord. Please don't you leave me. I feel so useless down here with no one to love. Though I looked everywhere, and I can't find me anybody to love, to feel my care…So, work me lord, oh, use me lord. Can I show you how hard it is trying to live when you're all alone? Everyday I keep trying to move forward but something is driving me, oh, back. Something's trying to hold on to me, to my way of life. So, oh, don't you forget me down here lord, no no no no no, don't you forget me, lord. Well I don't think I'm any very special kind of person down here, I know better. But I don't think you're gonna find anybody, not anybody who can say that they tried like I tried. The worst that you can say all about me is that I'm never satisfied…”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Work me, Lord", live at Woodstock (1969)

Love, Life, Way, Feeling

“The collapse of the Ice Ages hypothesis does not, of course, settle the debate about whether there are racial differences in genes for intelligence. If universities had their way, the necessary research will never be done. They fund the most mundane research projects, but never seem to have funds to test for genetic differences between races. I tell US academics I can only assume that they believe that racial IQ differences have a genetic component, and fear what they might find. They never admit that the politics of race affects their research priorities. It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century (2012), p. 36, Box 4

Age, Fear, Way, Intelligence

“If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

Author FAQ at Brown's official site http://www.danbrown.com/meet_dan/faq.html

Feeling, Idea, Help

“Mexico is a country that has a lot of energy potential. We not only have oil; we also have shale gas. But we cannot expect that a Mexican state company is the only one that can exploit the resources. Resources will continue belonging to Mexicans. They are the patrimony of the nation. But the Mexican state must find more efficient ways to exploit those resources.”

Enrique Peña Nieto (1966) 57th President of Mexico

Foreign Affairs interview (January 2014)

Way, Country

“… From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind.”

David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

"David J. Gross - Biographical" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2004/gross-bio.html, Nobel Prize in Physics, nobelprize.org (2004)

Life, Secret, Books, Age

“I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hard-to-find records. Nothing was alphabetized.”

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

Do You Believe in Gosh?

“I am constantly trying to find solutions to the problems of the nation. However, our opponents are engrossed in finding a solution to Modi. This mentality can never benefit the nation”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014 Source: Rally in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, quoted by First Post, "Modi welcomes Paswan to NDA: 'National Development Alliance'" http://www.firstpost.com/politics/modi-welcomes-paswan-to-nda-national-development-alliance-1416863.html (3 March 2014).

Problem

“I'm just interested in finding out what the hell goes. I mean do you have to be a goddam bohemian type, or dead, for Chrissake, to be a real poet? What do you want — some bastard with wavy hair?”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Source: Franny and Zooey (1961), Franny (1955), p. 19

Hell, Dead

“I find a way to ground myself, literally by using the ground of places near where I live.”

Anne Simpson (1956) Canadian poet

Susan Olding Interview (February 23, 2010)

Way

“You see, some people have a talent for programming. At ten to thirteen years old, typically, they're fascinated, and if they use a program, they want to know: “How does it do this?” But when they ask the teacher, if it's proprietary, the teacher has to say: “I'm sorry, it's a secret, we can't find out.” Which means education is forbidden. A proprietary program is the enemy of the spirit of education. It's knowledge withheld, so it should not be tolerated in a school, even though there may be plenty of people in the school who don't care about programming, don't want to learn this. Still, because it's the enemy of the spirit of education, it shouldn't be there in the school.
But if the program is free, the teacher can explain what he knows, and then give out copies of the source code, saying: “Read it and you'll understand everything.” And those who are really fascinated, they will read it! And this gives them an opportunity to start to learn how to be good programmers.
To learn to be a good programmer, you'll need to recognize that certain ways of writing code, even if they make sense to you and they are correct, they're not good because other people will have trouble understanding them. Good code is clear code that others will have an easy time working on when they need to make further changes.
How do you learn to write good clear code? You do it by reading lots of code, and writing lots of code. Well, only free software offers the chance to read the code of large programs that we really use. And then you have to write lots of code, which means you have to write changes in large programs.
How do you learn to write good code for the large programs? You have to start small, which does not mean small program, oh no! The challenges of the code for large programs don't even begin to appear in small programs. So the way you start small at writing code for large programs is by writing small changes in large programs. And only free software gives you the chance to do that.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

