Quotes about first (10000 quotes, page 47)

“Well, first things first, I've got to thank my Lord and Savior up above--thank You, Jesus.”

Kurt Warner (1971) American football quarterback

Kurt Warner's Testimony, November 16, 2008, Eadshome.com, July 19, 2006 http://www.eadshome.com/KurtWarner.htm,

“As revelation is the great strengthener of reason, the march of mind which leaves the Bible in the rear, is an advance, like that of our first parents in Paradise, towards knowledge, but, at the same time, towards death.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Death , Knowledge , Parent , Time

“The first act of my public life was to publish my views and opinions of the evils under which Ireland laboured, and that subject is one that, amidst all the public questions in which I have been engaged, I have always had deeply and painfully at heart. I know I am taunted by some of my friends with giving a bad vote on this occasion. I shall give a conscientious vote, and if in doing so I am to make personal sacrifices, and lose the good opinion of those with whom I have long acted and have a deep respect for, I shall regret it; but, next to the satisfaction of having acted conscientiously, will be that I shall feel in voting for that which I believe will tend to heal the festering wounds of Irish society.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/18/maynooth-college-adjourned-debate-sixth in the House of Commons (18 April 1845) in favour of the Maynooth College Act 1845.
1840s

Life , Feeling , Question , Evil

“The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices"
Strictly Personal (1953)

Faith , Religion

“There is always trouble if meat is not divided by lot. Someone immediately says that he has been given more than his share, and tries to hand a piece to someone else. Then there is much arguing and swearing by God, with everyone insisting that he has been given too much, and finally a deadlock ensues which can only be settled by casting lots for the meat – as should have been done in the first place. I have never heard a man grumble that he has received less than his share. Such behaviour would be inconceivable to the Bedu, for they are careful never to appear greedy, and quick to notice anyone who is.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 71.

God , Appearance

“If you have little money and you want to be rich, you must first be “focused,” not “balanced.””

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Money

“For I can assure you that in any war, even if it does not become a world war, I do not think there will be a victor who can do much. There may be one less badly off than the other. One side or the other may have sued first for peace. The destruction will be so great, the moral erosion of the experience will be so great, that it is idle to think you’ll find liberty, walking serenely among the corpses of the dead and the agonies of the dying. There are other things to do than that if we want democracy and freedom to live; there have to be other things to do than that.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

War , World , Peace , Democracy

“So David outside of gay and lesbian issues, first of all no one should get fired because they are gay or lesbian period. But when you set these laws up my experience with these laws are you create a protected class. And I speak as someone who started a one man handyman business in Albuquerque in 1974 and grew it to over a thousand employees… I’ll tell you because of our laws that we passed on safety issues that this whole notion of whistle blower legislation it sounds great but the reality is… employees that were horrible declared themselves to be whistle blowers in the safety category or they declared themselves an alcoholic because of legislation [feedback] the American for Disabilities Act… I want that person who breaks a window breaks a windshield with a rock prosecuted on the basis that they threw a rock through a windshield not because they were motivated by hate.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Hate , Alcohol , Law , Motivation

“The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself — whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance — is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential being.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816)

Knowledge , Reality

“What some of the revolutionary syndicalists proceed to do was to identify the ‘communality’ of man not will class, but with the nation. The first intimations of a ‘revolutionary nationalism’ made their appearance among the most radical Marxists.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 55

Communication , Appearance

“Pythagoras says that number is the origin of all things, and certainly the law of number is the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe. But the law of number possesses an immanent order, which is at first sight mystifying, but on a more intimate acquaintance we easily understand it to be intrinsically necessary; and this law of number explains the wondrous consistency of the laws of nature.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

"Reflections on Magic Squares" in The Monist, Vol. 16 (1906), p. 139

Secret , Law , Understanding , Nature

“Well, I didn't ever think about Australia much. To me Australia had never been very interesting, it was just something that happened in the background. It was Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee movies and things that never really registered with me and I didn't pay any attention to it at all. I went out there in 1992, as I was invited to the Melbourne Writers Festival, and I got there and realised almost immediately that this was a really really interesting country and I knew absolutely nothing about it. As I say in the book, the thing that really struck me was that they had this prime minister who disappeared in 1967, Harold Holt and I had never heard about this. I should perhaps tell you because a lot of other people haven't either. In 1967 Harold Holt was prime minister and he was walking along a beach in Victoria just before Christmas and decided impulsively to go for a swim and dove into the water and swam about 100 feet out and vanished underneath the waves, presumably pulled under by the ferocious undertow or rips as they are called, that are a feature of so much of the Australian coastline. In any case, his body was never found. Two things about that amazed me. The first is that a country could just lose a prime minister — that struck me as a really quite special thing to do — and the second was that I had never heard of this. I could not recall ever having heard of this. I was sixteen years old in 1967. I should have known about it and I just realised that there were all these things about Australia that I had never heard about that were actually very very interesting. The more I looked into it, the more I realised that it is a fascinating place. The thing that really endeared Australia to me about Harold Holt's disappearance was not his tragic drowning, but when I learned that about a year after he disappeared the City of Melbourne, his home town, decided to commemorate him in some appropriate way and named a municipal swimming pool after him. I just thought: this is a great country.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The pool was under construction before he disappeared and is located in the electorate he represented.
Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

