Quotes about first (10000 quotes, page 72)

“We can assume that in a relatively short time — perhaps within 100 million years — the one celled organism evolved into a colony of cells. With the further passage of time, groups of cells within those colonies assumed specialized functions of food-gathering, digestion, the structural features of an outer skin, and so on; thus began the stage of evolution leading to the complex, many-celled creatures which dominate life today.
The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms. The first clues to the existence of relatively advanced forms of life consist of a few barely discernible tracks, presumably made in the primeval slime by soft, wriggling wormlike animals. These are found in rocks about one billion years old. These meager remains are the earliest traces of many-celled animal life on the planet.”

Robert Jastrow (1925–2008) American astronomer

Red Giants and White Dwarfs : Man's Descent from the Stars (1971), p. 249.

Life , Food , Time , Animals

“People say, "Well, don't plants die? If Adam ate the apple, didn't it die?" Oh, you'd better first check out to see if plants are truly alive. They have no blood, no breath. They wither. They fade.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

People

“Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose.”

Vilfredo Pareto book Manual of Political Economy

page 95.
Manual of Political Economy

Men , Imagination , Appearance

“Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them. As far as Adams could teach experience, he was bound to warn them that he had found it an invariable disaster. Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had been always tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education

“I claim that jihadis are really motivated neither by religion nor by a Leftist sense of justice, but by resentment, which in no way puts them on the Left, neither “objectively” nor “subjectively.” I simply never wrote that Islamic fundamentalists are in any sense on the Left—the whole point of my writing on this topic is that the “antagonism” between liberal tolerance and ethnic or religious fundamentalism is inherent to the universe of global capitalism: in their very opposition, they are the two faces of the same system. The true Left starts with the insight into this complicity. A good example of how religious fundamentalism is to be located “in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism” is Afghanistan. Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 30 years ago, it was a country with strong secular tradition, up to a strong Communist party which first took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Afghanistan became fundamentalist when it was drawn into global politics”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

first through the Soviet intervention
"Disputations: Who Are You Calling Anti-Semitic?" in The New Republic (7 January 2009) http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/disputations-who-are-you-calling-anti-semitic

Religion , Justice , Way , Motivation

“See first with your mind, then with your eyes, and finally with your body.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

As quoted in Living the Martial Way : A Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think (1992) by Forrest E. Morgan, p. 88.

“I was glad to get away from those students when I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study in London. I found myself in the British Museum, at first content, reading English Renaissance literature. But then came the crisis: the domed silence; the dusty pages of books all around me; the days accumulating in lists of obsequious footnotes; the wandering doubts about the value of scholarship. My year in Britain came to an end and I rushed to ‘come home.’ Then quickly discovered that I could not. Could not cast off the culture I had assumed. Living with my parents for the summer, I remained an academic—a kind of anthropologist in the family kitchen, searching for evidence of our ‘cultural ties’ as we ate dinner together.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Books , Family , Home , Search

“But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about. This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

People , Imagination , Sense , Strong

“My first rule – the golden rule – ensures that over the economic cycle the Government will borrow only to invest, and that current spending will be met from taxation.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Hansard, 6 ser, vol 297 col 304 (2 July 1997)
From Brown's first Budget speech.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

“A finished or even a competent reasoner is not the work of nature alone… education develops faculties which would otherwise never have manifested their existence. It is, therefore, as necessary to learn to reason before we can expect to be able to reason, as it is to learn to swim or fence, in order to attain either of those arts. Now, something must be reasoned upon, it matters not much what it is, provided that it can be reasoned upon with certainty. The properties of mind or matter, or the study of languages, mathematics, or natural history may be chosen for this purpose. Now, of all these, it is desirable to choose the one… in which we can find out by other means, such as measurement and ocular demonstration of all sorts, whether the results are true or not.
.. Now the mathematics are peculiarly well adapted for this purpose, on the following grounds:—
1. Every term is distinctly explained, and has but one meaning, and it is rarely that two words are employed to mean the same thing.
2. The first principles are self-evident, and, though derived from observation, do not require more of it than has been made by children in general.
3. The demonstration is strictly logical, taking nothing for granted except the self-evident first principles, resting nothing upon probability, and entirely independent of authority and opinion.
4. When the conclusion is attained by reasoning, its truth or falsehood can be ascertained, in geometry by actual measurement, in algebra by common arithmetical calculation. This gives confidence, and is absolutely necessary, if… reason is not to be the instructor, but the pupil.
5. There are no words whose meanings are so much alike that the ideas which they stand for may be confounded.
…These are the principal grounds on which… the utility of mathematical studies may be shewn to rest, as a discipline for the reasoning powers. But the habits of mind which these studies have a tendency to form are valuable in the highest degree. The most important of all is the power of concentrating the ideas which a successful study of them increases where it did exist, and creates where it did not. A difficult position or a new method of passing from one proposition to another, arrests all the attention, and forces the united faculties to use their utmost exertions. The habit of mind thus formed soon extends itself to other pursuits, and is beneficially felt in all the business of life.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Source: On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831), Ch. I.