A Free Digital Society - What Makes Digital Inclusion Good or Bad? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.html#education; Lecture at Sciences Po in Paris (19 October 2011)] 2010s

People, Secret, Education, School

“Of Dr. Hooker, whom I have often cited in this chapter, Mr. Darwin has spoken in the Introduction to his 'Origin of Species, as one 'who had, for fifteen years, aided him in every possible way, by his large stores of knowledge, and his excellent judgement.' This distinguished botanist published his 'Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia' in 1859, the year after the memoir on 'Natural Selection' was communicated to the Linnaean Society, and a few months before the appearance of the' Origin of Species.'… no one was better qualified by observation and reflection to give an authoritative opinion on the question, whether the present vegetation of the globe is or is not in accordance with the theory which Mr. Darwin has proposed. We cannot but feel, therefore, deeply interested when we find him making the following declaration: 'The mutual relations of the plants of each great botanical province, and, in fact, of the world generally, is just such as would have resulted if variation had gone on operating throughout indefinite periods, in the same manner as we see it act in a limited number of centuries, so as gradually to give rise in the course of time, to the most widely divergent forms…. The element of mutability pervades the whole Vegetable Kingdom; no class, nor order, nor genus of more than a few species claims absolute exemption from it, whilst the grand total of unstable forms, generally assumed to be species, probably exceeds that of the stable.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 417-418

World, Way, Feeling, Communication

“I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they're actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?"”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

I don't need that question answered.
Paris Review Interview (1986)

Question, Time

“England has got successful competitors in America, Japan, France, Germany. It has competitors in the handful of mills in India, and as there has been an awakening in India, even so there will be an awakening in South Africa with its vastly richer resources — natural, mineral, and human. The mighty English look quite pigmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages, after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Statement at Oxford (24 October 1931), published in Young India Vol. 13 (1931), p. 355
1930s

Nature, Success

“Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a shot at finding out.”

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

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

Question, Waiting

“What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web … Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

As quoted in "US backing for two-tier internet" in BBC News (7 September 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6983375.stm

“The great Cartesian invention had its roots in those famous problems of antiquity which originated in the days of Plato. In endeavoring to solve the problems of the trisection of an angle, of the duplication of the cube and of the squaring of the circle, the ruler and compass having failed them, the Greek geometers sought new curves. They stumbled on the conic sections…There we find the nucleus of the method which Descartes later erected into a principle. Thus Apollonius referred the parabola to its axis and principal tangent, and showed that the semichord was the mean propotional between the latus rectum and the height of the segment. Today we express this relation by x2 = Ly, calling the height the ordinate (y) and the semichord the abscissa (x); the latus rectum being… L. …the Greeks named these curves and many others… loci… Thus the ellipse was the locus of a point the sum of the distances of which from two fixed points was constant. Such a description was a rhetorical equation of the curve…”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Number: The Language of Science (1930)

Lying, Problem

“One of the most difficult aspects of being an actor is trying to find the right work. Work that speaks to an audience, that you enjoy doing and that is reflective of your artistic sensibility. To be a contemporary movie actor, you have to kill people - that's basically it. If you don't cock'n'load'n'fire a Smith&Wesson at some point in your film career, you're not going to have a film career. There just aren't enough movies that I like to keep me working in movies all the time. Well, let me rephrase that: there aren't enough available parts.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/may/16/ethan-hawke-cherry-orchard-old-vic-mendes (2009-05-16) 2005&ndash;2009

People, Time, Parting

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature."”

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

It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Free-thinker mentality.
Letter to Beatrice F. in response to a question about whether he was a "free thinker" (17 December 1952), p. 121
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

God, Law, Feeling, Idea

“Growing up, I was always in and out of the hospital with stomach problems, and no one could figure out what was wrong. I decided to give up meat and become a vegetarian, and I haven’t had stomach problems since! I love eating healthy, delicious vegetarian meals and the options are endless. No matter where I go, I can find vegetarian dishes that satisfy my hunger and my taste for great food.”