People , Books , Way , Home

“The best way, of course, to understand the animator is to see that he parallels the actor. He has the same responsibility a fine actor has. […] Even the people who write about animation just don't seem to understand that when you have a drawing, you don't have a character. […] "This is the first Bugs Bunny" has no meaning. It's how Bugs came to stand and move and act, and what his feelings were, and his thoughts, and what kind of personality he was. That developed over a period of time. And you need fine animators to do that.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 61.

People , Way , Feeling , Understanding

“I was born in the richest, most technologically advanced (and consequently the most powerful) country in the world. We were the leaders in science, so of course we had a better economy, and we had a higher standard of living than anyone else at that time. The rest of the globe sent their best and brightest to enroll in our schools because our students were among the most inventive, innovative and involved. Some of the greatest American scientists were the immigrants who stayed and enabled the United States to achieve more than anyone else had in the history of mankind. That's when our secular government still cared about better education. Sadly, that is not the country I still live in. America was number one, but saying that now reminds me of Aesop's fable where the hare is still resting on its laurels long after the tortoise has passed. In the fifty years since I was born, America's rating in science has fallen from number one to number thirty-seven. We have one of the lowest science scores of all countries in the developed world (or first world). Foreign scholars and foreign scientists don't stay here long after graduation (if they come at all), because what sort of environment do we offer intellectuals now? Our own scientists, our own graduate scholars are leaving as well, moving to Europe or Asia where they're more welcome, although an American going abroad now means that he will have to try to live down new stereotype instead of living up to the old one.”

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

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

World , Education , School , History

“Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first sight the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 7

Life , Wisdom , Thinking , Water

“Vibrating strings in 10 dimensions is just a weird fact… An explanation of that weird fact would tell you why there are 10 dimensions in the first place.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by K.C. Cole, "A Theory of Everything" New York Times Magazine (1987) Oct.18

“The whole point of the military-first policy was not so much to whip up support for the military as to de-ideologize the economic sector, to make it possible to dismantle the command economy without dismantling the authority of the whole system.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Support

“Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind;
Therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of free-thinkers.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

On the purpose of writing Les Carácteres, Preface to La Bruyere's "Characters," p. v
Les Caractères (1688)

God , Knowledge , Passion

“Of all the mind tools we acquire in the course of furnishing our brains from the stockpiles of culture, none are more important, of course, than words — first spoken, then written. Words make us more intelligent by making cognition easier, in the same way (many times multiplied) that beacons and landmarks make navigation in the world easier for simple creatures. Navigation in the abstract multidimensional world of ideas is simply impossible without a huge stock of movable, memorable landmarks that can be shared, criticized, recorded, and looked at from different perspectives.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

World , Way , Intelligence , Idea

“There seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic industry. The first is, when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. The act of navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases, by absolute prohibitions, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Dependency , Country

“Can't trust a fascist--truth is always your first sacrifice to the welfare of the state”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(I.3) Del Rey, p. 74
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Truth

“Learning can be defined as occurring under two conditions. First, learning occurs when an organisation achieves what it intended; that is, there is a match between its design for action and the actual outcome. Second, learning occurs when a mismatch between intention and outcome is identified and corrected; that is, a mismatch is turned into a match…. Single-loop learning occurs when matches are created, or when mismatches are corrected by changing actions. Double-loop learning occurs when mismatches are corrected by first examining and altering the governing variables and then the actions.”

Chris Argyris (1923–2013) American business theorist/Professor Emeritus/Harvard Business School/Thought Leader at Monitor Group

Chris Argyris (1982) as cited in: "Chris Argyris: The Manager's Academic" in Business (2003). p. 965

Learning , Change

“Now, I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life — for the past five years. There have been rumors to this effect… but this is Apple's campus in Cupertino — let's zoom in on it — in that building right there… we've had teams doing the "just-in-case" scenario; and our rules have been that our designs for OS X must be processor independent, and that every project must be built for both the Power PC and Intel processors. And so today for the first time, I can confirm the rumors that every release of OS X has been compiled for both Power PC and Intel — this has been going on for the last five years. Just in case.”