Life , Children , Truth , Education

“The first grand design of Christ Jesus is to destroy and consume His mortal enemy antichrist. This must be done by the breath of His mouth in His prophets and witnesses. Now, the nations of the world have impiously stopped this heavenly breath and stifled the Lord Jesus in His servants. Now, it shall please the civil state to remove the state bars set up to resist the holy spirit of God in His servants (whom yet finally to resist is not in all the powers of the world), I humbly conceive that the civil state has made a fair progress in promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ's (1652)

God , World , Christ

“Muslim ‘community’ in India had remained sharply divided into two mutually exclusive segments throughout the centuries of Islamic invasions and rule over large parts of the country. On the one hand, there were the descendants of conquerors who came from outside or who identified themselves completely with the conquerors - the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Afghans. They glorified themselves as the Ashrãf (high-born, noble) or Ahli-i-Daulat (ruling race) and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat (custodians of religion). On the other hand, there were converts from among the helpless Hindus who were looked down upon by the Ashrãf and described as the Ajlãf (low-born, ignoble) and Arzãl (mean, despicable) depending upon the Hindu castes from which the converts came. The converts were treated as Ahl-i-Murãd (servile people) who were expected to obey the Ahl-i-Daulat and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat abjectly. Shah Waliullah (1703-62) and his son Abdul Aziz (1746-1822) were the first to notice this situation and felt frightened that the comparatively small class of the Ashrãf was most likely to be drowned in the surrounding sea of Hindu Kafirs. … They had to turn to the neo-Muslims. The neo-Muslims, however, had little interest in waging wars for Islam. They had, therefore, to be fully Islamized, that is, alienated completely from their ancestral society and culture. That is why the Tabligh movement was started.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

War , People , Religion , Communication

“According to Seth, poor health is caused mainly by destructive mental feeling patterns that directly affect the body because of the particular range within the electromagnetic system in which they fall. Bad health, for example, does not happen first, resulting in unhealthy thoughts. It is the other way around.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 237-238

Health , Way , Feeling

“Although the problem of transmuting chemical elements into each other is much older than a satisfactory definition of the very concept of chemical element, it is well known that the first and most important step towards its solution was made only nineteen years ago by the late Lord Rutherford, who started the method of the nuclear bombardments.”

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) Italian physicist

Nobel lecture (12 December 1938)

Problem

“John F. Kennedy's death was as personal a body blow to most of the nation's young people. Why? It seems to me that the answer is simple: He was the symbol of the new generation grasping the tiller of the ship of state for the first time, and finding it exhilarating, exciting, challenging. He knew that there is an element of danger in accepting a challenge — in taking a risk that is beyond what is expected of you, beyond what you may expect of yourself.”

Leo Ryan book Understanding California Government and Politics

Understanding California Government and Politics (1966), Preface, p. v.

Death , People , Time , Personality

“In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, Unity for Liberation

World , Nature

“A myth has it that in the Texas League some years back, Billy Williams hit a line drive so hard it broke the leg of a rival first baseman. The myth is total nonsense. Williams actually hit a one-bounce ground shot that broke the leg of a rival second baseman. When Billy Williams sets the record straight, he laughs, and tiny white lights glitter in his black eyes, like the tips of icepicks. You know," he says, "nobody likes to hurt anybody. But you have to think I hit that ball pretty good." This is the Billy Williams laugh. It is not a friendly laugh. It is the laugh of an arrogant hitter. Stan Musial used to giggle that way, and no one would confuse it with a girlish giggle. Ted Williams used to grin that way when he talked about hitting. Not a friendly grin; a wicked grin. That is Billy Williams' laugh. It is probably the way the legendary Billy the Kid laughed before he killed a man. Cold as the tip of an icepick. Not that Billy Williams is not a friendly man. He is. Very. He is one of the nicest guys in baseball. But he knows how to separate the two—nice guy, big league hitter.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Billy Williams: Invisible Iron Man," in Baseball Stars of 1971 (March 1971), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 106
Sports-related

Way , Guy , Thinking , Light

“The initial thesis of my enterprise - on the basis of which this entanglement of periodizations is organized by extracting the sense of each - is this following: the science of being qua being has existed since the Greeks - such is the sense and status of mathematics. However, it is only today that we have the means to know this. It follows from this thesis that philosophy is not centered on on ontology - which exists as a separate and exact discipline- rather it circulates between this ontology (this, mathematics), the modern theories of he subject and its own history. The contemporary complex of the conditions of philosophy includes everything referred to in my first three statements: the history of 'Western'thought, post-Cantorian mathematics, psychoanalysis, contemporary art and politics. Philosophy does not coincide with any of these conditions; nor does it map out the totality to which they belong. What philosophy must do is purpose a conceptual framework in which the contemporary compossibilty of these conditions can be grasped. Philosophy can only do this - and this is what frees it from any foundational ambition, in which it would lose itself- by designating amongst its own conditions, as a singular discursive situation, ontology itself in the form of pure mathematics. This is precisely what delivers philosophy and ordains it to the care of truths.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Introduction
Being and Event (1988)