Patricia de Leon (actress) (1976) Actress, model, television host

"Patricia De Leon Says, ‘Go Vegetarian!’" https://www.peta.org/features/patricia-de-leon-vegetarian/, interview with PETA (February 2010).

Love, Hunger, Food, Problem

“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Marble Faun

Source: The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter XLI: Snowdrops and Maidenly Delights

Thinking, Reading

“While technology can be instrumental in closing gaps and reducing social inequality, not everyone feels invited to the party. Religious extremists, fundamentalists and racists of all sorts, find an easy foothold for spreading hatred and anger among youngsters who feel they’re missing out on the spoils of technology.”

Yoel Esteron (1954) Israeli journalist

Can technology trump Trumpism? http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4882175,00.html, Ynetnews (21-11-16)

Feeling, Anger

“My policy has always been the same. We're fighting ISIS and Assad is fighting ISIS, but we're backing rebels to fight Assad. You can't fight everybody, you have to pick who you want to fight. And now you've got Turkey, who like ISIS more than they like others, no one really knows because we don't have people that know what they're doing. So in my opinion, you go along, and Russia does not like ISIS, and people are starting to find out. I mean in all fairness lost an airplane, got blew out of the air. So Russia is not a fan of ISIS. Russia is bombing the hell out of them, starting to bomb them. I say isis is our number one threat. We can't be fighting everybody at the same time. ISIS is our number one threat. I would bomb the hell out of them -- I like to do one thing at a time. I would knock the hell out of ISIS. I would hit them … so hard like they've never been hit before.”

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

In an interview with Fox & Friends. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trump-kill-isil-families-216343 (December 2, 2015) 2010s, 2015

People, Hell, Time, Fight

“O no don't go O no O slow down Joe!
The righteous path is straight as an arrow,
Take a walk and you'll find it's too narrow,
Too narrow for the likes of me.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Up Jumped the Devil

“It all comes down to the great stories. The colorful and interesting characters that people can invest themselves in. The ones that they want to follow. That is the most critical thing for me. The second thing is, you have to have a filmmaker who gets it. Who has a passion for a character. Who has a vision for a character. Someone who really knows how to execute that vision. It's a hard thing to find. And its essential. The third thing is, and I have been in the trenches of Hollywood for thirty-five years, day by day, trying to make them understand this…Comic books and superheroes are not synonymous.”

Michael E. Uslan (1951) American film producer

Executive Producer Michael E. Uslan Talks The Dark Knight Rises! https://movieweb.com/exclusive-executive-producer-michael-e-uslan-talks-the-dark-knight-rises/ (September 19, 2011)

People, Books, Color, Understanding

“Yes. I think it’s just because I forgot to cut it, and it’s a slightly different colour, so it’s an object of affection or ridicule, depending on whether you’re Steve Mangan or anybody else on the planet. I think your shaved version is very distinguished, incidentally. I wish I could carry it off. Unfortunately all you’d find under here is the FA Cup. My ears are shocking. They can get satellite TV.”

Julian Rhind-Tutt (1968) British actor

An interview on the Green Wing microsite asking if he had a preoccupation with his hair.

Thinking, Dependency

“I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,'yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam [Rig-Veda, 1.24.7]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing…. Wanton waste, careless spoiling of physical things in an incredibly short time, loose disorder, misuse of service and materials due either to vital grasping or to tamasic inertia are baneful to prosperity and tend to drive away or discourage the Wealth-Power. These things have long been rampant in the society and, if that continues, an increase in our means might well mean a proportionate increase in the wastage and disorder and neutralise the material advantage. This must be remedied if there is to be any sound progress…. Asceticism for its own sake is not the ideal of this yoga, but self-control in the vital and right order in the material are a very important part of it… and even an ascetic discipline is better for our purpose than a loose absence of true control. Mastery of the material does not mean having plenty and profusely throwing it out or spoiling it as fast as it comes or faster. Mastery implies in it the right and careful utilisation of things and also a self-control in their use…. There is a consciousness in [things], a life which is not the life and consciousness of man and animal which we know, but still secret and real. That is why we must have a respect for physical things and use them rightly, not misuse and waste, ill-treat or handle with a careless roughness. This feeling of all being consciousness or alive comes when our own physical consciousness'and not the mind only'awakes out of its obscurity and becomes aware of the One in all things, the Divine everywhere.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Undated
India's Rebirth