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

2000s, WWDC 2005

Life , Secret , Time , Past

“We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of "Grace"; let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called "Gift"; that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received — if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that separates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 20

Love , Life , God , Justice

“Nothing is easier than to see the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount as 'the first socialist' or communist, and though the majority of early socialist theorists were not Christians, many later members of socialists movements have found this reflection useful.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

How To Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism (2011)

Christ

“One day I saw the combative Giants shortstop Billy Jurges confront umpire George Magerkurth, on a call Jurges violently objected to, the two men standing jaw to jaw, raging invective at each other. A faint spray of saliva emitted from Magerkurth's mouth; Jurges stepped back and uncorked his own oyster of spittle, right in the umpire's face. Magerkurth slugged Jurges, who slugged him back, and the two men rolled on the infield grass, clawing at each other until they were pried apart. Jurges, of course, was tossed out of the game and suspended for a spell, his place at shortstop taken over by the mild-mannered prematurely gray utility infielder, Lou Chiozza. The very next day, Chiozza ran out to short left field, chasing a pop fly, while in rushed Joe Moore, from his left field post. The result was a noisy collision, which sent Chiozza to the hospital, marking the first and only time one player's spittle had broken another player's leg.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From his Foreword https://books.google.com/books?id=jF7v30gqs_0C&pg=PA8 to The Early Polo Grounds (2009) by Chris Epting
Sports-related

Men , Game , Grass , Rage

“Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.”

Henry Clay Trumbull (1830–1903) Union Army chaplain

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 197.

God

“When a man is in doubt what to do, he goes wherever he happens to be first called.”

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay book Kapalkundala

Kopal-Kundala, Chapter IV: With the Kapálik translated by Henry Arthur Deuteros Phillips (1885)

“Cognitive liberty begins at home, behind your eyes and between your ears. The first act of liberation is to step forward, and be counted as one of us.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

Tales of Un-DARE-ing Do http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/undaringdo.html

Home

“Eight years before he became vice president, Richard Cheney spelled out this premise in his "Defense Strategy for the 1990s." Either before or soon after 9/11, he and his close associates chose Iraq as the first major target, apparently to remove a threat to Israel and to have Iraq serve as our permanent military, economic, and political base in the Middle East.”

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

Page 100
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

“Dad, by example and through his teaching, had helped me understand something that has been with me since that time: When something we learn contradicts Scripture, we need to first of all go to the Bible and study the words in context very carefully. If, after doing this, we are sure the Bible still clearly means what we had previously gleaned, then we need to question the ideas that contradict the Bible's words. Then, even if we can't find an explanation that shows where the secular idea is in error, we need to continue to search and wait for the answer. Even if we don't find answers in our lifetime, we cannot reinterpret Scripture. To do so would be to make man's ideas infallible and God's Word fallible. This would put us on a course of compromise and unbelief through the rest of Scripture, and Dad often warned us of this "slippery slope."”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Raising Godly Children in an Ungodly World: Leaving a Lasting Legacy (2008)

God , Error , Search , Idea

“That was the first time she was given the opportunity to use what I think is still an underrated talent.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

James Foley, on Berry's performance in Monster's Ball — reported in Steven Rea (April 28, 2007) "The days are sweet for Berry", The Courier Mail, p. M04.
About

Thinking , Time

“Why did transculturalization seem to operate only in one direction? Whites who had lived for a time with Indians almost never wanted to leave. But almost none of the "civilized" Indians who had been given the opportunity to savor White society chose to become a part of it. …Nor does this problem relate solely to the American Indian. Some of the first missionaries sent to the South Seas from London, in the eighteenth century, threw away their collars and married native women.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Women , Problem , Time , Parting

“Who first shall reach the mill, he first shall grind.”

Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary

Chi prima giugne al mulin, prima macina.
Gli Sciamiti, Act II., Scene III.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 270.

“One's tendency when one is young is to do experiments just to see what will happen, without really looking for specific things at all. I first set up a little laboratory in the attic at home just to grow crystals or try experiments described in books, such as adding a lot of concentrated sulfuric acid to the blood from a nosebleed which precipitates hemotin from the hemoglobin in the blood. That was quite a nice experiment. I still remember it.”

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994) British chemist

interviewed by [Olivia Cox-Fill, For our daughters: how outstanding women worldwide have balanced home and career, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996, http://books.google.com/books?id=UBqr_MEn4m4C&printsec=frontcover#PPA171,M1, 0-275-95199-5, 171]

Books , Home

“Are we, in blind obedience to primitive instincts and old prejudices, enslaved by the old catchwords and that curious indolence which makes the revision of old ideas unpleasant, to duplicate indefinitely on the political and economic side a condition from which we have liberated ourselves on the religious side? Are we to continue to struggle, as so many good men struggled in the first dozen centuries of Christendom — spilling oceans of blood, wasting mountains of treasure — to achieve what is at bottom a logical absurdity, to accomplish something which, when accomplished, can avail us nothing, and which, if it could avail us anything, would condemn the nations of the world to never-ending bloodshed and the constant defeat of all those aims which men, in their sober hours, know to be alone worthy of sustained endeavor?”

Norman Angell book The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

Men , World , Mountain , Idea

“If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand. If the weather had been mild, you would have loitered along the watercourses, but at the first howl of the storm you quickened your pace heavenward and wrapped around you the warm robe of Saviour’s righteousness.”

