Quotes about first (10000 quotes, page 34)

“… the fact is that while we have become the most religious of any of the predominantly Christian first world nations, (due to repeated surges in rural revivalism) the US in its infancy was once the most secular government in history. The original colonies were primarily peopled by refugees fleeing religious persecution in other countries. But almost upon arrival, the Puritans only continued that practice against native Shaman, then against Quakers, and even each other –over religious differences. Catholics to the South were even worse! The founding fathers however were largely Deists, the least devout form of theism. They were brilliant men who knew better than to let religion rule over law because theocracy has in all instances almost automatically violated human rights and it inevitably always does. Consequently, the irreligious and non-Christian framers of the American Constitution produced the first government ever to grant all its citizens the right to religious freedom, and they did so by forbidding the government from sponsoring or promoting one religion over any other. Because it is not possible to have freedom of religion without having freedom from religion.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"5th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmbnxtnMB4, Youtube (January 14, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men , People , World , Religion

“I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone so unsuspectingly to its disaster. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.”

Erich von dem Bach (1899–1972) German politician and SS functionary

Quoted in Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators : Essays on the Nazi Holocaust (1980) by Joel E. Dimsdale, p. 35

People , Truth

“I say cowardice, because the standards which is Isaiah Berlin himself has set for anyone who undertakes such an enterprise are dauntingly high. His ability to catch the allegiances and the emotional tone of the authors he has written about, as well as his ability to meet the commentator's first duty to the subtleties of their thought, has always meant that their per sonalities and ideas alike have remained in tact and alive.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Introduction in The Idea of freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin (1979), Edited by Alan Ryan.

Idea

“There is one hit of mine which will not stay in the official records, but which I believe to be the longest clout ever made off a major league pitcher. At least some of the veteran sport writers told me they never saw such a wallop. The Yanks were playing an exhibition game with the Brooklyn Nationals at Jacksonville, Fla., in April, 1920. Al Mamaux was pitching for Brooklyn. In the first inning, the first ball he sent me was a nice, fast one, a little lower than my waist, straight across the heart of the plate. It was the kind I murder, and I swung to kill it. The last time we saw the ball it was swinging its way over the 10-foot outfield fence of Southside Park and going like a shot. The ball cleared the fence by at least 75 feet. Let's say the total distance traveled was 500 feet: the fence was 423 feet from the plate. If such a hit had been made at the Polo Grounds, I guess the ball would have come pretty close to the top of the screen in the centerfield bleachers.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

In "Wherein Babe Tells of Some Longish Swats" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1920/08/15/page/18/article/wherein-babe-tells-of-some-longish-swats by Ruth (as told to Pegler), in The Chicago Tribune (August 15, 1920); reprinted as "The Longest Hit in Baseball" https://books.google.com/books?id=SAAlxi-0EZYC&pg=PA39&dq=%22There+is+one+hit+of+mine%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjngMzRjbnQAhXDYyYKHe-JCCMQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20one%20hit%20of%20mine%22&f=false2 in Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball, p. 39

Way , Travel , Game , Sport

“Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to whorship God.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Stanza 10.
The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/landing_of_the_pilgrim_fathers.html (1826)

God , Freedom

“Twenty-one years between first and second films is longer than any director should have to wait. The case of Polonsky is one of the most dismal hangovers from the McCarthy period.”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3
About

Waiting

“No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

“Twenty-five years ago this Republic was bearing and wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people; the narrowing and disintegrating doctrine of State sovereignty had shackled and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the national government; and the grasping power of slavery was seizing upon the virgin territories of the West, and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage.
At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every human heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and to save.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Men , God , People , Soul

“Ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 185.

“It’s a women’s issue, but a lot of the women wouldn’t be having abortions if the men would step up and be a part of what they are already biologically a part of. Raising children and having children, even though the women birthed the child, is designed for two people to do it. And there is so much undue stress and pressure on the woman if the other one isn’t there. So, really one thing we do is say it’s a woman’s issue, forcing the woman to have to deal with it on her own, so that way men don’t have to. As a man, I am going to passive-aggressively tell you you are in control, when really I am just telling you that because it makes my life easier, cause that way I don’t have to step up and make a decision. I obviously think that a man has just as much invested in that child as the woman does. He need to be there to support her through the physical changes of the pregnancy, and help and provide emotional strength, and do it together. As much as he has a role in making the baby in the first place, it needs to take both of them the whole way through. Any idea that a man doesn’t have a role in it is not true, and is simply more about politics and making a man’s life easier.”

Benjamin Watson (1980) gridiron football player

Benjamin Watson Interview, Part Two http://turningpointfriends.org/benjamin-watson-interview-part-two/

Life , Women , Men , Children

“Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 413.