Life, Children, Truth, Secret

“Our courage and our resolve will be tested. And so too will our imagination. Because our world is changing. And if we are prepared to imagine and to shape it in new ways, we will find ourselves stronger, more free - a better, closer community.”

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

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

World, Way, Imagination, Communication

“Daly: In a sense, would you say that the age of biogenetics/cyberspace is the age of philosophy?
Žižek: Yes, and the age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 54

Life, Age, World, Way

“The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.”

Truman Capote book Other Voices, Other Rooms

Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Love, Beauty, Hell, Nature

“On the subject of biblical texts and examples to why you can't do certain things with your body that you wish to, I find that absolutely absurd. I've always been extremely uncomfortable with the idea in any society that the belief is based on revealed truth, that's to say on a text like a Bible or a Qur'an, or whatever it is. It seems to me that the greatness of our culture, for all its incredible faults, is that we have grown up on the Greek ideal of discovering the truth, discovering by looking around us, by empirical experiment, by the combination of the experience of generations of ancestors who have contributed to our sum knowledge of the way the world works, and so on. And to have that snatched away and to be told what to think by a book, however great it may be in places, this is a book that says you can sell your daughter into slavery, it's a book that bans menstruating women from within miles of temples. The fact that it also says that for one man to lie with another man is an abomination, is no more made relevant or important than the fact that you can't eat shellfish.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Interview with Simon Callow.[citation needed]
2000s

Women, Truth, Lie, Books

“Even the modern word "concept" means "a grasping together," implying that the mind itself, in its act of knowing, functions like the intervening hand (in contrast to its ancient counterpart, “idea,” “that which can be beheld,” which implies that the mind functions like the receiving eye). And modern science rejects, as meaningless or useless, questions that cannot be answered by the application of method. Science becomes not the representation and demonstration of truth, but an art: the art of finding the truth—or, rather, that portion of truth that lends itself to be artfully found.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 8

Truth, Art, Idea, Question

“Today the percentage of female judges, college professors and detectives seen on television is a pretty good reflection of the actual world. (In the case of judges, I wouldn't be shocked to find out the number on television exceeds the number in real life — what is it about those black robes that makes us think ovaries?)
But merely thrusting more women into more prestigious on-screen jobs doesn't necessarily make the working world a better place for women. If you were to show people images of two real-life professionals, one a man, one a woman, and ask them to rate their competence knowing nothing but job and gender — I bet people still give the guys the edge.
It's not television's fault, exactly. But television can help fix the problem. Not by writing women into better professions, but by more accurately showing them as complex people contending with the sort of snide, generous, ambitious, incompetent, sad and hilarious co-workers who populate real workplaces.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Life, Women, People, World

“Only experience or example can rationally determine which way the heart should incline. Now experience is not an advantage that it is open to everyone to acquire, since it depends on the various situations in which, by chance, we find ourselves. For many people, then, this leaves only example that can offer any guidance as to how they should exercise virtue.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

Il n'y a que l'expérience ou l'exemple qui puisse déterminer raisonnablement le penchant du cœur. Or l'expérience n'est point un avantage qu'il soit libre à tout le monde de se donner; elle dépend des situations différentes où l'on se trouve placé par la fortune. Il ne reste donc que l'exemple qui puisse servir de règle à quantité de personnes dans l'exercice de la vertu.
Avis de l'auteur, p. 32; translation pp. 4-5.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

People, Way, Exercises, Chance

“No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html

People

“Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

"Historical Murder", as translated by Anthony Bower
The Rebel (1951)

Justice, Idea, Freedom

“It’s clear that this resistance stems largely from religion. You can find religions without creationism, but you never find creationism without religion.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. xvii

Religion

“Quantum wellness isn't about deprivation and it's not about perfection. It is about pointing yourself in the direction of growth, training yourself to get comfortable with your highest potential, and then taking small steps to support that shift. It's about showing up for yourself, day by day, and then one day finding that you've undergone a transformation.”