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

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 100.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894

God , Dependency , Weather

“In real life, too, it takes a long time for a woman to bring the animus into consciousness, and it costs her a great deal of suffering. But if she succeeds in freeing herself from his possession, he changes into an "inner companion" of the highest value, who confers on her positive masculine qualities such as initiative, courage, objectivity, and intellectual clarity. Like the anima in a man, the animus also commonly exhibits four stages of development. In the first stage he manifests as a symbol of physical force, for example, a sports hero. In the next stage, in addition he possesses initiative and focused ability to act. In the third stage, he becomes "the word" and is therefore frequently projected onto noteworthy intellectuals, like doctors, ministers, and professors.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man

Life , Courage , Sport , Suffering

“…Stevens himself hating horses even more than dogs, rating the horse an unassailable first in loathing since though both were parasites, the dog at least had the grace to be a sycophant too; it at least fawned on you and so kept you healthily ashamed of the human race. But the real reason was, though neither the horse nor the dog ever forgot anything, the dog at least forgave you; and his, Stevens's, thought was that what the world needed was more forgiving.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Source: The Mansion (1959), Ch. 16

Hate , World , Dogs , Forgiveness

“Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant — you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.
Trust your demon.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Introduction to Passion Play (1962)

Stupidity , Way , Idea , Personality

“Aurangzeb did this for two reasons: first, because by this time his treasures had begun to shrink owing to expenditure on his campaigns; secondly, to force the Hindus to become Mahomedans. Many who were unable to pay turned Mahomedans, to obtain relief from the insults of the collectors.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

About the Jizya. Manucci II. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.
Storia do Mogor

Time

“I could be counted upon to perform the mission they had assigned me, or, if that was unworkable, to improvise and turn my men's exertions upon a secondary undertaking as good as or better than the first.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the first criteria for an able commander
Killing Rommel (2008)

Men

“The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People , Education , Exercises , Democracy

“My observation of the flight of buzzards leads me to believe that they regain their lateral balance when partly overturned by a gust of wind, by a torsion of the tips of the wings. If the rear edge of the right wing tip is twisted upward and the left downward the bird becomes an animated windmill and instantly begins to turn, a line from its head to its tail being the axis. It thus regains its level even if thrown on its beam’s end, so to speak, as I have frequently seen them. I think the bird also in general retains its lateral equilibrium, partly by presenting its two wings at different angles to the wind, and partly by drawing in one wing, thus reducing its area. I incline to the belief that the first is the more important and usual method….
My business requires that my experimental work be confined to the months between September and January and I would be particularly thankful for advice as to a suitable locality where I could depend on winds of about 15 miles per hour without rain or too inclement weather. I am certain that such localities are rare.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Letter to Octave Chanute (13 May 1900)

Business , Bird , Thinking , Animals

“EFI is this other Intel brain-damage (the first one being ACPI).”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

the first one being ACPI Message to linux-kernel mailing list, 2006-07-24, Torvalds, Linus, 2007-05-28 http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/7/25/23,
2000s, 2006

“The future painter must feel what is useful for his development – drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things – which is what I call Nature – that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 238-239
1940s

Color , Feeling , Nature , Sense

“Bennett seems to be showing alarming signs of irony. I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

“I think he once told us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now long ago. Thou dear father! Through what stern obstructions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for us and for our travelling to be made smooth!”

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

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Way , Travel , Thinking , Clothes

“If the last and the worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked. If, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955)

Way

“I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

As quoted in Toole, Betty Alexandra (1998), Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age, Strawberry Press, ISBN 0912647183. p. 99

Mathematics , Thinking , Study , Reading

“Not long after I first came to the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word, Courage. I want to return to it now, in a different way: to a nation still nursing a broken heart for what happened here in 2001, and especially to those who found themselves closest to the events of September 11; to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in dangerous places; to those who have endured the tsunami, and to all who have suffered natural disasters, and must now find the will to rebuild; to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all; and to each of you, Courage.
For The CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good night.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

CBS Evening News Farewell (2005)

Health , Truth , Way , Courage

“I thought, wow, those people are showing off like me, that’s what I do at home. I can do that and get paid. That was my first realisation that maybe I wasn’t going to be a secretary or a postwoman or a lollipop woman. I did have a moment of thinking I liked the lollipop woman idea. But can you imagine? I would be like, ‘F**king move your car!’ I don’t think that would work.”

Michelle Gomez (1966) Scottish actress

An interview with the Sunday Herald talking about when she went to see Kiss Me Kate when she was seven.