“Bricks are considered to be the first material created by human intelligence from the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. …The great variety of designs and effects that artists of the past, especially the Arabs… were able to create in their brickwork, assembled with an element so monotonous… can be compared only with the beauty and attractiveness a romantic poet attained by adjusting his verses to the rigidity of a formal meter.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Beauty , Intelligence , Water , Past

“Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world. And their manners were their own business. And so were their politics. And so, but ten times so, were their souls.”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

"The American Cause", address delivered at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts (November 20, 1940); reported in MacLeish, A Time to Act; Selected Addresses (1943), p. 115

People , World , Soul , History

“So great is the ascendancy of the Law of Actions in the infancy of Courts of Justice, that substantive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure; and the early lawyer can only see the law through the envelope of its technical forms.”

Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) British comparative jurist and historian

‘Dissertations on Early Law and Custom’ (1883) ch. 11.

Secret , Justice , Law

“I tour a bit in America and a lot in Europe, Holland especially, where they have this forward-looking music scene because they got through the barriers 15 years ago. They gobble up the things I do. I go to the Far East - I like working with the orchestra in Singapore - but my favourite places tend to be the ones where it's more than turning up and doing a big concert. Next month I go to the Sydney Festival, where I've persuaded them to do the Lou Harrison concerto. As penance, though I don't mind it, I have to play the Gershwin concerto in the first half. And I hope to return year after year to South Africa, where I've been with the National Symphony Orchestra into Soweto. Education work is being done there for the first time. Previously they had never bothered to find new audiences, and now they are staring into an abyss which we may face too. Events there are a fast-forward version of what could happen here.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Times, 15/12/1998
Musician's life

Education , Hope , Music , Time

“Just observe what you are. What you are is the fact: the fact that you are jealous, anxious, envious, brutal, demanding, violent. That is what you are. Look at it, be aware; don’t shape it, don’t guide it, don’t deny it, don’t have opinions about it. By looking at it without condemnation, without judgement, without comparison, you observe; out of that observation, out of that awareness comes affection. Now, go still further. And you can do this in one flash. It can only be done in one flash — not first from the outside and then working further and deeper and deeper and deeper; it does not work that way, it is all done with one sweep, from the outermost to the most inward, to the innermost depth. Out of this, in this, there is attention — attention to the whistle of that train, the noise, the coughing, the way you are jerking your legs about; attention whereby you listen to what is said, you find out what is true and what is false in what is being said, and you do not set up the speaker as an authority. So this attention comes out of this extraordinarily complex existence of contradiction, misery and utter despair. And when the mind is attentive, it can then give focus, which then is quite a different thing; then it can concentrate but that concentration is not the concentration of exclusion. Then the mind can give attention to whatever it is doing, and that attention becomes much more efficient, much more vital, because you are taking everything in.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XIV, p. 301
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works

Jerk , Way , Falseness , Training

“I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The [unclear] call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. [laughter] I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?”

Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012) American writer and publisher

Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group http://www.mediaite.com/online/andrew-breitbart-to-tea-partiers-we-outnumber-liberals-and-we-have-the-guns/ (September 16, 2011)

Death , War , People , Game

“There is a scale of virtues, and it is necessary, if one would mount the higher steps, to begin with the lowest; and the first virtue a man must acquire if he wishes to acquire the others, is that which the ancients called ἐγκράτεια or σωφροσύνη”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

i.e., self-control or moderation.
Source: The First Step (1892), Ch. VIII

“Outwardly Eisenhower impressed me favourably. On June 5 Eisenhower, Montgomery and de Lattre de Tassigny arrived in Berlin to sign the declaration on the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority in Germany by Governments of the USSR, the US, Britain and France. Before the formal meeting, Eisenhower came to my headquarters to confer upon me a high American military award: I was made Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit. On receiving the award, I immediately called Stalin and told him about it. Stalin said: "We should decorate Eisenhower and Montgomery with Orders of Victory and de Lattre de Tassigny with the Order of Suvorov, First Class." "May I tell them about it?"”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

I asked. Stalin said I could.
p. 660

Victory

“The first principle of good barn design is flexibility of space.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“My view is that you don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies. You don't reward your enemies necessarily, by talking to them if you're tough and you know what you're doing. You don't appease them. Talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement. I made 15 trips to Syria in 1990-1991 at a time when Syria was on the list of countries who are state sponsors of terrorism. And the 16th trip, guess what? Lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Now, all I'm saying is that would never have happened if we hadn't been sufficiently dedicated that we were going to keep at it.”