Kathy Freston American self-help writer

Quantum Wellness (2008)

Support, Perfection, Training

“Try this: say the words "global, global, global" aloud several times, as fast as you can. You'll find yourself sounding like a turkey ("gobble, gobble, gobble").”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 4, Chapter 21, Globalization, p. 254
Economics For Everyone (2008)

Time

“In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“May: Back from the Argentine”, p. 35.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Country

“I hate to talk about the accident. It's like really pushing me into areas that I've put away. It's going to be difficult. See, I never knew that I was going to die. I knew that there was something very wrong with me but I never knew that I was going to die. And the entire period when I was seemingly gone, when I was struggling for life, I was in a state of coma. I was unconscious. That was the difficult period for my family. It was easy for me because I was oblivious. The difficult period for me started after I got okay. When you're told what you've been through. And it's not enough that you've been told. The worst phase is when you discover that what they have told you is, in fact, true. Your entire body is finished from within. You're in full bloom, you're healthy and you're full of life and gusto. And to suddenly find that the body is not there. You can't move your fingers. Your legs can't support you. And your whole system has gone through a battering. But you know that it was there. It was just there the other day. How come it's not working? It was a very frightening time.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Life, Hate, Family, Support

“Son,” he said, “you’re going to work in this life, and you’re going to play. And when the last days come, you’ll look back and find that that’s all there was, and endless stream of days going back to today. But if you can find the thing you should be doing, the thing that makes you you, and if you can make that thing yours, then you’ve beaten the game. I haven’t. Most men don’t. You probably won’t, either, but the point is to try, and to never give up, even when you think it’s over.”

Eric Garcia (1972) An amazing author who has written several wonderful books!

Source: The Repossession Mambo (2009), Chapter 21 (p. 311)

Life, Men, Game, Thinking

“Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Asimov's Guide to Science (1972), p. 15
General sources

“The life cycle of family size, at least in the U. S., has a very humped shape rather similar to that of income, though with a somewhat earlier peak. As a result, one might expect, and generally finds a fairly constant rate of saving in the central age group, but lower saving or even dissaving in the very young or old.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani, " Life Cycle, Individual Thrift and the Wealth of Nations http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fichiers/enseig/ecoineg/EcoIneg_fichiers/ModiglianiNobelLecture1985(AER1986).pdf" Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1985, in: Nobel Lectures, Economics 1981-1990, Editor Karl-Göran Mäler, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992.

Life, Age, Family

“Our lives are so full of activity and "chatter" it’s difficult to find quiet time… Those are the moments that are the most creative for me. The location is less important than the choice to turn other things off. Because I find that the quietest times of my life speak the loudest.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

As quoted in "The CNN 10 : Thinkers" (2013)

Life, Time

“Book-to-screen adaptations must always strive for two things: First, you must find a way to tell the broad story of the original plot; second, you must somehow reflect the spirit and texture of the novel—that is, you must transform a lot of words into a few pictures. All those digressions, inner monologues, thought processes, turns of phrase, all those word pictures, and especially all that un-photographable stuff that made the novel so delicious, must somehow be represented onscreen by use of the filmmaker's tools: moving pictures, dialogue and performance, sets, costumes, music and all the other tricks of the trade. That's the process a writer must go through to create a successful blueprint for a film.”