People , Cars , Home , Imagination

“The rain eased off, but the streets were greasily wet, rainbowed with oil. I went to the bank for more five-pound notes, stood like a pauper in the public library reading the Christian Science Monitor, then went for the first drinks of the day to a dive-bar popular with merchants. Hungarian refugees waited on at the tables and a West Indian negro collected dirty glasses – we were all exiles together.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Drink , Science , Waiting , Reading

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Dissemination (1972)

Secret , Books , Law , Game

“Somewhere around the world someone would love to have my first world problems”

Matthew Good (1971) Canadian singer-songwriter

Musical Works, Last of the Ghetto Astronauts, The War is Over/Omissions Of The Omen

Love , World , Problem

“Maybe he didn't do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work … On occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there. And when Secretary Clinton talks about people that didn't get paid, first of all, they did get paid a lot, but taken advantage of the laws of the nation. Now, if you want to change the laws, you've been there a long time, change the laws. But I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I'm running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that's what I do. … She [Hillary Clinton] doesn't say is that tens of thousands of people that are unbelievably happy and that love me.”

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

About not having paid to some of his employees.
2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Love , People , Family , Law

“Among the many factors that make a return to halcyon days of the first decades of the postwar era virtually impossible is the decline of clearly defined political leadership.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Ten, Emergent International Economic Order, p. 406

“Since I have been in England I have been asked several times why I am studying business management. I will try to tell you. Free to choose between different paths of study, I have chosen this for a number of reasons. First of all, it is among businessmen (not all, but a few) that I find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my thinking where it is most alive. I said last winter to a Professor of Philosophy: 'Do you realize that you philosophers have got to look to your laurels, that businessmen are doing some very valuable thinking and may get ahead of you?' And he acknowledged this, which I think was a very significant concession. Moreover, I find the thinking of businessmen to-day in line with the deepest and best thinking we have ever had. The last word in science—in biology—is the principle of unifying. The most profound philosophers have always given us unifying as the fundamental principle of life. And now business men are finding it is the way to run a successful business. Here the ideal and the practical have joined hands. That is why I am working at business management, because, while I care for the ideal, it is only because I want to help bring it into our everyday affairs.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xix-xx

Life , Men , Way , Business

“She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She's a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she's out having her hair streaked at Kenneth's. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

On Gloria Steinem
Playboy interview (May 1995)

Love , Women , Men , Age

“This could be the beginning of Civil War. There is no kind more distressing, no kind which so rapidly describes the pointlessness of human killing human. I have been fated, for a reason I cannot comprehend or for no reason at all, to witness the worst examples of insane warfare (and all warfare, it seems to me now, is that) and having to listen to the most ridiculous explanations as to its “necessity” from otherwise perfectly rational people, I have long since become weary, Moorcock, of the debate. If I appear to you to be in a more reconciled mood than when your grandfather first met me it is because I have learned that no individual is responsible for War—that we are all, at the same time, individually responsible for the ills of the human condition. In learning this, (and I am about to tell you how I learned it) I also learned a certain tolerance for myself and for others which I had never previously possessed.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 359)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Fate , War , People , Mood

“Push hands is practiced between two people: the intitiator and the one acted upon. Initiating is called ‘asking’. The person acted upon ‘answers’. When the opponent asks, listen first before answering.”

Wu Kung-tsao (1902–1983) Chinese martial artist

Wu Family T'ai Chi Ch'uan (1980)

People , Personality

“After dinner my father asks me into his study…. Then he slams the door so hard that I nearly jump out of the chair. He tells me that he's been ashamed to invite anyone over since I "came back" because of my "long" hair and my clothes…. "That's all right," I say after a tense silence. "I'm leaving for New York tomorrow. And I'm leaving for Canada, as soon as I get my immigrant status!" His expression breaks first. He urges me to "reconsider." I am afraid to say anything at all. He says, "Ever since you left home your life has been a series of blunders, and this is your biggest; your most fatal…. You tried to destroy society and you couldn't. Really, you were trying to destroy me. Now you're going to destroy yourself instead."”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 206. Spring of 1967. Satin had flown home to Wichita Falls, Texas, to tell his family he was immigrating to Canada. His father is a college professor.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

Life , Home , Study , Silence

“I guess what surprised me the most was the discrepancy in casualties: Iraq, one hundred fifty thousand casualties, USA…seventy-nine! Let's go over those numbers again, they're a little baffling at first. Iraq, 150,000, USA 79. Does that mean we could have won with only 80 guys there? Just one guy in a ticker-tape parade, "I did it! Hey!"”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Guy

“The gospel does not abolish industry, but changes its nature and chief design; it dignifies toil, mitigates the evils connected therewith, and creates new motives to diligence. The triumph achieved on Calvary never was designed to supersede the duty of close application to enterprising duty. Its first command compels us to some honorable and useful pursuit. Its language is," Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you."”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

" If any man will not work, neither let him eat."
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 347.

Motivation , Business , Nature , Study

“It seems that in writing a composition, one must first have in mind a reason for writing. If there is a reason behind it, no matter what one writes about, it will turn out to be excellent writing. If there is no reason behind it, there is no way to write. Even if one can produce something, it will be as dry and unpleasant as chewing wax.”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"How to Read the Shui-hu chuan", § 26; in How to Read the Chinese Novel (1990), ed. David L. Rolston, p. 137

Way

“There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into “the one genius with 1,000 helpers.” It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

James C. Collins, in interview in: Fast Company online magazine, October 2001.