Truth , Art , History , Mathematics

“The United States are deemed all the world over to be pre-eminently the land of equality. This was the first feature which struck Europeans when they began, after the peace of 1815 had left them time to look beyond the Atlantic, to feel curious about the phenomena of a new society. This was the great theme of Tocqueville's description, and the starting-point of his speculations; this has been the most constant boast of the Americans themselves, who have believed their liberty more complete than that of any other people, because equality has been more fully blended with it.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

The American Commonwealth: Volume II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), p. 810.
1910s

People , World , Peace , Feeling

“Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between “is” and “ought” first as an ontological condition, pertaining to the structure of Being itself. However, the recognition of this state of Being — its theory — intends from the beginning a concrete practice. Seen in the light of a truth which appears in them falsified or denied, the given facts themselves appear false and negative.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 133

Truth , Understanding , Light , Appearance

“And now cruel famine came – famine that is ever first in the train of great disasters.”
Jamque comes semper magnorum prima malorum<br/>saeva fames aderat.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Jamque comes semper magnorum prima malorum
saeva fames aderat.
Book IV, line 93 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Training

“Try not to use two actions. Like when kicking, Wing Chun doesn't like to lift the knee first and then kick because this is a two step action. Also the line of force is wrong because your kick will not have ground support. Instead, your kick will transmit back to your body to off-balance you. This is why Yip Man's kick in the second set looks a bit funny at first. We want to travel in a straight line from the ground to the target, not lift the knee first.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wong Shun Leung Applied the Principle of a One-Step Action to Execute a Kick
Kicking and Kneeing
Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

Travel , Support

“The proletariat must seize state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois state apparatus and, in a first phase, replace it with a quite different, proletarian, state apparatus, then in later phases set in motion a radical process, that of the destruction of the state.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 95

“Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity, and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient Nature which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable philosophy.”

David Strauss (1808–1874) German theologian

The Old Faith and the New (Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872, translated from the 6th edition by M. Blind, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. II, part IV, ch. 71, pp. 59 https://archive.org/stream/oldfaithnewconfe01stra#page/59/mode/2up-60.

Men , History , Nature , Animals

“The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 5

Marriage

“Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Back to the Dump" (p.414)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Life , Education , Learning

“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him… Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Column discussing John Toland's biography of Hitler http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm (1977).
1970s

War , History , Courage , Sense

“What effect will all this have on education? First of all, teaching computer skill will be more important - much more important - than teaching children lists of facts. The computer will become the child's memory.”

Owain Owain (1929–1993) Welsh novelist, short story writer and poet

Children , Education , Memory

“I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in BAM Magazine (6 April 1990).

“Oh, it was a real shock when we saw the Creature. And you can see from the pictures in the book that I look a little awestruck, kind of taken aback when I saw it at first. I thought it was quite wonderful, extraordinary, and a little scary which of course is exactly what is was supposed to be.”

Julie Adams (1926–2019) American actress

WAMG Interview: Julie Adams – Star of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON https://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2012/03/wamg-interview-julie-adams-star-of-creature-from-the-black-lagoon/ (March 19, 2012)

Books

“I don’t mind people admiring me if they want to but I don’t think it’s very logical. It’s not like I was St. George knocking off some dumb dragon or anything like that. First of all, you’re talking about something I did a long, long time ago. Secondly, we were doing things that were not expected to last a lifetime. We figured they’d last about three years and then disappear forever. Remember there was no television back then and no place for the cartoons to go after they left the theaters. But I’m not trying to demean what we did. I always took the work very seriously and I’m proud to have been associated with the work we did. It’s just that adulation is impractical and makes me uncomfortable. Nobody noticed us back then. Nobody called us geniuses. And we didn’t feel like artists. We were just trying to make people laugh.”

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

Orange County Register, October 22, 1989

People , Feeling , Thinking , Time

“!-- A motion was made and seconded, that the report of the Committee made on Monday last, be amended, so far as to add the following to the first article therein mentioned, viz.: ' -->And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog<!-- Printed by the Resolves of the Legislature, 1856. Boston: William White, Printer of the Commonwealth.
Variant: The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms...
As quoted in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1850) edited by Peirce & Hale
Disputed

People , Search , Time , Personality

“In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 3, In-Formation, The roots of the concept, p. 18

Understanding

“Consolidation didn’t make him a New Yorker, and nothin’ on earth can. A man born in Germany can settle down and become a good New Yorker. So can an Irishman; in fact, the first word an Irish boy learns in the old country is “New York,” and when he grows up and comes here, he is at home right away. Even a Jap or a Chinaman can become a New Yorker, but a Brooklynite never can. p. 41”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 10, Brooklynites Natural-Born Hayseeds

Home , Boy , Learning , Country

“Friends are born, not made, and Henry never mistook a friend except when in power. From the first slight meeting in February and March, 1861, he recognized Hay as a friend, and never lost sight of him at the future crossing of their paths.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Future

“It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/184/mode/1up p. 184

Friendship , Hope , Parting

“The world political system is till based on the concept of the national sovereign state. For the first time therefore, in three hundred years economy and sovereignty are becoming divorced from each other.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 739

World , Time

“When I went vegetarian at age eleven, it was a remarkably easy transition. A boy at my school was attempting to kill creatures in the pond. When I tried to stop him, he said, “You eat animals,” like that meant I had no right to try and save something that could end up on my plate later. The hypocrisy of my actions became crystal clear in that moment. I decided, no more meat. … When I first started working for two organizations supporting anti-factory farming, vegan outreach and humane education, my choice to go vegan became that much clearer. I realized veganism is the only diet that can change the world. … You can expect a healthier body, and the feeling of pride that goes hand-in-hand with living according to your values. That’s something that many people aspire to, but few people achieve.”

