from the book Blue Star Love by By Maia Chrystine Nartoomid. http://safehaven.0catch.com/quotes.htm,originally
Letter http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/letters/toherzenandogareff.html to Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen and Ogareff from San Francisco (3 October 1861); published in Correspondance de Michel Bakounine (1896) edited by Michel Dragmanov
Source: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (2000), p. 246.
From Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese Women (1988), trans. Kiyooka Eiichi.
“Better to put things at the worst at first, and reserve the best for a surprise.”
Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.
Part I, ch. IX
The Mysterious Island (1874)
Context: Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and reserve the best for a surprise.
When asked how he can predict that a song will be a hit.
Scaggs, Austin (2007-05-31), "Adam Levine". Rolling Stone. (1027):36.
12 July 1942, p. 488-89
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943
Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d'abord par de grands coupables et dépensée ensuite par d'honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu'ils font.
Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Ch. I
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc_MC7NQek&t=0s "2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations"
Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)
Brown looking for alternatives to slow down Magic offense, Jodie Valade, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 25, 2009 http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2009/05/cavaliers_insider_brown_lookin.html,
James before Game 3 of the 2009 Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Orlando Magic.
Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XI
Context: Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time.
St. 2
Tears, Idle Tears (1850)
Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)
Context: All intelligent persons also possess some larger-scale frame-systems whose members seemed at first impossibly different — like water with electricity, or poetry with music. Yet many such analogies — along with the knowledge of how to apply them — are among our most powerful tools of thought. They explain our ability sometimes to see one thing — or idea — as though it were another, and thus to apply knowledge and experience gathered in one domain to solve problems in another. It is thus that we transfer knowledge via the paradigms of Science. We learn to see gases and fluids as particles, particles as waves, and waves as envelopes of growing spheres.
Variant translation: "...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand." Translation by Paul Woodruff.
Book I, 1.20-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack. This does not mean that everyone will turn against you (Kent and the Fool stand by Lear from first to last), but in all probability someone will. If you throw away your weapons, some less scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen. The second blow is, so to speak, part of the act of turning the other cheek. First of all, therefore, there is the vulgar, common-sense moral drawn by the Fool: "Don't relinquish power, don't give away your lands." But there is also another moral. Shakespeare never utters it in so many words, and it does not very much matter whether he was fully aware of it. It is contained in the story, which, after all, he made up, or altered to suit his purposes. It is: "Give away your lands if you want to, but don't expect to gain happiness by doing so. Probably you won't gain happiness. If you live for others, you must live for others, and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself."
Nationally televised address (6 July 1976)
1970s
Context: I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.
I-II, q. 28, art. 5
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)
Context: it is to be observed that four proximate effects may be ascribed to love: viz. melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor. Of these the first is "melting," which is opposed to freezing. For things that are frozen, are closely bound together, so as to be hard to pierce. But it belongs to love that the appetite is fitted to receive the good which is loved, inasmuch as the object loved is in the lover... Consequently the freezing or hardening of the heart is a disposition incompatible with love: while melting denotes a softening of the heart, whereby the heart shows itself to be ready for the entrance of the beloved.
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strongperson is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of [[love].
“In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first.”
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly (2004), p. xxiv
Context: Once we realize we are all members of humanity, we will want to compete in the spirit of love.
In a competition of love we would not be running against one another, but with one another. We would be trying to gain victory for all humanity. If I am a faster runner than you, you may feel bad seeing me pass you in the race, but if you know that we are both racing to make our world better, you will feel good knowing that we are racing toward a common goal, a mutual reward.
In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first.
“Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum.”
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 1
Context: I am trying to describe the people in our quarter, not for the mere curiosity, but because they are all part of the story. Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum. The slum, with its dirt and its queer lives, was first an object-lesson in poverty, and then the background of my own experiences. It is for that reason that I try to give some idea of what life was like there.
"Notes on Nationalism" (1945)
Context: By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant. Therefore the rule — always do what's most profitable to your party. Any professional group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of society comes tumbling down.
“Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”
As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows—at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example—as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.