Sense

“Now - how can we possibly examine something we use all the time and presuppose in every statement? How can we criticize the terms in which we habitually express our observations? Let us see! The first step in our criticism of commonly-used concepts is to create a measure of criticism, something with which these concepts can be compared. Of course, we shall later want to know a little more about the measuring stick itself; for example, we shall want to know whether it is better than, or perhaps not as good as, the material examined. But in order for this examination to start there must be a measuring-stick in the first place. Therefore, the first step in our criticism of customary concepts and customary reactions is to step outside the circle and either to invent a new conceptual system, for example a new theory, that clashes with the most carefully established observational results and confounds with the most plausible theoretical principles, or to import such a system from outside science, from religion, from mythology, from the ideas of incompetents, or the ramblings of madmen. This step is, again, counter-inductive, Counter-induction is thus both a fact”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

science could not exist without it - and a legitimate and much needed move in the game of science.
Pg 68.
Against Method (1975)

Religion , Game , Idea , Science

“The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits,
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates,
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar,
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

Men

“Remember three things about censorship. First, it doesn’t work to suppress art or words that you don’t like. Second, trying to censor something just arouses interest in it, as well as resentment towards those who try to tell others what they can or cannot see. Third, exhibiting art or recommending that students read a book does not mean an endorsement of the image or contents.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" National Coalition Against Censorship and PEN defend Met’s showing of a “controversial” painting https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/national-coalition-against-censorship-and-pen-defend-mets-showing-of-a-controversial-painting/" December 9, 2017

Books , Art , Reading

“A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world." The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"
Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 2

God , Books , World , Smile

“This isn’t the first. People have been making malware that does this for a few years now. There’s a word for it: ‘ransomware.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 1
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

People

“The antithesis of 10th St. Howard was, at first, like a pariah uptown. He was very midwestern and his gallery had wall-to-wall carpeting.”

Frank Gillette (1941) American artist

Frank Gillette, interview with Marita Sturken, Nov. 11, 1983, cited in: Afterimage, May 1984; About the arrival of Howard Wise in the art community

“What is a bow and arrow?
It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war.
It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering.
It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb.
It is a symbol of a way of life.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (p. 210)

Life , War , Way

“There's equal stuff in Venezuela. There's equal stuff in Cuba. It's a lie. It's a lie. Only God can equalize. Only God, and I got news for you, gang, he's about to. And we are gonna be first on the receiving end.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Response to Al Sharpton saying to President Obama, "The dream was not to put one black family in the White House. The dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house."
2010s, 2010

God , Lie

““Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point….
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Music , Time

“If every man lays down his arms and refuses to pick them up, the first man to pick up can do whatever he wants.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Violence is Golden
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

“The first step of obedience that any of you can take is to confess your sins to God before his witnesses.”

Ann Lee (1736–1784) English Shaker leader

The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875)

God

“Cardan's originality in the matter seems to have been shown chiefly in four respects. First, he reduced the general equation to the type x^3 + bx = c; second, in a letter written August 4, 1539, he discussed the question of the irreducible case; third, he had the idea of the number of roots to be expected in the cubic; and, fourth, he made a beginning in the theory of symmetric functions. …With respect to the irreducible case… we have the cube root of a complex number, thus reaching an expression that is irreducible even though all three values of x turn out to be real. With respect to the number of roots to be expected in the cubic… before this time only two roots were ever found, negative roots being rejected. As to the question of symmetric functions, he stated that the sum of the roots is minus the coefficient of x2</sup”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, pp.461-464

Idea , Question , Time

“The Indian community in Fiji have been here over 120 to 130 years and would be the largest potential field of harvest to proselytize in, but we have not a show because of our examples and behaviours towards them. We need to show them the love of Christ first … before they can respond to Him.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts), Speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=245&viewtype=full, 26 August 2004 (excerpts)

Love , Communication , Christ

“So, whether or not how dramatic this change will be, or is, what it’s caused by, are things that honest people, I think, can disagree with, and I really personally, having been a journalist, the first thing I was always cautioned by when someone was claiming, well, everybody is on my side, or everybody says this, or there is a total consensus, almost always when people said that to me over my years as a journalist, it wasn’t true. It was that there were honest people who disagreed and significant disagreement on such issues. We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows? We do know the CO2 in the past had its time when it was greater as well. And what happened when the CO2 was greater since then and now? There have been many cycles of up and down warming. So with that said, I think that we’ve had a great discussion today.”

Dana Rohrabacher (1947) American politician

Thoughts on global warming on C-SPAN 2 (February 15, 2007) http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/10/dino-flatulence.

