Quotes about first
page 81

“We have, for the first time in history, easy access to all of the world's great religions. Examine the many great traditions — from Christianity to Buddhism, Islam to Taoism, Paganism to Neoplatonism — and you are struck by two items: there are an enormous number of differences between them, and a handful of striking similarities.
When you find a few essential items that all, or virtually all, of the world's great religions agree on, you have probably found something incredibly important about the human condition, at least as important as, say, a few things that physicists can manage to agree on”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

which nowadays, by the way, ain't all that impressive
An Integral Spirituality

World, Religion, Way, History

“Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. II

“The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, 'This is jessamine, this violet, this rose'. But at last Dahoum drew me: 'Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all', and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. 'This,' they told me, 'is the best: it has no taste.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part.
Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 3

World, Dogs, Way, Flowers

“Our fellow passenger was Major Grogan, who thirty years before had been the first white man to go from the Cape to Cairo. It took him three years, one whole year in the marshes of the Sudd; his two companions died. It is said he ate them; I think so. He looked like a sensible man.”

James Tiptree, Jr (1915–1987) American science fiction writer

As quoted in "James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon" (2006) by Julie Phillips

Thinking

“And since any inflation, however modest at first, can help employment only so long as it accelerates, adopted as a means of reducing unemployment, it will do so for any length of time only while it accelerates. "Mild" steady inflation cannot help—it can lead only to outright inflation. That inflation at a constant rate soon ceases to have any stimulating effect, and in the end merely leaves us with a backlog of delayed adaptations, is the conclusive argument against the "mild" inflation represented as beneficial even in standard economics textbooks.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s Unemployment and the Unions: Essays on the Impotent Price Structure of Britain and Monopoly in the Labour Market https://books.google.com/books?id=zZu3AAAAIAAJ&q=%22only+while+it+accelerates%22&dq=%22only+while+it+accelerates%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HBhsUYjUGMv34QSW-YDgDg&redir_esc=y (1984) 1980s and later

Time, Help

“As steals the dew along the flower,
So stole thy smile on me;
I cannot tell the day, nor hour
I first loved thee!”

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

(1836-2) (Vol.47) Songs-IV.
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Smile, Flowers

“The exclusion of true or esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.firmstand.org/articles/separation_of_church_and_state.html

Wisdom, Religion, Business, Time

“We might easily pursue these contrasts between bourgeois of the Jansenist school and those of the Jesuit school. One, of upright and rigid character, was himself in the various occupations of daily life; the other had the personality of his state, which would make of him less a moral personality than a socially determined being, subject to rules which it would be improper and unChristian not to observe, the "first duty of probity" always being, as Père Bourdaloue puts it, to "submit to authority." So that while the disciple of the Jesuit Fathers might be a reliable man, who most probably would always remain prudently within the confines of mediocrity, the disciple of the Jansenists might sometimes indulge in eccentricities. He was less reliable; he might take the counsels of perfection literally, and not be so docile. Under a middle-class exterior, he might often conceal a romantic spirit, preserving a predilection for the heroic feats of olden times.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 163

Life, School, Time, Personality

“When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say "The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven."”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

God, People, World, Nature

“Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there's only one of me.”

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git
YouTube
Google
2007.
2000s, 2007

Time, Perfection

“The 1911 pistol remains the service pistol of choice in the eyes of those who understand the problem. Back when we audited the FBI academy in 1947, I was told that I ought not to use my pistol in their training program because it was not fair. Maybe the first thing one should demand of his sidearm is that it be unfair.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Guns & Ammo magazine, January 2002

Understanding, Problem, Training

“Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88

Travel

“The first law is the same for both light and material bodies; they both move in a straight line, as long as they are not deflected by an outside force.
The second law is also the same as that governing the reflection of an elastic ball from an impenetrable surface. Mechanics shows that such a ball is reflected from such a surface so that its angle of reflection equals its angle of incidence, as observed for light.
But the third law still requires a plausible explanation. The passage of light from one medium to another exhibits behavior that is totally different from a ball moving through different media.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Law, Behavior, Light

“When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her. I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.
I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage. It just went from there. I knew over the years, I knew that things were getting better and better and we went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on. From were you had the odd problem when you are first getting to know each other, those have all gone and it is just really easy being with each other, it is really fun and I'm extremely funny and she loves that so it's been good.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

First post-engagement interview (2010)

Love, Problem

“If my father had a heart attack, it would give me no solace at all to know his treatment was first tried on a dog.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Washington Post, 1983 November 13.
On animal research and activism against it

Dogs, Heart

“This will to live was the first thing that Judaism gave to Christianity: hence that contradiction, which even today seems to many an inexplicable riddle, between a doctrine of inner conversion, toleration and mercifulness, and a religion of exclusive self-assertion and fanatical intolerance.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

Religion

“Most controversies would soon be ended, if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 88.