Tommy Lee Wallace (1949) American film director

Tommy Lee Wallace on Crafting His Miniseries Masterpiece, IT https://dailydead.com/stephen-king-week-tommy-lee-wallace-on-crafting-his-miniseries-masterpiece-it/ (October 27, 2015)

Books, Music, Way, Success

“Judges who find Constitutional rights the Framers never intended take important issues out of the public space of democratic debate and suspend them in a sort of legal formaldehyde.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at University of Vermont, 8 October 2004 http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=article.php&id=1389 2000s

“Conscientiously though we have sought to avoid them, the reader may find errors attributable in part to inaccurate sources and to faulty recollection. To those who may feel themselves wronged, I freely acknowledge that this is in part a book of opinion and that the opinion is my own.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. viii

Books, Error, Feeling, Parting

“Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?”
They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said.
“I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,” he repeated, “as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!” He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a litter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. “Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,” said Donnell, “then to Hell with you.””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 10, p. 118

Fear, Hell

“Some people undoubtedly find it convenient to have students arrive having already been stamped PRIME, CHOICE, SELECT, or STANDARD.”

Alfie Kohn (1957) American author and lecturer

Punished by Rewards

People

“Maybe I seem a little too clever sometimes… Maybe I'm too well prepared and I may sometimes be regarded as a little fault finding.”

Göran Persson (1949) Swedish politician, Swedish Social Democratic Party, thirty-second Prime minister of Sweden

Answering a question about his weaknesses in the Swedish newspaper Expressen (August 30, 2000).

“As anyone who watches a bird flying may wish that he himself could fly, yet still he cannot fly, being without wings, so also a man may have the will to be pure, to be without blame and spotless, to be always without evil and in communion with God, yet he does not truly have the power. To fly into the divine air and enjoy the liberty of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3:18) may be one's desire, but, if he does not have wings given him, he cannot. Let us pray to God that he give us "the wings of a dove" (Ps 55:7) of the Holy Spirit so we may fly to him and find rest and that he may separate and take away from our soul and body such an evil wind, namely, sin itself, inhabiting the members of our soul and body. For this he alone is able to do.”

Macarius of Egypt (300–391) Egyptian Christian monk and hermit

Homily 2. The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, trans. George A. Maloney.
Disputed

God, Soul, Bird, Evil

“When we don't take years of experience into account, it is easy for a woman to become discouraged when she reads headlines such as 'Study of TV News Directors Finds Discrimination Against Women.' When a woman in the mid-1980's read that TV news directors who were women got paid about 27% less than men directors, it might have made her avoid the field… If, on the other hand, a headline more accurately reflecting the study's core findings, read 'Female Managers Become TV News Directors Three Times as Quickly as Men,' well, that would have made a woman feel wanted… In brief, the road to higher pay is a toll road. But at this point in history, there are female tollbooths and male tollbooths, and the toll charged to women is lower. This should encourage every woman who wishes to embark on the road to higher pay to take it while the tolls are still low, and every man who wishes to be with his children--or just wishes to support the career-focused woman he loves--to be aware that there was never a better time to be a great dad and go with your wife's flow.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 85-87.

Love, Women, Men, Children

“No person is less disposed than I am to accommodate the law to the particular convenience of the case: but I am always glad when I find the strict law and the justice of the case going hand in hand together.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Peaceable v. Read and others (1801), 1 East. 573.

Justice, Law, Personality

“[W]hat good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them? How could one communicate with the gods? Our ancestors (while they were alive!) stumbled on an extremely ingenious solution: divination.

We all know how hard it is to make the major decisions of life: should I hang tough or admit my transgression, should I move or stay in my present position, should I go to war or not, should I follow my heart or my head? We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things. Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.

Consider flipping a coin, for instance. Why do we do it? To take away the burden of having to find a reason for choosing A over B. We like to have reasons for what we do, but sometimes nothing sufficiently persuasive comes to mind, and we recognize that we have to decide soon, so we concoct a little gadget, an external thing that will make the decision for us. But if the decision is about something momentous, like whether to go to war, or marry, or confess, anything like flipping a coin would be just too, well, flippant.

In such a case, choosing for no good reason would be too obviously a sign of incompetence, and, besides, if the decision is really that important, once the coin has landed you'll have to confront the further choice: should you honor your just-avowed commitment to be bound by the flip of the coin, or should you reconsider? Faced with such quandaries, we recognize the need for some treatment stronger than a coin flip. Something more ceremonial, more impressive, like divination, which not only tells you what to do, but gives you a reason (if you squint just right and use your imagination).

Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdomancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatoscopy) or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceroscopy). Then there is moleosophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites, numerology and astrology, among dozens of others.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life, God, War, Way

“Does Irish discontent arise because the priests of Maynooth are now insufficiently clad or fed? I have always thought that it arose because one-third of the people were paupers. I can easily see how, by the granting of this sum, you might hear far less in future times of the sufferings and wrongs of the people of Ireland than you have heard heretofore. For you find that one large means of influence possessed by those who have agitated for the redress of Irish wrongs is the support which the Irish Catholic clergy have given to the various associations for carrying on political agitation. And the object of this Bill is to tame down these agitators—it is a sop given to the priests. It is hush-money, given that they may not proclaim to the whole country, to Europe and to the world, the sufferings of the population to whom they administer the rites and the consolations of religion.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (16 April 1845) against the Maynooth grant, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 161-162.
1840s

Money, People, World, Religion

“A CIA officer's name was blown and there was a leak and we needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it. Given national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.”

Patrick Fitzgerald (1960) American lawyer

CIA probe 'not over' after Cheney's top aide indicted on CNN.com (October 28, 2005) http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/28/leak.probe/index.html

“New shoots, old roots make a tree look beautiful
New approaches and old principles give us true Dharma
Sayings of sages and findings of scientists come together
Human life is then truly splendid –Mankuthimma.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

DVG’s Kannada poetry Kagga translated in to English.
The Wisdom of Kagga: A Modern Kannada Classic

Life, Beauty, Tree

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America. I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks. Secretary Rod Paige and the Lt. Governor will take the podium and discuss education. I do want to thank the folks here at Booker Elementary School for their hospitality. Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much.”

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

Remarks on After Two Planes Crash Into World Trade Center https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_After_Two_Planes_Crash_Into_World_Trade_Center (11 September 2001) 2000s, 2001

God, World, Education, School

“Poor man want to be rich
Rich man want to be king
And a king ain't satisfied
Till he rules everything.
I want to go out tonight
I want to find out what I got.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Badlands"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

““Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.”
“The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate.”
“Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the ‘natural’ process; consequently, you shouldn’t be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.””

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 4, “Enlightenment: Down on the Edgegleam Plains” (p. 83)

Nature, Chance, Time

“It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 269

Pleasure, World, Problem, Learning

“We use the word divine because the word human is not big enough. He is so much more like God than any other. But the word “divine” is really only an expression of Christian agnosticism. I am quite ready to say that I believe in the divinity of Christ, but I do not know what it means, nor can I find anyone who can explain what it means, least of all some of the theologians from Paul onwards. I sincerely believe that he is the Savior of the World, and if I am immediately challenged about what he saves men from, my answer is that he saves men from the utter despair which would fall upon a thoughtful man, who, conscious of high aims and immense possibilities within himself, was condemned to try to achieve them without any aid save his own, and purely human help of his fellows.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.94

Men, God, World, Help

“That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about, he thought of them as working drawings. I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there. And then when you come to use line, if you know what you're looking at, it's much easier to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution to what you want to depict.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981), p. 185
1980s

Love, Understanding, Tear, Drawing

“Virtue, who was of squalid look and dress, said, if you obey me you will adorn yourself not with ornament nor beauty that passes away and perishes, but with everlasting and precious graces. And we are persuaded that everyone who flees from what is superficially good and follows what is reckoned hard and foolish finds happiness awaiting him. For Vice, veiling her actions in the beauties which properly belong to Virtue and are genuine, enslaves groveling people.”

Justin Martyr (100–165) early Christian martyr

Second Apology, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 42

Happiness, People, Beauty

“We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part II

Personality

“My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"You ask the questions", The Independent, 17 June 2004, p. 7.
Asked "Admit it: you want to become prime minister, don't you?" by Amanda Findlay of Bolton.
2000s, 2004

Chance