Statement to Josef Heil, 1922 quoted in Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution pg. 17 https://books.google.com/books?id=qPV_rGdhYpkC&pg=PA17&dq=Once+I+really+am+in+power,+my+first+and+foremost+task+will+be+the+annihilation+of+the+Jews.+As+soon+as+I+have+the+power+to+do+so,&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8uJGhnJbXAhUJbiYKHZXiDi4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Once%20I%20really%20am%20in%20power%2C%20my%20first%20and%20foremost%20task%20will%20be%20the%20annihilation%20of%20the%20Jews.%20As%20soon%20as%20I%20have%20the%20power%20to%20do%20so%2C&f=false
1920s
A Theory of Roughness (2004)
Context: My book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, reproduced Hokusai's print of the Great Wave, the famous picture with Mt. Fuji in the background, and also mentioned other unrecognized examples of fractality in art and engineering. Initially, I viewed them as amusing but not essential. But I changed my mind as innumerable readers made me aware of something strange. They made me look around and recognize fractals in the works of artists since time immemorial. I now collect such works. An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.
For Patriotism and Profit (2001)
Context: I was in the hospital, and a soldier in the bed beside me asked: "Why do our soldiers have only one rifle for two or three of our men, when the Germans have automatics?" So I designed one. I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier. It was called an Avtomat Kalashnikova, the automatic weapon of Kalashnikov — AK — and it carried the date of its first manufacture, 1947.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.
Optimism (1903)
Context: The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
“If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.”
“I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed.”
Preface (8 May 1686)
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
As quoted in Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1960) by René Jules Dubos, Ch. 3 : Pasteur in Action
Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm Ch. 6
Twitter https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/30089090699366400, , quoted in * 2018-10-23 Prager University's slick production masks deep-seated hatred Judah Weinerman The Justice
https://www.thejustice.org/article/2018/10/prager-universitys-slick-production-masks-deep-seated-hatred
2011
Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)
Liguori, A. M. (1882). Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity: In What True Wisdom Consists. In N. Callan (Trans.), Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year (Eighth Edition, p. 43). Dublin; London: James Duffy & Sons.
“First, do it. Second, do it well. Third, do it well and fast — that means you're a professional.”
http://www.americanparkour.com/content/view/680/243/
“You must know yourself first instead of following blindly like sheep.”
Source: Queen Radio Episode 14 December 2020
“In all the nations, the good news has to be preached first.”
13:10 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/mark/13/, NWT
New Testament, Gospel of Mark
Source: 1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)
Source: Mark on the September 11 attacks in a 2012 interview
Said about Absinthe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe. Quoted in “Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author" by Ada Leverson (London: Duckworth, 1930)
As quoted in Out of the Blue: Delight Comes Into Our Lives (1996) by Mark Victor Hansen, Barbara Nichols, and Patty Hansen, p. 85
“Don't try to rush things: for the cup to run over, it must first be filled.”
Source: Istanbul: Memories and the City
“Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.”
Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny
Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 2"<!-- 255 -->
Source: The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
“Open your heart. Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.”
Variant: Someone will come for you, but first you must open your heart...
Source: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said "this is a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then? p. 17e
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Ludwig Wittgenstein / Quotes / Culture and Value (1980)
1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)
Source: Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951
Source: A Woman of No Importance
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
Source: Works of Samuel Johnson
Student Loans
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Source: Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays
“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."
()”
Source: Lost in a Good Book
Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
“Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad.”
Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
Rilke's Letters
Context: What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, chairman, committee on Congress of Constructive Patriotism (January 10, 1917). Roosevelt’s sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, read the letter to a national meeting, January 26, 1917. Reported in Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, Washington, D.C., January 25–27, 1917 (1917), p. 172
1910s
Context: Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
“I was the first woman to burn my bra - it took the fire department four days to put it out.”
“Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.”
Misattributed
Variant: Don’t believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Source: Often attributed to Twain, but sourced to Robert J. Burdette, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/06/world-owes/
Quote from Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1987) by Pierre Cabanne
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1981 - 1989
Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638); Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno à due nuove scienze, as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio (1914)
Other quotes
Source: Discorsi E Dimostrazioni Matematiche: Intorno a Due Nuoue Scienze, Attenenti Alla Mecanica & I Movimenti Locali
Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)
Source: The Light Fantastic
Source: The Last Song
A Declaration of Independence (12 March 1964) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1148
Variant: We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
Context: There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity. There can be no workers' solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. One can't unite bananas with scattered leaves.
Source: A Stroke of Midnight
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad (Latin).”
Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. New York: Random House, 2002, 135–136.
Also quoted by Richard Dawkins in his Eulogy for Douglas Adams (17 September 2001) http://www.edge.org/documents/adams_index.html
Context: If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was God given, and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.
Pt II, p. 162
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Context: One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief.
If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
Book Two in 'Flight', B/O, Margarita talking about herself to a young girl
Source: The Master and Margarita (1967)
Source: The God Delusion
“Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