“You know, that's the first time I've ever been able to smell a website.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (February 6, 2007) - referring to Kip Winger's website

Time

“A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" (March 1975), p. 173
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Stupidity

“We cannot solve ethical questions of the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his. Being Christians does not mean following 'in his steps.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 139

Question

“When we speak of the early history of algebra it is necessary to consider… the meaning of the term. If… we mean the science that allows us to solve the equation ax^2 + bx + c = 0, expressed in these symbols, then the history begins in the 17th century; if we remove the restriction as to these particular signs, and allow for other and less convenient symbols, we might properly begin the history in the 3rd century; if we allow for the solution of the above equation by geometric methods, without algebraic symbols of any kind, we might say that algebra begins with the Alexandrian School or a little earlier; and if we say that we should class as algebra any problem that we should now solve with algebra (even though it was as first solved by mere guessing or by some cumbersome arithmetic process), the the science was known about 1800 B. C., and probably still earlier.<”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, Ch. 6: Algebra, p. 378

History, Problem, Science

“With the invention of printing, mass standardized culture had become possible.
With the inventions of photography and then cinema, the standardization of popular culture began to progress geometrically and its rate of change slowed down.
In addition, the complete documentation of daily life made possible by these technological advances presented the mass of humanity, for the first time in history, with a mirror in which to regard itself. Less and less had it been able to look away, as its own image became more detailed and perfect, especially with the burden of information that became available at the end of the twentieth century.
What this meant, in practical terms, was that retro was the only fashion.”

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 6, “Alec and His Friends” (p. 105)

Life, History, Fashion, Change

“The current language Pāṇini describes is very close in structure to the late Vedic found in certain Brāhmaṇa texts. As noted earlier, scholars have recognized other varieties of Sanskrit. Epic Sanskrit is so called because it is represented principally in the two epics, Mahābhārata (“Great Epic of the Bhārata Dynasty”) and Rāmāyaṇa (“Romance of Rāma”). In the latter the term saṃskṛta ‘adorned, cultivated, purified (by grammar)’ is encountered, possibly for the first time with reference to the language. The date of composition for the core of early Epic Sanskrit is considered to be in the centuries just preceding the Common Era.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Prof. George Cardona in:"Indo-Aryan languages".

Time

“The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

(1951, pg.16) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

People, Fear, Understanding, Waiting

“It seems to me that we have three choices; first, public services of high standard and cost but of limited scope, leaving unfilled a substantial part of the present gap, not necessarily benefiting those in real need and benefiting many who are not in need at all (this has been our historical approach); second, public services to meet the requirements of all, with the beneficiaries making a contribution by way of fee according to their means, and with adequate provision for complete remission in suitable cases; or third, universal public services provided for rich and poor alike on terms the poorest can afford; that is, the welfare state where all benefit and the whole cost is met by the taxpayer in general. I think it is well-known that I am an advocate of the second approach.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 24, 1966, page 72.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way, Thinking, Universe, Parting

“You are the elayaraja (crown prince) of Travancore?' She then recollected our first meeting years back in England. I was amazed when she asked if Travancore was in the southern tip of India?”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

After exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, quoted in "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".

“This approach creates fewer strains between family members, because those individuals don’t have to make the sort of extreme sacrifices that can cause them to lose their independence, which so often forces families in America to fall apart—or stops them from forming in the first place.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 3

Family

“Silence equals nonexistence. If I don't give too much information, if I don't go there, it's like I was never there in the first place. I noticed this most right after September 11, when there were no gays or lesbians invited to give their opinion about what was going on. There were no women invited to give their opinion. There were hardly any people of color invited, and if they were, they were Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans talking about the violence that they'd experienced because they shared the same skin color as the terrorists, which is heinous and dumb!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

That's like arresting Emmanuel Lewis because Gary Coleman punched that woman!
From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Women, People, Color, Silence

“She can find in her bewilderment no words wherewith to begin, how to order or where to end her speech; fain would she pour out all in her first utterance, but not even the first words doth fear-stricken shame allow her.”
Nec quibus incipiat demens videt ordine nec quo quove tenus, prima cupiens effundere voce omnia, sed nec prima pudor dat verba timenti.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 433–435

Fear

“Being, not doing, is my first joy.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Abyss," l. 100
The Far Field (1964)

Joy

“It first was a rumour dismissed as a lie
but then came the evidence none could deny:
a double page spread in the Sunday Express —
The Russians are running the DHSS!”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"Russians in the DHSS", from Cautionary Tales for Dead Commuters (1985)
DHSS = Department of Health and Social Security, a British government department.