Alicia Silverstone (1976) American actress

"How to Transition from Vegetarianism to Veganism", in The Kind Life (9 April 2013) http://thekindlife.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-transition-from-vegetarian-to-vegan/

People , Age , World , Education

“Charles coloured, from “a complication of disorders.” First he was quite shy enough to be annoyed at its being supposed that he cared whether there were any young ladies in the world or not; and, secondly, he was quite romantic enough to be shocked at the idea of money supplying the want of a pretty face.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Money , World , Idea

“The most likely reason for the adoption of a relatively small number of discrete intervals as the tonal material for music is that discretization or categorization is a typical, if not universal, strategy used by animals in order to reduce information overload and facilitate processing when subjected to the high-information-conetent signals and/or high information rates from a highly developed sensory system (e. g., Estes, 1972; Terhardt, 1991). An obvious example is the processing of speech information by humans, wherein each language selects a relatively small portion of the available timbral-differences that can be produced by the vocal tract as information-carrying units (phonemes) in the language. A related reason for discrete scales, and another obvious analogy with speech perception, lies in the social aspect of music. Music first developed as, and still largely remains, a social phenomenon associated with religious or other rituals that, like language, necessitated an easily remembered common framework.”

Edward Burns (1968) American actor and director

Burns, Edward M. (1999). "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning", 'The Psychology of Music second edition, p. 218. Deutsch, Diana, ed. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0122135644

Music , Universe , Animals

“After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it has become part of our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expectations are brought more into balance with its actual uses, and its excessive popularity is ended. A few zealots persist in the old key-to-the-universe view of it; but less driven thinkers settle down after a while to the problems the idea has really generated. They try to apply it and extend it where it applies and where it is capable of extension; and they desist where it does not apply or cannot be extended. It becomes, if it was, in truth, a seminal idea in the first place, a permanent and enduring part of our intellectual armory. But it no longer has the grandiose, all-promising scope, the infinite versatility of apparent application, it once had. The second law of thermodynamics, or the principle of natural selection, or the notion of unconscious motivation, or the organization of the means of production does not explain everything, not even everything human, but it still explains something; and our attention shifts to isolating just what that something is, to disentangling ourselves from a lot of pseudoscience to which, in the first flush of its celebrity, it has also given rise.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 3-4

Truth , Law , Motivation , Idea

“Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Time Magazine, Who Needs Breasts, Anyway? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001832-1,00.html, Feb. 18, 2002. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

“Palissy, a French writer on 'the Origin of Springs from Rain-water' and of other scientific works, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge. 'He was the first,' said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he pronounced his eulogy nearly a century and a half later, 'who dared assert' in Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to marine animals.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Spring , Fish , Universe , Water

“2826. Provoke not even a patient Man too far; extreme Sufferance when it comes to dissolve, breaks out into the most severe Revenge; for taking Fire at last, Anger and Fury being combined into one, discharge their utmost Force at the first Blast. Irarumque omnes effundit habenas.”

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

Latin fragment from Vergil's Aeneid, Book XII, line 499 : ‘He threw away all restraint on his anger.’
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Revenge , Suffering , Anger

“I was in a bar a few nights ago, moving from stool to stool, trying to get lucky… But there was no gum under any of them. And I hear giggling behind me. At first I don't mind, but the giggling continues… Finally, I thought "What's so amusing?" I turn around, and these two guys, for the last, oh, half hour or so, have been throwing darts into my head. It's a good thing I heard them! I said, "Look, you bums," 'cause I was angry now, "As soon as this game is over, hit the road!"”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

But as I left that bar, one thing stuck in my mind...
E=MO² (1985)

Guy , Game , Night

“We went to see 'Dr No' [first James Bond film, 1962] at Fort-Second Street. It's a fantastic movie, so cool. We walked outside and somebody threw a cherry bomb right in front of us, in this big crowd. And there was blood. I saw blood on people and all over. I felt like I was bleeding all over. I saw in the paper last week that there are more people throwing them - it's just part of the scene - and hurting people. My show in Paris is to be called 'Death in America.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

I'll show the 'Electric-chair' pictures and the Dogs in Birmingham and car wrecks and some suicide pictures.
Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Death , People , Dogs , Cars

“As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 182

Understanding , Universe

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Women , Men , War , Children

“Looking through an aperture [a door or a window] is a way that I have been able to isolate or fragment a single form. My first memory of focusing through an aperture occurred when I was around twelve years old. One evening, passing the lighted window of a house. I was fascinated by red, blue and black shapes inside a room. But when I went up and looked in, I saw a red coach, a blue drape and a black table. The shapes had disappeared. I had to retreat to see them again.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