People , Thinking , Change , Time

“I discovered, first of all, that there is a great and divine Plan. I found that this universe of ours is not a "fortuitous concurrence of atoms" but that it is the working out of a great design or pattern which will be all to the glory of God. I found… that each civilisation and culture had seen humanity step forward a little further upon the path of return to God.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Unfinished Autobiography (1951)

God , Universe

“I have signifying of Three manners of Cheer of our Lord. The first is Cheer of Passion, as He shewed while He was here in this life, dying. Though this Beholding be mournful and troubled, yet it is glad and joyous: for He is God. — The second manner of Cheer is Ruth and Compassion: and this sheweth He, with sureness of Keeping, to all His lovers that betake them to His mercy. The third is the Blissful Cheer, as it shall be without end: and this was oftenest and longest-continued.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 71

Life , God , Lovers , Passion

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile , Tear , Light , Silence

“The Bible … does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Reply to a Christian http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_4 (May 2006)
2000s

“People ask what gives me the authority to give advice? I say, First of all, I don't give advice. Dr Phil gives advice. Mr T helps people. I motivate them, I inspire them, I give them hope, and I plant the seed so they can feel good about themselves.”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Attributed

People , Hope , Feeling , Motivation

“Rules of simultaneous ensemble constraint can't be assumed a priori to be the kinds of rules or rest on the same foundations as rules for constraint on succession. They may well be similar, but they may well not be similar also. It seems to me that ensemble constraints must first be understood in their own terms, within musical cultures individually and comparitively, looking to what appear to be basic principles in each in light of the others, I would call such a study "comparative counterpoint.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.39.

Music , Study , Light , Appearance

“The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematicians do." […]
In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D. C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Hamming cites Forsythe, G.E., "What to do until the computer scientist comes", Am. Math. Monthly 75 (5), May 1968, p. 454-461.
One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)

People , Hope , Feeling , Mathematics

“I am constantly observing my actions, words, and behaviors while processing what my being white has done to affect certain responses and outcomes. The same is true of observing how others interact with me. How does my being white affect what they say and do to me, and how they behave around me?It is an important part of my commitment to actively dismantle the white skin privilege that persists in America today. While I remain much invested in the ongoing work of deconstructing institutional injustice and systemic racism, I am also committed to being hyper-aware of and hyper-sensitive to how I am manifesting and/or receiving privilege. I believe justice requires both. I also believe I can't condition myself to see or to rebel against institutional privilege if I can't first see them in myself.”

John C. Dorhauer

"Checking my Privilege," UCC News, August 4, 2016 http://www.ucc.org/commentary_checking_my_privilege_08042016#.V6gGJL2sepA.facebook

Justice , Behavior , Parting

“Can Intelligence Survive? Looking at this nonclassical evolution of intelligence, one even begins to wonder whether it is such a small Law after all, even from the sun's point of view. Men create lakes and can level mountains; their atomic explosions have already shaken the whole earth's magnetic field; and they send out visible satellites and sensors that now range the solar system. Will the evolution of these powers of go on increasing? Or must it finally run down, was the sun does by the great Second Law?
f we think about this problem in the light of the physical and biological regularities of behavior that we now know, it seems to me that we are led to a further rather surprising conclusion: There is no thermodynamic reason why evolution should ever stop. What evolution leads to is the larger and larger control of environment by the organisms, first by genetic natural selection; then, with the growth of societies and language, by cultural natural selection; and finally by brains. And once we pass a certain threshold of brains and intelligence we begin to know how to insulate ourselves against all sorts of environmental changes.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Cited in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 24, Nr. 8 1968. p. 40
The step to man, 1966

Men , Law , Behavior , Mountain

“The way things turned out in Misrata was not what Khadafy had hoped for. Right to the very bitter end, he remained a prisoner of his illusions. For four decades, he had heard people, men and women, shouting themselves hoarse with promises of dying for him. For four decades, he had distributed vast sums of money, generated by Libya’s huge oil exports, among a few hundred thousand “Fedaees” or “self-sacrificers,” individuals who were supposed to fight for him to the end. When high on hubris and the “stimulant” drugs he took, the colonel claimed to have “an army of Omar Mukhtars” under his command, named after a bandit who became a local hero by fighting Italian colonialists in 1912. Yet the first city to rise against Khadafy was Tobruk — Omar Mukhtar’s birthplace. Then Benghazi rose, followed by Braiga. As each town and city rose against him, the colonel promised to fight back from another. His last stands were in Bani-Walid and Sirte. Tens of thousands of Omar Mukhtars did enter the battlefield. But they were fighting not for but against him.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Khadafy, kha-put" http://nypost.com/2011/10/21/khadafy-kha-put/, New York Post (October 21, 2011).
New York Post

Women , Men , Money , People

“No, I don’t think it’s correct to define my writing as fables. There are themes, yes, but I’m not trying to offer some categorical cure-it-all to the problematic situation of Man. I’m neither theologian nor a politician. My concern in my first novel, The Zoo, was loss of inner life. After long years of writer’s block, the novel just exploded out of me. Thirty days. All too quickly to really do it justice. With my second novel, The Nihilesthete, I was taken by the spiritual diminishment and the all-pervasive powerlessness that I felt was taking over our culture which in turn prevented and inverted my lead character’s full expression. Such is the motive-force behind almost banal, cerebralized cruelties he harbours upon his arch-enemy, the artist, Brodski.”