Lie

“This was the most difficult, the most extraordinary transition. Her body had been a source of shame and disgust; to engage in activities with no purpose at all except to revel in their sheer physicality had first nauseated, then terrified, and finally liberated her.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), p. 188

“The emphasis of the men’s group was on understanding, coping, changing the situation and then, if all else failed, getting out; the emphasis of battered women’s groups is on getting out first, and second, locking up the problem”

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

the man
Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Men, Understanding, Problem

“Just you think first, and don’t bother to speak afterward, either.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

“Catch That Rabbit”, p. 71
I, Robot (1950)

Thinking

“These rules for symmetry were established by Hermogenes, who was also the first to devise the principal of the pseudodipteral octastyle.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book III, Chapter III, Sec. 8

“I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany. We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the Euro. That's quite clear. I would have lost and by seven to three…. If a Chancellor is trying to push something through, he must be a man of power. And if he's smart, he knows when the time is ripe. In one case – the Euro – I was like a dictator … The Euro is a synonym for Europe. Europe, for the first time, has no more war.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

2002 interview for the PhD. of Jens Peter Paul, a German journalist

War, Time

“Then he turned and walked away, and I gazed after him in sorrow. “Don’t look so, girl. He’s the first to fall at your feet; he will not be the last””

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Girl

“The tragic destruction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen reaches into the very roots of humanity and touches not only every human being alive today, but the generations yet to be born. The Gana and Gwi call themselves ’first people of the Kalahari', they might as well say, ’first people of the world'. They have been here longer than any of us. They are the last survivors of the world's first modern humans. It is not up to the Botswana government to wipe them out of history, with nothing more than an arbitrary and cruel presidential directive in favour of just more wealth for the country's elite – and of course the fantastically rich owners of De Beers. We will fight for the Bushmen's right to survive however long it takes. If they lose, then we will make certain that the crimes which brought their end are not expunged, but written large into history. Twenty-first century governments can no longer destroy indigenous tribes with impunity.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

Massive assault on Bushman rights http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/1161, Survival International 12 September 2005

People, World, History, Beer

“A fool puts her hand into a hollow tree without finding out what’s inside first.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1993)

Fools, Tree

“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd!”

John Newton Olney Hymns

Olney Hymns (1779), Amazing Grace

Fear, Appearance, Heart

“The education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard, and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739 assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with me. I was ten years old at the time…. It was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in his conduct as well as his character.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs

Death, Truth, Education, Family

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

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

Respectfully Quoted says this is "obviously spurious", noting that the OED's earliest citation for the word "deflation" is from 1920. The earliest known appearance of this quote is from 1935 (Testimony of Charles C. Mayer, Hearings Before the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Seventy-fourth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 5357, p. 799)
Misattributed

Children, People

“Chess first of all teaches you to be objective.”

Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Quoted in: M. Yudovich, ‎A. Kotov (2001) The Soviet School of Chess, p. 42.

“SPAN ID=We_all_inherit> We all inherit a great deal of useless knowledge, and a great deal of misinformation and error (maps that were formerly thought to be accurate), so that there is always a portion of what we have been told that must be discarded. But the cultural heritage of our civilization that is transmitted to us -- our socially pooled knowledge, both scientific and humane -- has been valued principally because we have believed that it gives us accurate maps of experience. The analogy of verbal words to maps is an important one […]. It should be noticed at this point, however, that there are two ways of getting false maps of the world into our heads: first, by having them given to us; second, by creating them ourselves when we misread the true maps given to us.

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Maps and Territories, p. 32

World, Way, Error, Knowledge

“The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#33
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Children, Parent

“The Chancellor has delivered his first budget but it's the same old Tories; hitting hardest at those who can least afford it and breaking their promises. This is true to form for the Tories, but it includes things that the Liberal Democrats have always fought against. Surely they cannot vote for this.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

Reaction to the Coalition's budget http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100622/debtext/100622-0007.htm#10062245000003, 22 June, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vdzUJMcDpA&feature=related

“I believe mine would be Piccolo. He was the first character in my manga where I was like, "He has a scary face, but he's so cool!" It really is cliché when bad guys turn into good guys, but it just feels great drawing it!”