Way , Light , Memory , Housing

“The preface to the first edition of this book… shows that in 1958 the classification ideas in it were felt to controversial, needing to be championed. A few years before, the had issued a memorandum proclaiming "the need for a faceted classification as the basis of all methods of information retrieval'. As part-author of this memorandum, I must now judge the claim to have been too bold, even brash.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Preface to third edition; Partly cited in: Vanda Broughton (2011) " Brian Vickery and the Classification Research Group: the legacy of faceted classification http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/broughton.pdf" p. 6
Classification and indexing in science (1958)

Books , Idea , Parting

“In any transition period there is a clash of realities. In the 1930s people considered the eventual solutions, at first, to be unrealistic. It’s the same this time round. At first, in the euro crisis there was to be no bailout. Then no buying of government debt. Then no QE. Each of these things have happened. Some things which are now seen as unrealistic will change with the political balance of forces.”

Euclid Tsakalotos (1960) Greek economist and politician

" Inside Syriza’s economic brain http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/Greece-syriza-election/2941" (20 January 2015)
Quoted during an interview, via Skype, between Tsakalotos and a number of other economists. Hosted at the London School of Economics.

People , Reality , Change , Time

“Francis Bacon, in his New Atlantis, could charge his elite scientists in Salomon’s House with practicing self-censorship to avoid publicizing dangerous knowledge. Here is how the Father of Salomon’s House describes their practice: “We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not: and take all a oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret: though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.” Bacon, the first prophet of the new relation between science and society and of the “conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate,” knew better than we that knowledge is dangerous, that publication is a public and politically relevant act, and that self-censorship on the part of scientists is necessary and desirable. The passage is also remarkable for its wonderful ambiguity regarding whether scientists or the State has ultimate authority over dangerous knowledge”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Forbidding Science: Some Beginning Reflections (2006)

Secret , Nature , Knowledge , Thinking

“The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, and in 1776, that's exactly what they meant. Women could not vote, women could not own property, and blacks were considered property. After 200 years of enlightenment, we have realized that gender and race are inappropriate distinctions for determining who has individual rights. Anytime Gov gives you permission they let you know that you have permission by giving you a permit or a license. If you have a marriage license, what permission do you have to do now that you did not have permission to do before, who gave you that permission, and who gave them the authority to give you that permission in the first place?”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Libertarian Party National Convention (2004)

Women , Men , Marriage

“These are armed enemy, who have hastened to this site with one object only: to take the lives of my comanions and me. I must take theirs first. No truth could be plainer. Yet at the same time nothing can alter the fact that beneath the fascist insignia of their uniforms, these men are fathers, husbands, sons.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 204
Killing Rommel (2008)

Men , Truth , Time

“We can now return to the NCERT guideline which proclaims that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in medieval India shall be regarded as political rather than religious. There is no justification for such a characterisation of the conflict. The Muslims at least were convinced that they were waging a religious war against the Hindu infidels. The conflict can be regarded as political only if the NCERT accepts the very valid proposition that Islam has never been a religion, and that it started and has remained a political ideology of terrorism with unmistakable totalitarian trends and imperialist ambitions. The first premises as well as the procedures of Islam bear a very close resemblance to those of Communism and Nazism. Allah is only the predecessor of the Forces of Production invoked by the Communists, and of the Aryan Race invoked by the Nazis.
My heart sinks at the very idea of such a sinister scheme being sponsored by an educational agency set up by the government of a democratic country. It is an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing. Having been a student of these processes in Communist countries, I have a strong suspicion that this document has also sprung from the same sort of mind. This mind has presided for long over the University Grants Commission and other educational institutions, and has been aided and abetted by the residues of Islamic imperialism masquerading as secularists.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

War , Education , Religion , Communication

“The feeling of uneasiness and insecurity, if not bound by the chains of some sect, is general. It is begotten of the false idea, first promulgated by Papacy, that membership in an earthly organization is essential, pleasing to the Lord and necessary to everlasting life. These earthly, humanly organized systems, so different from the simple, unfettered associations of the days of the apostles, are viewed involuntarily an almost unconsciously by Christian people as so many Heaven Insurance Companies, to some one of which money, time, respect, etc., must be paid regularly, to secure heavenly rest and peace after death. Acting on this false idea, people are almost as nervously anxious to be bound by another sect, if they step out of one, as they are if their policy of insurance has expired, to have it renewed in some respectable company.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 186.

Life , Death , Money , People

“Galileo had the experience of beholding the heavens as they actually are for perhaps the first time, and wherever he looked he found evidence to support the Copernican system against the Ptolemaic, or at least weaken the authority of the ancients. This shattering experience—of observing the depths of the universe, of being the first mortal to know what the heavens are actually like—made so deep a an impression… that it is only by considering the events of 1609… that one can understand the subsequent direction of his life.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

I. Bernard Cohen,
The Birth of a New Physics (1959)

Life , Understanding , Support , Universe

“For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Health and Education http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17437/17437-h/17437-h.htm, The Science of Health (1874).

“Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against first — Roe v. Wade?”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

Republican presidential debate, 2011-09-22
2011

“Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock … then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne.”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

Bill Finger as quoted by Kane, Bob; Tom Andrae (1989). Batman & Me. Forestville, California: Eclipse Books. p. 44. ISBN 1-56060-017-9.

Search , Madness

“If the people in this room were not citizens of the United States, if they were not citizens of any state, or of any sovereign government, and if we decided that we needed to, for our own protection, first beginning with safety—September 11th told us why we need each other for the sake of safety—form a government, we have to recognize, each one of us, that this government shall protect the right to life, and to liberty, and property of each one of us. No one of us can say that he deserves protection for the government to be formed, but not somebody else, or that somebody is entitled to more protection than anybody else. Anybody who demands more protection from the government than his fellow citizens won’t be accepted as a fellow citizen.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Life , People

“Originally I was supposed to do Grand Prix, but I was under contract to 20th Century Fox at that time and Alex North was supposed to do Sand Pebbles, but he got sick, so Fox preempted me out of Grand Prix, and to my good fortune, I got to do Sand Pebbles. It was my first time working with Robert Wise and it was a great experience.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

AOL Online Host (1995-07-11)

Time

“You get pictures in pre-season. You get pictures of fitness, you get pictures of attitude, you get pictures of mentality, you get pictures of systems and the way players play and you also get pictures of whether people can step up to the plate in the Premier League. I was getting all those pictures in the first half”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

28-Jul-2008 Hull City OWS
The pre-season friendly against Crewe provided a huge boost to Phil's picture collection.

People , Way , Season

“The work that has so far been done has indeed been of the highest value. The growth during the last 50 years, of a feeling of common nationality, based upon common tradition, common disabilities, and common hopes and aspirations, has been most striking. The fact that we are Indians first, and Hindoos, Mahomedans, Parsees, or Christinas afterwards, is being realized in a steadily increasing measure, and the idea of a united and renovated India, marching onwards to a place among the nations of the world worthy of her great past, is no longer a mere idle dream of a few imaginative minds, but is definitely the accepted creed of those who form the brain of the community-the educated classes of the country.”

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915) social and political leader during the Indian Independence Movement

Extract from his speech during setting up and defining the charter of the Servants of Scoiety. Page=702
Sources of Indian Tradition

World , Education , Dreams , Hope

“Getting my first chance to play in front of crowds like that, situations like that, is going to be huge for us going on. We have a lot of young guys on this team, and getting as far as we did is going to be beneficial down the road for us.”

Aaron Judge (1992) American baseball player

quoted by Newsday https://www.newsday.com/sports/aaron-judge-makes-spectacular-catch-but-falls-short-at-the-plate-in-yankees-game-7-loss-1.14574441

Guy , Chance

“If you score first, you have a 75 per cent chance of not losing the game. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that you have to get off to a good start and score.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

06-Mar-2007, Hull City OWS
It's maths, not rocket science.

Game , Chance

“If there is a god, why did he make me an atheist? That was his first mistake. Well, the talking snake was his first mistake.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

"Inside the Actors Studio," 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBBtYcK9Jb8

God

“First, most of the speculation about the superiority of the communist system - including the popular view that Western economies could painlessly accelerate their own growth by borrowing some aspects of that system - was off base. Rapid Soviet economic growth was based entirely on one attribute: the willingness to save, to sacrifice current consumption for the sake of future production. The communist example offered no hint of a free lunch.
Second, the economic analysis of communist countries' growth implied some future limits to their industrial expansion - in other words, implied that a naive projection of their past growth rates into the future was likely to greatly overstate their real prospects. Economic growth that is based on expansion of inputs, rather than on growth in output per unit of input, is inevitably subject to diminishing returns. It was simply not possible for the Soviet economies to sustain the rates of growth of labor force participation, average education levels, and above all the physical capital stock that had prevailed in previous years. Communist growth would predictably slow down, perhaps drastically.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Pop Internationalism (1996), Asia's Miracle (1994)

Education , Past , Future , Country

“…two things. First that Daberlohn's eyes seemed to say: 'Death and the Maiden, that is the two of us;' and second, that she still loved him as much as ever. And if he was Death, then everything was alright, then she did not have to kill herself like her ancestors... So she was in fact the living model for his theories, and she remembered…”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 3th ending, written page in brush, related to JHM no. 4924r https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004924/part/character/theme/keyword/M004924: (556) 'Life? or Theater..', p. 821
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Love , Death

“Love is the eternal first breath.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Home"
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Love

“First of all, when you enter a conservatory, it’s already too late. The kind of connection that has to be made with an instrument, be it a piano, strings, a wind instrument, it really has to start much younger – five, six, seven - eight years-old is already getting late. The instrument must really become an extension of yourself. That neuromuscular connection between intention and realization is something that really has to be started very young. And the years between nine or ten and twenty, that’s when one should learn the whole repertoire.”