James Baker (1930) Former U.S. Secretary of State

On the October 5, 2006 edition of the Fox News Channel's <i>Hannity & Colmes</i> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,218260,00.html.
2000s

History , Change , Time , Country

“I do not mean to suggest that all those who call themselves monetarists make this unconscious assumption that an inflation involves this uniform rise of prices. But we may distinguish two schools of monetarism. The first would prescribe a monthly or annual increase in the stock of money just sufficient, in their judgment, to keep prices stable. The second school (which the first might dismiss as mere inflationists) wants a continuous increase in the stock of money sufficient to raise prices steadily by a "small" amount—2 or 3 per cent a year. These are the advocates of a "creeping" inflation. … I made a distinction earlier between the monetarists strictly so called and the "creeping inflationists." This distinction applies to the intent of their recommended policies rather than to the result. The intent of the monetarists is not to keep raising the price "level" but simply to keep it from falling, i. e., simply to keep it "stable." But it is impossible to know in advance precisely what uniform rate of money-supply increase would in fact do this. The monetarists are right in assuming that in a prospering economy, if the stock of money were not increased, there would probably be a mild long-run tendency for prices to decline. But they are wrong in assuming that this would necessarily threaten employment or production. For in a free and flexible economy prices would be falling because productivity was increasing, that is, because costs of production were falling. There would be no necessary reduction in real profit margins. The American economy has often been prosperous in the past over periods when prices were declining. Though money wage-rates may not increase in such periods, their purchasing power does increase. So there is no need to keep increasing the stock of money to prevent prices from declining. A fixed arbitrary annual increase in the money stock "to keep prices stable" could easily lead to a "creeping inflation" of prices.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money , School , Past

“DOGS, KIDDIE PORN & STAR TREK: (Hey, that’s a good book title). Unfortunately, I was out with Cosmo when the conversation got interesting around here. First of all, while I think it is wrong to judge dogs by human political categories they most certainly aren’t liberals. Dogs may try to run your life, but they do not much care about running the lives of people they’ve never met. And still, they are willing to judge others -- and admit it. They are morally pragmatic, loyal and willing to share with family while outraged or flummoxed by the idea of taxation for the benefit of people or dogs they don’t know. They firmly believe in sexual harassment as a modus vivendi. They believe nature is a tool. They are not vegetarians and reject animal rights. They chuff at egalitarianism. In short, I think they are Monarchists; they believe in something very close to a Great Chain of Being with humans and dogs at the top (and, even at the top humans and dogs have different ranks).”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

April 2002 http://web.archive.org/web/20001011/www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/2002_04_14_corner-archive.asp
2000s, 2002

Life , People , Books , Family

“First let us ask whether our wealth-creating agencies, particular that of industry, are to be based upon private enterprise of policy management. I can not see how any intelligent observer can have any possible faith in the capacity of political management to provide either stability or progress if it should set out to operate the agencies of wealth creation, particularly industry. It is my firm conviction that any form of 'Government Regulation of Business' is bound to result in an ever-increasing interference with the broad exercise of initiative - the very foundation of the American system. That is the natural evolution of bureaucracy. If that be so, might not the ultimate logical result be the necessity for the socialization of industry through the break down of the profit system induced by the accumulative effect of the ever-increasing political management. We do not need to go far afield to see definite evidences of that possibility”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

as cited in: Thurman Arnold (2000, 72-73).
New York Times interview, 1935

Faith , Exercises , Intelligence , Business

“Erdogan really needs to get a grip on himself, if only because, sadly, Turkey needs him right now as the least bad option in a confused situation. He may be every Turk’s first choice but he sure is the second choice of many. The first thing he needs to do is to take a deep breath since breathing is not one of those things that the ruler had better not do. Next, he needs to restore a measure of discipline within his camp, at least as far as the narrative of the events is concerned.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Turkey – Towards a “One and a Half Party” System http://english.aawsat.com/2016/08/article55355819/opinion-turkey-towards-one-half-party-system, Ashraq Al-Awsat (5 Aug, 2016).

“Almost 2000 years ago, the Roman architect Vitruvius recorded what makes a design good: durability (firmitas), utility (utilitas), and charm (venustas). These quality requirements still hold, for buildings as well as software systems. A well-designed system is easy to implement, is understandable and reliable, and allows for smooth evolution. Badly-designed systems may work at first, but they are hard to maintain, difficult to test, and unreliable.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 2007, p. 279

Understanding

“He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill- being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,—Heaven's blessed life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation. 'Hero-worship,' if you will,—yes, friends; but, first of all, by being ourselves of heroic mind.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Men , God , World

“Nor is it a matter for wonder that the good do not appear herded in great thongs. First because specimens of great goodness are rare, secondly, because they avoid the great crowd of the more thoughtless and keep themselves at leisure for the contemplation of what nature has to show.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

63.
Every Good Man is Free

Nature , Appearance

“For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 126

People , Parting

“Had a long talk to the Chinese First Secretary at the embassy — a very charming man called Liao Dong — and said how much I admired Mao Tse tung or Zedong, the greatest man of the twentieth century. He said that I couldn't admire Mao more than he did. I asked him how Mao was viewed now. He said Mao was 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong; the Cultural Revolution didn't work. He said he had been named after Mao — it was amusing.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Journal entry for 6 June 1996 in Free at Last!: Diaries, 1991-2001 (2003) p. 371
1990s

“In 1933-34, I took a full-blown college course on the University of Chicago campus. This was part of an experiment by President Hutchins to see whether combining the last two years of high school with the first two years of college might make a more rigorous curriculum possible for what he called "General Education." This he hoped might provide a rational, philosophical guide to adult life and citizenship, replacing the vanished religious certainties he had grown up to reject—and regret.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

Life , Education , School , Hope

“The first step to understanding what is really going on in our communities and in our country is to gather more and better data related to those we arrest, those we confront for breaking the law and jeopardizing public safety, and those who confront us. “Data” seems a dry and boring word but, without it, we cannot understand our world and make it better.”