Akira Toriyama (1955) manga artist and video game character designer

In response to which character is his favorite from the Dragon Ball manga he created. Interview with Toriyama http://www.thegrandline.com/odainterview.html

Guy, Feeling, Drawing

“It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions. For example, because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice. NASA officials limited our surface working time to 2 and 3/4 hours on that first surface exploration to assure that we would not expire of hyperthermia.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

Hostility, Water, Time, Perfection

“The whole system of the Foreign Enlistment Act is, I may add, only 200 years old. The ancients did not know the meaning of the word "neutrality" as we know it at the present day. In the Middle Ages people were hardly aware of such a thing as neutrality; the first Foreign Enlistment Act is hardly 200 years old, and since that time that system of legislation has grown up. It has been a code of legislation that has gradually grown up, and is now looked to by the nations to assist in keeping the peace and preventing the catastrophe of a general war. Shall we be the first to roll back the tide of civilization, and thus practically go back to barbarism and the Middle Ages, by virtually repealing this international code by which we preserve the rights and interests of neutrality? I cannot but think that this House and the country, when they reflect on the facts of the case, will consider that if they in any way lend their sanction to such a retrograde policy, they would be unworthy of themselves, and would be guilty of a great crime against humanity.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1863/apr/24/observations in the House of Commons (24 April 1863). 1860s

War, People, Age, Peace

“Could the Aboriginal and the British cultures have been reconciled when they first met? The prevailing view is that they could have signed a treaty and found a way of living together in relative harmony. I am not persuaded. The two confronting cultures, whether first living side by side at Sydney in 1788 or at Perth in 1829, had little in common except that they were the product of human beings. Their languages and religions differed. Their attitude to marriage, family, property and individual wealth, their economic and political systems, their way of fighting, and their thoughts about life and death, were far apart. In the world today no two cultures are so far apart as those that lived side by side in many Australian regions after 1788. Mecca and Washington today have far more in common than did the paternal Governor Phillip and the Aborigines whom he met in Sydney in 1788.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Geoffrey Blainey: I can see parts of our history with fresh eyes," The Australian (February 21, 2015)

Life, Death, Marriage, World

“They claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cocktail, stonefence, and sherry cobbler.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Book IV, ch. 241. Knickerbocker's History of New York http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13042 (1809)

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie, Fear, Game, Failure

“When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition."”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

Assessments and Anticipations http://books.google.com/books?id=87AxAAAAMAAJ&q=&quot;When+our+first+parents+were+driven+out+of+Paradise+Adam+is+believed+to+have+remarked+to+Eve+My+dear+we+live+in+an+age+of+transition&quot;&pg=PA261#v=onepage (1929), p. 261

Age, Parent

“Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry's future.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Children, Pleasure, Art, Future

“Simpson's paradox (Simpson 1951; Blyth 1972), first encountered by Pearson in 1899 (Aldrich 1995), refers to the phenomenon whereby an event C increases the probability of E in a given population p and, at the same time, decreases the probability of E in every subpopulation of p.”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Source: Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, 2000, p. 1

Time

“When facing “scientific” arguments for God like these, ask yourself three questions. First, what’s more likely: that these are puzzles only because we refuse to see God as an answer, or simply because science hasn’t yet provided a naturalistic answer? In other words, is the religious explanation so compelling that we can tell scientists to stop working on the evolution and mechanics of consciousness, or on the origin of life, because there can never be a naturalistic explanation? Given the remarkable ability of science to solve problems once considered intractable, and the number of scientific phenomena that weren’t even known a hundred years ago, it’s probably more judicious to admit ignorance than to tout divinity.
Second, if invoking God seems more appealing than admitting scientific ignorance, ask yourself if religious explanations do anything more than rationalize our ignorance. That is, does the God hypothesis provide independent and novel predictions or clarify things once seen as puzzling—as truly scientific hypotheses do? Or are religious explanations simply stop-gaps that lead nowhere?…Does invoking God to explain the fine-tuning of the universe explain anything else about the universe? If not, then that brand of natural theology isn’t really science, but special pleading.
Finally, even if you attribute scientifically unexplained phenomena to God, ask yourself if the explanation gives evidence for your God—the God who undergirds your religion and your morality. If we do find evidence for, say, a supernatural origin of morality, can it be ascribed to the Christian God, or to Allah, Brahma, or any one god among the thousands worshipped on Earth? I’ve never seen advocates of natural theology address this question.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 156-157