Leon Fleisher (1928) American conductor and pianist

Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-leon-fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)

Learning

“Formerly, the purchase of Texas by our Government, for the purpose of bestowing it as a gift upon our colored population, was a favorite opinion of ours; but we have settled down into the belief, that the object is neither practicable nor expedient. In the first place, it is not probable that the Congress would make the purchase; nor, secondly, is it likely that the mass of our colored people would remove without some compulsory process; nor, thirdly, would it be safe or convenient to organise them as a distinct nation among us,—an imperium in imperio. The fact is, it is time to repudiate all colonization schemes, as visionary and unprofitable; all those, we mean, which have for their design the entire separation of the blacks from the whites. We must take our free colored and slave inhabitants as we find them—recognise them as countrymen who have extraordinary claims upon our charities—give them the advantages of education—respect them as members of one great family, who may be made useful in society and honorable in reputation. This is our view of the subject.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

The Liberator http://deadconfederates.com/2016/03/21/garrison-gives-up-on-colonization/ (22 January 1861)
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

People , Education , Family , Color

“I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1340.htm to James Madison (6 September 1789) ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
1780s

Dead

“It was pretty sad, because for the first time I found how stupid people could be. It sort of made me feel alone in the world. The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.”

Frances Farmer (1913–1970) American actress

On reaction to her high school essay "God Dies", Collier's magazine, (8 May 1937)

People , Stupidity , World , Sadness

“First of all, no one can accuse me, Ayad Jamal Aldin, of secatarianism, because I support a secular regime that fully separates religion and the state. […] I believe that my freedom as a Shia and as a religious person will never be complete unless I preserve the freedom of the Sunni, the Christian, the Jew, the Sabai and the Yazidi. We will not be able to preserve the freedom of the mosque unless we preserve the freedom of entertainment clubs. […] The curricula - both the modern ones, in some Arab and Islamic countries, and the books of jurisprudence and heritage - have many flaws that must be fixed once and for all. There are rulings about Ahl al-Dhimma - even if, Allah be praised, no current regime can enforce these rulings. However, just for the sake of amusement and diversion, I recommend that the viewers read the books of jurisprudence, and see how Ahl al-Dhimma are treated. I especially recommend this to people with a lust for Arab and Islamic history, who claim that our history is a source of pride, and that others were treated with kindness and love - especially Christians and Jews. Among these rulings, a Dhimmi must wear a belt, so he would be identifiable. Moreover, it is recommended that he be forced to the narrowest paths, and there are even jurisprudents who say that it is recommended to slap a Christian on the back of his neck so he would feel humiliated and degraded. This is how we harass him and then invite him to join Islam. I can swear that the Prophet Muhammad is innocent of such inhuman jurisprudence. I challenge anyone among the people with a lust for history to talk candidly to the West, to the advocates of human rights, and tell them that our heritage has such evils and flaws. We are a nation of blackout and darkness. We cannot live in the light of day. […] We do not hold ourselves accountable. This is why America came to demand that the Arabs be accountable. We must have more self-confidence and be accountable before others hold us accountable. We must discipline ourselves before the Americans and English discipline us. We must maintain human rights, which we have neglected for 1,300 or 1,400 years, to this day - until the arrival of the Americans, the Christians, the English, the Zionists, the Crusaders - call them what you will. They came to teach you, the followers of Muhammad, how to respect human rights.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: The Arabs Want Tyrannical Regimes, in Line with Their Backward Culture, LBC TV, July 31, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZKffu6Wsg,

Love , People , Books , Religion

“When I was growing up in the 1950s, the twenty-first century was an idea associated with science fiction, not a reality in which I would live. Practical people focus on the next moment and leave the centuries to dreamers. But the truth is that the twenty-first century has turned out to be a very practical concern to me. I will spent a good deal of my life in it.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 254

Life , People , Truth , Idea

“I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Interview in TIME magazine (2 February 1976)
1970s

Personality

“Smile to me, like the very first smile
You are magnificent when you're innocent.
Walk to me
Like the very first walk
You are from heaven sent when you're innocent.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Smile

“In love, the first healed is the best healed.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

En amour, celui qui est guéri le premier est toujours le mieux guéri.
Maxim 417.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love

“Matter is actually distributed very unevenly… conglomerated into stars and galactic systems. The average density is the density that we should get if all… could be evaporated into atoms of hydrogen, or protons, and… distributed evenly over the whole of space. …three or four protons in every cubic foot. …a million million times less than that of the most perfect vacuum that we can produce… The universe thus consists mostly of emptiness… consider a universe without any matter at all, an empty universe, as a good approximation. But we may also take as our first approximation a universe containing… three or four protons per cubic foot. The local deviations from the average, caused by the conglomeration of matter into stars and stellar systems, are then disregarded in the grand scale model, and are only taken into account when we come to study details.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Star , Study , Universe , Time

“We saw the choices. The audience will be given the opportunity. They can see Him and Her, or they can see Them. … Well, for the cinephiles and the people who really want to commit, I would definitely say, “See Him and Her.” It’s the full experience. … I’ve always thought Him and Her. But it’s funny, in Toronto, when Harvey Weinstein saw the film for the first time, he saw Her and Him, and he was determined. He was like, “That’s how it has to be seen!””