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

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

World , Law , Communication , Understanding

“Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on."”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

He said, "Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car."
Alice's Restaurant Massacree

Cars , Thinking

“Political conservatives have focused on tax reduction as an economic growth strategy for three reasons. First it is self-serving; it saves rich people lots of money. Second, it comports with their ideological allegiance to laissez-faire economics. And third, tax incentives are less intrusive to business-as-usual than any other form of government planning.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 5, Taxes, p. 227

Money , People , Business

“When you are reading God’s Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but what you understand, and with that you comply at once. If you understood only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all, but you do not first have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 29
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

God , Understanding , Reading

“We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes as to whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, an overwhelming majority would cry, "No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, they have meted out to us." {applause} The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: "You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We remember Warsaw! In the first few days of the war. We remember Rotterdam. We have been newly reminded of your habits by the hideous massacre in Belgrade. We know too well the bestial assaults you're making upon the Russian people, to whom our hearts go out in their valiant struggle! {cheers} We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will! You do your worst!”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

and we will do our best! {sustained cheering} Perhaps it may be our turn soon. Perhaps it may be our turn now."
July 14, 1941, in a speech before the London County Council. The original can be found in Churchill's The Unrelenting Struggle (English edition 187; American edition 182) or in the Complete Speeches VI:6448.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

War , People , Sun , Heart

“You burn barns. I don't burn barns. There's this glaring difference, and to me, rather than say which of us is strange, first of all I'd like to clear up just what that difference is.”

Haruki Murakami book Barn Burning

Barn Burning (short story) in The Elephant Vanishes

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter VII, New Interests In land, p. 96

Feeling , Country

“…I had no love for politics. I treasured the privacy of my family life. My mother respected both these sentiments. Then my brother, Sanjay was killed in the prime of his life. It broke a mother’s heart. It did not break a Prime Minister’s will. Without even a day’s break, she carried on her noble task single-minded in fulfilling her pledge to her people
There is a loneliness that only a bereaved mother can know…she called to me in her loneliness. I went to her side. At her instance, I left my love for flying at her instance I joined her as a political aide. From her I learned my first political lessons. It was she who urged me to respond to the insistent demand from the constituency and the part to take my brother’s place as Member of Parliament for Amethi. With her blessings I was made General Secretary of my party asking me to accept the challenge of stepping into her shoes.
In accepting this challenge I fulfilled a national duty and a filial duty of a son to a mother.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi (2009) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=L5bTCgLM1lYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, Quote 37
Quote

Love , Life , People , Family

“There are two prime requisites in efficient staff service, coordination and infiltration. The tertn "co-ordination" describes the necessary method of sound staff procedure, but "infiltration of knowledge" is the ultimate purpose of all staff activities. Staff service is not alone for the top leader. It comes to him first, for he needs it in the making of his initial decisions, but the subordinates in the scalar chain, down to the very rank and file, likewise need it in the intelligent execution of all plans.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 73

Intelligence , Knowledge , Decision

“Now have I told you of Fifteen Revelations, as God vouchsafed to minister them to mind, renewed by lightings and touchings, I hope of the same Spirit that shewed them all.
Of which Fifteen Shewings the First began early in the morn, about the hour of four; and they lasted, shewing by process full fair and steadily, each following other, till it was nine of the day, overpassed.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 65

God , Hope , Light

“Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally that whether you like [Android 4.0] or not … you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Source: Google's Schmidt: Android leads the iPhone http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57338276-264/googles-schmidt-android-leads-the-iphone in CNET (7 December 2011).

“Oh, where is there the heart but knows
Love's first steps are upon the rose!”

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

Canto I
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Heart

“It isn't important who is ahead at one time or another in either an election or horse race. It's the horse that comes in first at the finish line that counts.”