Life, God, Religion, Question

“Let me end this chapter by suggesting that religion has done something for science. The latter came to full flower in its modern form in seventeenth-century Europe. Have you ever wondered why that's so? After all the ancient Greeks were pretty clever and the Chinese achieved a sophisticated culture well before we Europeans did, yet they did not hit on science as we now understand it. Quite a lot of people have thought that the missing ingredient was provided by the Christian religion. Of course, it's impossible to prove that so - we can't rerun history without Christianity and see what happens - but there's a respectable case worth considering. It runs like this.
The way Christians think about creation (and the same is true for Jews and Muslims) has four significant consequences. The first is that we expect the world to be orderly because its Creator is rational and consistent, yet God is also free to create a universe whichever way God chooses. Therefore, we can't figure it out just by thinking what the order of nature ought to be; we'll have to take a look and see. In other words, observation and experiment are indispensable. That's the bit the Greeks missed. They thought you could do it all just by cogitating. Third, because the world is God's creation, it's worthy of study. That, perhaps, was a point that the Chinese missed as they concentrated their attention on the world of humanity at the expense of the world of nature. Fourth, because the creation is not itself divine, we can prod it and investigate it without impiety. Put all these features together, and you have the intellectual setting in which science can get going.
It's certainly a historical fact that most of the pioneers of modern science were religious men. They may have had their difficulties with the Church (like Galileo) or been of an orthodox cast of mind (like Newton), but religion was important for them. They used to like to say that God had written two books for our instruction, the book of scripture and the book of nature. I think we need to try to decipher both books if we're to understand what's really happening.”

John Polkinghorne (1930) physicist and priest

page 29-30.
Quarks, Chaos & Christianity (1995)

Men, God, People, Books

“There were many reasons why we did not gain complete success at Arnhem. The following in my view were the main ones. First. The operation was not regarded at Supreme Headquarters as the spearhead of a major Allied movement on the northern flank designed to isolate, and finally to occupy, the Ruhr - the one objective in the West which the Germans could not afford to lose. There is no doubt in my mind that Eisenhower always wanted to give priority to the northern thrust and to scale down the southern one. He ordered this to be done, and he thought that it was being done. It was not being done. Second. The airborne forces at Arnhem were dropped too far away from the vital objective - the bridge. It was some hours before they reached it. I take the blame for this mistake. I should have ordered Second Army and 1st Airborne Corps to arrange that at least one complete Parachute Brigade was dropped quite close to the bridge, so that it could have been captured in a matter of minutes and its defence soundly organised with time to spare. I did not do so. Third. The weather. This turned against us after the first day and we could not carry out much of the later airborne programme. But weather is always an uncertain factor, in war and in peace. This uncertainty we all accepted. It could only have been offset, and the operation made a certainty, by allotting additional resources to the project, so that it became an Allied and not merely a British project. Fourth. The 2nd S. S. Panzer Corps was refitting in the Arnhem area, having limped up there after its mauling in Normandy. We knew it was there. But we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively; its battle state was far beyond our expectation. It was quickly brought into action against the 1st Airborne Division.”

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976) British Army officer, Commander of Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein

Concerning Operation Market Garden in his autobiography, 'The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery' (1958)

War, Peace, Time, Success

“As Duke Ellington once said, "the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Elkton." […] About that Wellington guy, I wouldn't know. Ellington, yes. As for that Eton business — well, I married my first wife in Elkton, and I always hated the place. It musta stuck.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Failed attempt—during a partially scripted radio interview, broadcast live on August 13, 1930—to deliver a familiar but apparently apocryphal quote, followed by his explanation for that failure; as quoted in The Tumult and the Shouting; My Life in Sport (1954) by Grantland Rice; reprinted in "The World I Loved — Part 1: My Baseball Hall of Fame" by Rice, in The New York Herald Tribune (October 3, 1954), pp. 8-9

Hate, Guy, Business

“"Listen, LISTEN… I agree… with everything… you're carving… on the kitchen table, I do. But do you think maybe this might have something to do with your per-ARGH!"(falls backward as if kicked). That first high kick to the thorax generally does the trick.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Talking with women about their periods.
Like, Totally (2006)