Jessica Chastain (1977) American actress

So it depends.
On her role in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013-2014), written and directed by Ned Benson
Vulture interview (2014)

People , Time , Dependency

“The proprietor should always direct his attention to obtain from his land a gradual increase of produce, or to augment its value continually. The farmer only desires the greatest profit during the continuance of his lease, without caring for the value of the land afterwards. "Whilst the proprietor can content himself with a trifling produce during a few years, in order to attain greater and more durable profit subsequently, the tenant must, on the contrary, endeavour to obtain the greatest produce, even though its amount should be diminished during the latter years of his lease; because the proprietor who wishes to farm on the best system, finds at the same time both pleasure and profit in laying out on his property as much capital as he can spare, whilst the tenant, on the contrary, withdraws as much of his pecuniary resources as possible, to employ it in other ways, or to place it at interest. The improvement of the land constitutes the pleasure of the proprietor, while the mere occupying farmer only thinks of augmenting his income. Thus the longer the lease may be, the more do the interests of the landlord and tenant become identified; the shorter the term, the more conflicting are those interests. With a lease of 24 years, a tenant ought, at least during the first two-thirds of its duration, to follow out the views of the proprietor. But the time will come when he will act on different principles, and endeavour to extract from the land a return in proportion to his outlay at the commencement.
To this must be added, that a tenant cannot have the means of laying out so much on the land as the proprietor, even if he wished to do so. The latter must pay the rent, whilst a proprietor anxious to improve can economize something from the net produce to expend on his property. The first may be compared to a merchant who trades on borrowed money; the second to one who speculates with his own funds. The former must first provide for his rent, the latter need only think of extending his speculations.”

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

Thaer, cited in: Joseph Rogers Farmers Magazine Volume The Seventh http://books.google.com/books?id=8OnG6xwQkesC&pg=PA263, 1843, p. 263: Speaking of lease and covenants

Money , Pleasure , Way , Thinking

“He was magnificent, and I will never forget that in that moment, I first loved him. And I never stopped loving him. I do now and always will. No one ever brought me more sorrow or pain or joy than he did. No, nothing, not even my sons, has ever outweighed the love I feel and still feel for him. And I believe – had I known what the future held for us: all the trouble, torment, battle, and grief of our lives – I still believe that I would have yielded my heart into his keeping as I did then”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Love , Pain , Feeling , Future

“These were the first specimens of Christian warfare against the heathen of Hind… It would perhaps be fortunate for Christianity, if the historic muse in India were mute, as many have endeavoured to prove her to be, since atrocities like these are alone sufficient to have scared the Hindus from all association with her creed.”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

Source: James Tod Travels in Western India’, London, 1839, reprinted in New Delhi, 1997, p. 260. Also quoted in Preface by S. R. Goel in Matilda Joslyn Gage : ‘Woman, Church and State’, New Delhi, 1997 (Reprint), p. V (Introduction). Also quoted in http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hvhb/ch20.htm. note: Travels in Western India

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - James Tod / Quotes / Travels in Western India

“If you look at anyone successful, at the start they were not balanced. Balanced people go nowhere. They stay in one spot. To make progress, you must first go unbalanced. Just look at how you make progress walking. Thomas Edison was not balanced. He was focused. Bill Gates was not balanced. He was focused. Donald Trump is focused. George Soros is focused. George Patton did not take his tanks wide. He focused them and blew through the weak spots in the German line. The French went wide with the Maginot Line, and you know what happened to them. If you have any desire of being rich, you must focus.”

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!

People , Success

“What are novels? What is the secret of the charm of every romance that ever was written? The first thing in a good novel is to place the persons together in circumstances which naturally call out the high feelings and thoughts of the character, which afford food for sympathy between them on these points — romantic events they are called. The second is that the heroine has generally no family ties (almost invariably no mother), or, if she has, these do not interfere with her entire independence.
These two things constitute the main charm of reading novels.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Secret , Family , Food , Feeling

“First generation Indian immigrants are mass guinea pigs. When a race that subsisted on plants for centuries subsists on a meat-dominated diet, it scares me to know what's in store for them”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 7
Dark Rooms (2002)

“If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"To the Reader" ["A quien leyere"], preface to Fervor of Buenos Aires [Fervor de Buenos Aires] (1923)

Books , Exercises , Chance , Success

“They did not deny the existence of authority. They recognized it and undertook to abide by it, and through obedience to it secure their freedom. They made their appeal and rested their cause not merely upon earthly authority, but in the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence asserted that they proposed 'to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.' And as they closed that noble document in which they submitted their claims to the opinions of mankind they again revealed what they believed to be the ultimate source of authority by stating that they were also 'appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of' their 'intentions.'.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God , World , Law , Nature

“I have learned from experience that it is useful to begin by drawing one's picture clearly on a virgin canvas, first having noted the desired effect on a white or gray paper, and then to do the picture section by section, as immediately finished as one can, so that when it has all been covered there is very little to retouch. I have noticed that whatever is finished at one sitting is fresher, better drawn, and profits more from many lucky accidents, while when one retouches this initial harmonious glow is lost. I think that this method is particularly good for foliage, which needs a good deal of freedom.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1828, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 239 – 240
1820 - 1850

Thinking , Freedom , Learning , Drawing

“When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Cuando yo muera, no me veré morir, por primera vez.
Voces (1943)

Time