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

As quoted in Bush's Brain : How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (2003) by Wayne Slater and James Moore, p. 173

Time , Horse

“Vyasa wrote the first 40,000 verses and this book was named Jaya. Afterwards other writers added more stories and it became known as Bharata. Later still more additions were made until the composition became the Mahabharata as we know it today…. We believe that Veds Vyasa was one person and that he alone composed the entire Mahabharata consisting of 100,000 verses, it is the world’s largest epic in existence today and an encyclopedia of knowledge.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Swami Tejomayananada, in p. 139.
Sources, Hindu Culture, An Introduction

Books , World , Knowledge , Personality

“The actual manufacture of material into a specific product is a sort of digestive process which must have a functioning organization purposed to meet the required ends, just as the human body has, and it is governed by similar conditions. It must also be directed by a specific intelligence and must have internal and external avenues of correspondence to keep it alive; and, like a living organism, must adhere to the eternal economy of things and show a profit by its activities or it cannot progress.
To exemplify this in a simple way, the writer has laid out Figure I, showing the prime elements composing the anatomy of an industrial body. One does not have to draw on the imagination very far to make a comparison of this anatomy with that of man. It has its mind, will power, and brain to direct it, as indicated by the stockholders, directors and executive officers, a heart which keeps in flow the circulating medium internally; and avenues of correspondence with the outside world which furnish to it the very elements of existence.
This chart shows first, that the stockholders are simply elements belonging to the general public who have made an investment for some specific purpose; second, that immediately after this, the election of directors sets into action the first internal factor in the body, which is then divided into different functioning powers by the election of executive officers.”

Clinton Edgar Woods (1863) American engineer

Source: Organizing a factory (1905), p. 24

World , Way , Imagination , Intelligence

““I Critic am. Critics follow Festival for many lifetimes. We come to Criticize. First want I to know, am I Criticizing sapients? Or is just puppet show on cave wall of reality? Zombies or zimboes? Shadows of mind? Amusements for Eschaton?
A shiver ran up and down Burya’s spine. “I think I’m sapient,” he said cautiously. “Of course, I’d say that even if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? Your question is unanswerable. So why ask it?”
Sister Seventh leaned forward. “None of your people ask anything,” she hissed. “Food, yes. Guns, yes. Wisdom? No. Am beginning think you not aware of selves, ask nothing.””

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Wisdom , People , Food , Question

“When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M.”

John Fowles book The Collector

The Collector (1963)

Men , School , Home , Sister

“I didn’t know what to expect when I made my first convention appearance (in Las Vegas in 2005). I was blown away by the loyalty and knowledge of the fans. They attend these events annually and know more about our characters than we do. Some of them were even dressed in costumes, even as Orion slaves painted in green. Star Trek fans are the most loyal fans.”

Menina Fortunato (1980) Canadian actress

Enterprise's Orion Slave Girls https://www.startrek.com/article/exclusive-interview-enterprises-orion-slave-girls (March 16, 2016)

Star , Knowledge , Appearance , Painting

“Over the past few years as First Lady, I have had the extraordinary privilege of traveling all across this country.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Democratic National Convention speech (2012)

Travel , Past , Country

“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan.
Welcome to the land of fame excess - am I going to fit in?
I jump into the cab, here I am for the first time,
I look to the right and I see the Hollywood sign.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Party in the USA, her second hit song
Song lyrics

Dreams , Time

“She has confessed her parentage to me. Since then, the first enchantment ruined.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Goebbels diary entry in 1924 after finding out his girlfriend Else Janke had a Jewish mother.
Diary excerpts

“The relationship of faith and politics is not about fashioning religious beliefs into political platforms. It is, instead, the way in which faithful people go about the work of politics. If it were the former, family values could be reduced to legislation, but despite the efforts of Christian conservatives, that is not possible. Family values concern how a person, in my case a political person, values his family, his wife and his children. Is the family, especially the spouse, first on the list of priorities, or is it somewhere down the line?”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 124
Faith and Politics (2006)

Children , People , Family , Faith

“We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colours as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green, are not very different from these children. They get indignant if they see other colours in a picture, but if we try to forget all we have heard about green grass and blue skies, and look at the world as if we had just arrived from another planet on a voyage of discovery and were seeing it for the first time, we may find that things are apt to have the most surprising colours.”

Ernst Gombrich book The Story of Art

Source: The Story of Art (1978), p. 26.

Children , People , World , Star

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

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

Men , God , Children , World

“Waterford began its existence as the gateway to the Erie Canal system, the first stretch of which was built to bypass several waterfalls on the Mohawk River.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 28, p. 137

“It has been said that in controversy everything depends upon whether truth be put in the first or in the second place. And so in constitutional law much depends upon whether "liberty" be given precedence.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From The Liberty to Trade as Buttressed by National Law (1909) by George H. Earle, Jr.

Truth , Law , Dependency

“Foreign Spokesman Qin Gang let everyone act as journalists to ask him questions. Professor of Beijing United University Chen Delin got the mic first: “What principles do you follow when you answer questions from Chinese and foreign reporters?””

Qin Gang (1966) politician

Question , Universe

“When you’ve parked the second car in the garage, and installed the hot tub, and skied in Colorado, and wind-surfed in the Caribbean, when you’ve had your first love affair and your second and your third, the question will remain, where does the dream end for me?”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Commencement address at Syracuse University, quoted in New York Times (12 May 1986)

Love , Dreams , Cars , Question

“A man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal has put together this travel journal. But at the moment of signing he is suddenly afraid. So he casts the first stone. Here.”

Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer

Preface to Ecuador (1929)

Travel

“The first impulse towards painting, or toward art in general, stems from the need to communicate, the effort to fix one's own vision, to deal with appearances (which are alien and must be given names and meanings.) Without this, all work would be pointless and unjustified, like Art for Art's Sake.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Art , Communication , Effort , Appearance

“I am as excited as in my first show. There the circle closes itself. The Devil's circle.”

Anke Engelke (1965) German actress

Ich bin so aufgeregt wie in meiner ersten Sendung. Da schließt sich der Kreis. Der Teufelskreis.
On the last Anke Late Night show (21 October 2004)

“Akbar was the first emperor to abolish Jizyah with one stroke of pen, along with all its associations and implications, including the distinction of Muslim and Dhimmî into the bargain. His son and grandson followed his example in regard to Jizyah, generally speaking, but reimposed upon the Hindus all the other restrictions and disabilities suffered by them before.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Jizyah and the spread of Islam, 1990, chapter 3.

Suffering

“So, when a pebble breaks the surface of a motionless pool, in its first movements it forms tiny rings; and next, while the water glints and shimmers under the growing force, it swells the number of the circles over the rounding pond, until at last one extended circle reaches with wide-spreading compass from bank to bank.”
Sic, ubi perrupit stagnantem calculus undam, exiguos format per prima volumina gyros, mox tremulum uibrans motu gliscente liquorem multiplicat crebros sinuati gurgitis orbes, donec postremo laxatis circulus oris contingat geminas patulo curuamine ripas.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book XIII, lines 24–29
Compare:
As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes
The sinking stone at first a circle makes;
The trembling surface, by the motion stirred,
Spreads in a second circle, then a third;
Wide, and more wide, the floating rings advance,
Fill all the watery plain, and to the margin dance.
Alexander Pope, Temple of Fame, lines 436–441
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake:
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. IV, lines 364–367
Punica

Water

“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President. Like many Americans, I’ve been conflicted by this election – I still haven’t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month. But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else – American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party – it is your duty.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

written Twitter statement reported 8 October 2016 article by Variety https://variety.com/2016/biz/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-i-will-not-vote-for-the-republican-candidate-for-president-1201882915/, released a day after the release of the Access Hollywood tape from 2005 of an interview of Trump by Billy Bush
2010s

Time , Country

“At the end of the Civil War, the "Slave Power" had been destroyed, free-labor Republicanism was triumphant, and the freed slave was poised on the verge of assuming an equal place in American society with every other citizen. Fifteen years later, the one-time slaveholders were back in control of the South, free-labor Republicanism was coping with the first stresses of mass industrialization in its own Northern backyard, and the freedmen were consigned to an economic peonage that offered little practical improvement on enslavement. It began to seem that a great opportunity had been bobbled away.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

War , Time

“First stop lying, then start speaking the truth.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Truth , Lying

“At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea.
Standing there on Freedom's shore.
Waiting for the sun…”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Waiting for the Sun" on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)

Freedom , Waiting , Sun , Sea

“Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009

People , Country

“The first discipline modernity’s originators imposed upon themselves was that of self-restraint, learning to live with vulgarity. Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 285.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Learning

“The immediate occasion for alarm is the government's announcement that British contractors for supplying armaments to our armed forces must in future share the work with what are called ‘European firms’, meaning factories situated on the mainland of the European continent. I ask one question, to which I believe there is no doubt about the answer. What would have been the fate of Britain in 1940 if production of the Hurricane and the Spitfire had been dependent upon the output of factories in France? That a question so glaringly obvious does not get asked in public or in government illuminates the danger created for this nation by the rolling stream of time which bears away the generation of 1940, the generation, that is to say, of those who experienced as adults Britain's great peril and Britain’s great deliverance. Talk at Bruges or Luxembourg about not surrendering our national sovereignty is all very well. It means less than nothing when the keys to our national defence are being handed over: an island nation which no longer commands the essential means of defending itself by air and sea is no longer sovereign…The safety of this island nation reposes upon two pillars. The first is the impregnability of its homeland to invasion by air or sea. The second is its ability and its will to create over time the military forces by which the last conclusive battle will be decided. Without our own industrial base of military armament production neither of those pillars will stand. No doubt, with the oceans kept open, we can look to buy or borrow from the other continents; but to depend on the continent of Europe for our arms is suicide.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Birmingham branch of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Association (18 February 1989), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), pp. 49-50
1980s

Fate , Question , Suicide , Time

“Theorist, and trifler though I may be called, I again assert as our first and holiest duty, the elevation and enlightenment of the proletariate: I again call on those nobler spirits among us who are working erroneously, it may be, but with incipient or growing sincerity and nobleness of mind, to divert their strenuous effort from the promotion of narrow class interests, from silly squabbles about offices and salaried positions, from a philanthropy laudable in itself and worthy of rational pursuit, but meagre in the range of its benevolence and ineffectual towards promoting the nearest interests of the nation, into that vaster channel through which alone the healing waters may be conducted to the lips of their ailing and tortured country.”