Richard Kalich novelist

Richard Kalich in conversation with Lucy Sweeney Byrne - Books Go Social http://booksgosocial.com/2015/01/13/richard-kalich-in-conversation-with-lucy-sweeney-byrne/ January 13, 2015.

Life , Justice , Motivation , Thinking

“Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun (June 29th, 1925), The Impossible Mencken
1920s

Men , Truth , Time

“The first is that he must be well-ordered from without in all virtues and unhindered within, just as empty of all outward works as though he were not working. For if he is busy within by any work of virtue, then he is assailed by images. As long as that is going on in him, he cannot contemplate.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Business

“Woever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don’t you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense.”
Quicumque ille fuit, puerum qui pinxit Amorem nonne putas miras hunc habuisse manus? is primum vidit sine sensu vivere amantes

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

II, xii, 1-3; translation by A. S. Kline
Elegies

Boy , Lovers , Thinking , Sense

“As every enquiry, which regards religion, is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular, which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature. Happily, the first question, which is the most important, admits of the most obvious, at least, the clearest, solution. The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. But the other question, concerning the origin of religion in human nature, is exposed to some more difficulty. The belief of invisible, intelligent power has been very generally diffused over the human race, in all places and in all ages; but it has neither perhaps been so universal as to admit of no exception, nor has it been, in any degree, uniform in the ideas, which it has suggested. Some nations have been discovered, who entertained no sentiments of Religion, if travellers and historians may be credited; and no two nations, and scarce any two men, have ever agreed precisely in the same sentiments.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Introduction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Men , Age , Religion , Travel

“The Natives of the Country now Possessed by the New-Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched Heathen ever since their first herding there; and tho' we know not When or How those Indians first became Inhabitants of this mighty Continent, yet we may guess that probably the Devil decoy'd those miserable Salvages hither, in hopes that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his Absolute Empire over them.”

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) American religious minister and scientific writer

Magnalia Christi Americana https://archive.org/stream/magnaliachristia00math#page/n345/mode/2up (The New English History), Book III, p. 190 (1702).

Hope , Christ , Country

“Our meeting with Admiral Leighton Smith, on the other hand, did not go well. He had been in charge of the NATO air strikes in August and September [1995], and this gave him enormous credibility, especially with the Bosnian Serbs. Smith was also the beneficiary of a skillful public relations effort that cast him as the savior of Bosnia. In a long profile, Newsweek had called him "a complex warrior and civilizer, a latter-day George C. Marshall." This was quite a journalistic stretch, given the fact that Smith considered the civilian aspects of the task beneath him and not his job - quite the opposite of what General Marshall stood for.
After a distinguished thirty-three-year Navy career, including almost three hundred combat missions in Vietnam, Smith was well qualified for his original post as commander of NATO's southern forces and Commander in Chief of all U. S. naval forces in Europe. But he was the wrong man for his additional assignment as IFOR commander, which was the result of two bureaucratic compromises, one with the French, the other with the American military. General Joulwan rightly wanted the sixty thousand IFOR soldiers to have as their commanding officer an Army general trained in the use of ground forces. But Paris insisted that if Joulwan named a separate Bosnia commander, it would have to be a Frenchman. This was politically impossible for the United States; thus, the Franh objections left only one way to preserve an American chain of command - to give the job to Admiral Smith, who joked that he was now known as "General" Smith. (…)
On the military goals of Dayton, he was fine; his plans for separating the forces along the line we had drawn in Dayton and protecting his forces were first-rate. But he was hostile to any suggestions that IFOR help implement any nonmilitary portion of the agreement. This, he said repeatedly, was not his job.
Based on Shalikashvili's statement at White House meetings, Christopher and I had assumed that the IFOR commander would use his authority to do substancially more than he was obligated to do. The meeting with Smith shattered that hope. Smith and his British deputy, General Michael Walker, made clear that they intended to take a minimalist approach to all aspects of implementation other than force protection. Smith signaled this in his first extensive public statement to the Bosnian people, during a live call-in program on Pale Television - an odd choice for his first local media appearance. During the program, he answered a question in a manner that dangerously narrowed his own authority. He later told Newsweek about it with a curious pride: "One of the questions I was asked was, "Admiral, is it true that IFOR is going to arrest Serbs in the Serb suburbs of Sarajevo?" I said, "Absolutely not, I don't have the authority to arrest anybody"."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

This was an inaccurate way to describe IFOR's mandate. It was true IFOR was not supposed to make routine arrests of ordinary citizens. But IFOR had the authority to arrest indicted war criminals, and could also detain anyone who posed a threat to its forces. Knowing what the question meant, Smith had sent an unfortunate signal of reassurance to Karadzic - over his own network.
Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p.327-329

Hostility , War , People , Hope