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

4 December 1893
New Lamps for Old (1893)

Effort , Water , Sincerity , Country

“Questions at home and school should be decided in the light of the future. It is a process of toughening, but not the sort of false physical thing that we have called toughening. Our boys and girls ought to know that the bully type, the false "tough," has been the first to break down under the actual fire of battle. The quiet, the calm, the determined have made the best soldiers. Why? Obviously the bully is insecure in himself- he blusters to muster his own courage. Children ought to know that. They ought to be taught to retort to the bully, "You're a coward or you wouldn't make such a noise about being brave. The really brave man simply acts brave- he doesn't have to talk about it."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 151-152

Children , School , Home , Girl

“The pace of life has increased in the last few decades just as the speed of the motor bicycle has been exceeded many times over by the aeroplane. After art passed through a whole series of intermediate stages it reached cubism where for the first time the creative urge to construct instinctively overcame conscious resolve.... from this point the picture started to gain stature as a new world of reality and in this way the foundation stone for a new representation of the shapes and forms of the material world was laid.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Life , World , Art , Way

“Early Christian art during the first two or three centuries of its existence was merely a development or even a variant of late Roman art. So great is the similarity between late pagan and early Christian work that the decisive change of style must have occurred between the classical and post-classical, not between the pagan and Christian eras.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Art , Decision , Change

“He imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen, declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 104, Referring to Arcadio

Men , Pain , Victory , Animals

“I wish it to be thoroughly under stood that it is Mr. Seurat, an artist of great worth, who has been the first to conceive the idea of applying the scientific theory after making a profound study of it. I have only followed, like my confreres, the example set by Seurat.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in an autograph letter 6 Nov. 1886, to Mr. Durand; as quoted in Brush and Pencil, Vol. XIII, no. 6 , article: 'Camille Pissarro' Impressionist'; by Henry G Stephens, March, 1904, pp. 412-13
1880's

Idea , Study

“By dabbing sandalwood paste on the forehead one were to reach heaven, the stone used to grind the paste should be first to go there.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Tripadis

Past

“[About the Swiss] The nice Germans, Yeah. Or as they like to say, the other white race. Now, I have only one question. How can you trust an army, how butch is an army that has a wine opener on its knife? "Many of you have never opened Chardonnay under fire! First, you pull the cork out, sniff it, say, 'Meat or fish?', and throw! (Military cadence) I don't know, but I've been told, Chardonnay must be served cold! Ja!"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

Question , Fish , Wine

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life , Death , Men , Friendship

“In the first televised presidential debate, Nixon thought he was upholding some puritan gravitas by refusing makeup; by choosing the citizen’s black suit; choosing the poor man’s version of natural aristocracy. Nixon was easily the more able in his grasp of history and the workings of government. John F. Kennedy, gold-dusted and ghostwritten, appeared completely natural. Nixon perspired. In an instant, I saw what many other Americans saw that night: Harvard College will always beat Whittier College in America. The game is fixed and there is nothing to be done about it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

History , Game , Nature , Appearance

“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

War , People , Truth , Business

“In other words: Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing. Against the revolution, nothing, because the revolution also has its rights, and the first right of the revolution is the right to exist, and no one can oppose the revolution's right to exist. Inasmuch as the revolution embodies the interests of the people, inasmuch as the revolution symbolizes the interests of the whole naion, no one can justly claim a right to oppose it.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

People

“In the case of those who are killed in battle, as in all other cases of violent death, a spirit, during the first few moments, is in a state of bewilderment, and as though he were stunned. He does not know that he is dead and seems to be taking part in the action. It is only little by little that the reality of his situation becomes apparent to him.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 249.

Death , Reality , Parting , Dead

“In another place, this learned geographer (Strabo), in alluding to the tradition that Sicily had been separated by a convulsion from Italy, remarks, that at present the land near the sea in those parts was rarely shaken by earthquakes, since there were now open orifices whereby fire and ignited matters and waters escaped; but formerly, when the volcanoes of Etna, the Lipari Islands, Ischia, and others, were closed up, the imprisoned fire and wind might have produced far more vehement movements. The doctrine, therefore, that volcanoes are safety valves, and that the subterranean convulsions are probably most violent when first the volcanic energy shifts itself to a new quarter, is not modern.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Source: Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1, Chpt.2, p. 21

Learning , Water , Parting , Sea

“But a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street — a community in which quality control is not prized — will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2000 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Communication , Learning , Waiting

“Of two men sharing with a calf the milk of that calf's mother one eyes the calf with the thought that his tender flesh would provide good meat for him and his friends to feast upon at his approaching birthday. The other thinks of the calf as his brother of the teat and is filled with affection for the young beast and his mother. I say to you, the latter is truly nourished by that calf's meat; while the first is poisoned thereby. Aye, many things are put in the belly that should be put in the heart.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Men , Birthday , Thinking , Heart

“Marxism does not make sense, and I am the first one to say this.”

Todor Zhivkov (1911–1998) communist head of state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria

Source: http://www.puggina.org/detailterceiros.php?recordID=618

Sense

“1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Whither Socialism?

Source: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

Books , Way , Communication , Failure

“The means determine the goal. If lies and violence are the means, the results cannot be good…. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [i. e. since the 1917 Balfour Declaration without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people…. I believe that it will be possible for us to hold Palestine and continue to grow for a long time. This will be done first with British aid and then later with the help of our own bayonets -- shamefully called Haganah [defense] -- clearly because we have no faith in our own policy. But by that time we will not be able to do without the bayonets. The means will have determined the goal. Jewish Palestine will no longer have anything of that Zion for which I once put myself on the line.”

Hans Kohn (1891–1971) American historian

Hans Kohn (1929), "Kohn’s letter of farewell to Zionism," as quoted in: Anthony G. Bing. Israeli Pacifist, The Life of Joseph Abileah, 1990.

People , Faith , Time , Help

“There are two important truths to understand here. First: God will not 'torture' anyone. He will give them 'justice'. A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it 'justice'. Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are children of Satan, and it's his will we gladly run to do. Isn't it true that we love the darkness and hate the light”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

see John 3:19
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love , God , Hate , Children

“I simply nod, for I have already noticed the short distance between his right and left eyes. It is my secret way of detecting fags. I know he will speak. And the first thing the idiot says is, “Are you by any chance Samoan?” All my life strangers have been interested in my ancestry. There is something about my bearing that cries out for history. I’ve been mistaken for American Indian, Spanish, Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan and Arabian. No one has ever asked me if I’m a spic or a greaser. Am I Samoan? “Aren’t we all?””

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

I groan.
Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 68.

Life , Secret , Way , History

“I believe that every person is a new person in every waking morning. She will always have the chance in her remaining three years in office. The best legacy she can ever give is first, a clean and honest election wherein the people can freely choose and elect their leaders. Secondly, she should not think about nor wait for our people's sympathy and trust. Instead, she should let her performance speak for her. This might be her chance to win it all back. If not today, maybe in due time.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Tony Lopez, "The natural successor to President Arroyo?", BizNews Asia, 11-18 June 2007, p. 25, ISSN 1655-7263.
2007

People , Thinking , Chance , Time

“Before starting, finish it, and before having your first step, reach your destination. Therefore, before making decision on something, try to be foresight, look at the probabilities to the possible extent and analyse them.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

The Great Master of Thought (Amen- Vol.3), Observing management

Decision

“For the divine Persons embrace mutually in eternal complacency With an infinite and active love in unity. This activity is constantly renewed in the living life of the Trinity. There is continuous new birth-giving in new knowledge, new complacency and new breathing forth of the Spirit in a new embrace with a new torrent of eternal love. All the elect, angels and men from the last to the first are embraced in this complacency. It is in this complacency that heaven and earth are suspended, existence, life activity and maintenance of all creatures.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love , Life , Men , Angels

“We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. … If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia which was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_368 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement
The 1930s

Loss , Country

“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

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

Individuality http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873).
Context: The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.

God , People , Truth

“Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to convince the loser.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

American Elections Are Too Easy to Hack. We Must Take Action Now, Schneier, Bruce, 2018-04-18, The Guardian, 2018-08-12 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/american-elections-hack-bruce-scheier,
Elections

“Most people think of pterosaurs as "flying dinosaurs". When I was a boy, I remember the other kids called them "dinosaur-birds", but they were neither dinosaurs or birds. The first problem is that most people don't know any more about the fossil record than what they've seen in a few plastic pieces in a prehistoric playset. Not only do they typically think that all these things are dinosaurs, they might even think that these are all the fossil forms that are known. They have no idea how rich the fossil record is.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

People , Boy , Idea , Problem

“I know that my early life was at one and the same time so common as to be unremarkable, and so strange as to be the stuff of fiction. I know of course that this is how all human lives are, but that it is only given to a few of us to luxuriate in the bath of self-revelation, self-curiosity, apology, revenge, bafflement, vanity and egoism that goes under the name Autobiography. You have seen me at my washpot scrubbing at the grime of years: to wallow in a washpot may not be the same thing as to be purified and cleansed, but I have come away from this very draining, highly bewildering and passionately intense few months feeling slightly less dirty. Less dirty about the first twenty years of my life, at least. The second twenty, now that is another story.”

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

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Life , Feeling , Revenge , Passion

Quotes about first page 34

Quotes about first
page 34