Thinking

““Look at me closely, amigo,” said my dad. “Here is a hundred-dollar bill just to start with. Thirty dollars of this is for you to put in your own pocket right now. Capiche?” The bartender’s whole attitude changed. Suddenly he wasn’t tired anymore. “Yes, mi general, entiendo!” he said. “Good, and give another twenty to the chef in back and ten to the dishwasher. That leaves forty for my son and me to drink and eat a little something.” “But of course!” said the barkeeper. “The whole place is open for you! Which tequila would you like?” he added anxiously. “Herradura, and a couple of Modelo cervezas.” “I like Dos Equis,” I said. “The dark one.” “Okay,” said my dad, “one Modelo and one dark Dos Equis.” The bartender was flying, moving, truly enjoying the whole show. My dad winked at me. “Like I always say, to tip after the meal is stupid. Tip first and big, and the whole world changes.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Stupidity, World, Drink, Change

“This State, this city, this campus, have stood long for both human rights and human enlightenment — and let that forever be true. This Nation is now engaged in a continuing debate about the rights of a portion of its citizens. This Nation is now engaged in a continuing debate about the rights of a portion of its citizens. That will go on, and those rights will expand until the standard first forged by the Nation's founders has been reached, and all Americans enjoy equal opportunity and liberty under law. But this Nation was not founded solely on the principle of citizens' rights. Equally important, though too often not discussed, is the citizen's responsibility. For our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. Each can be neglected only at the peril of the other. I speak to you today, therefore, not of your rights as Americans, but of your responsibilities. They are many in number and different in nature. They do not rest with equal weight upon the shoulders of all. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility. All Americans must be responsible citizens, but some must be more responsible than others, by virtue of their public or their private position, their role in the family or community, their prospects for the future, or their legacy from the past. Increased responsibility goes with increased ability, for "of those to whom much is given, much is required."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Family, Law, Communication, Nature

“Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1960s, Dedication (1960)

Age, World

“During the recent centennial of our National Park Service, I found myself at the ceremony at Yellowstone National Park, our first National Park established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. As I enjoyed the celebration under the famous Roosevelt arch, I could not help but notice the words etched in the stone at the top of the arch “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” And, on the side of the right pillar was a plaque with the words “Created by Act of Congress.””

Ryan Zinke (1961) 52nd and current United States Secretary of the Interior and former Congressman from Montana

I thought “What a perfect symbol’ of what our land policy in a Nation as great as ours should be. Before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources https://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=383FE96D-4714-4769-BF7E-089C40FB4C63 (January 17, 2017)

People, Law, Help, Perfection

“It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Sunday Times interview (1990)

Fashion

“I began to suspect that Daddy had been right all along: the only hope I had of changing the world was to change myself first.”

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

Page 60
2000s, (2008)

World, Hope, Change

“The number of levels of authority in the management hierarchy increased with technical complexity, while the span of control of the first-line supervisor decreased.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 16

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

People, Soul, Time, Sea

“Every decade or so, the business world invents another term for how it extracts managerial and decision-making value from computerized data. In the 1970s the favored term was “decision support systems,” accurately reflecting the importance of a decision-centered approach to data analysis. In the early 80s, “executive information systems” was the preferred nomenclature, which addressed the use of these systems by senior managers. Later in that decade, emphasis shifted to the more technical-sounding “online analytical processing,” or OLAP. The 90s saw the rise of “business intelligence” as a descriptor. In the middle of 2000’s first decade, “analytics” began to come into favor, at least for the more statistical and mathematical forms of data analysis.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Thomas H. Davenport. The New World of “Business Analytics”. International Institute for Analytics. March 2010

World, Intelligence, Mathematics, Business

“We are Republicans. But we are Americans first. It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country.”

Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) Member of the United States Senate from Maine

Source: Declaration of Conscience (1950)

Country

“In geometry the following theorems are attributed to him [Thales]—and their character shows how the Greeks had to begin at the very beginning of the theory—(1) that a circle is bisected by any diameter (Eucl. I., Def. 17), (2) that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal (Eucl. I., 5), (3) that, if two straight lines cut one another, the vertically opposite angles are equal (Eucl. I., 15), (4) that, if two triangles have two angles and one side respectively equal, the triangles are equal in all respects (Eucl. I., 26). He is said (5) to have been the first to inscribe a right-angled triangle in a circle: which must mean that he was the first to discover that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle. He also solved two problems in practical geometry: (1) he showed how to measure the distance from the land of a ship at sea (for this he is said to have used the proposition numbered (4) above), and (2) he measured the heights of pyramids by means of the shadow thrown on the ground”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

this implies the use of similar triangles in the way that the Egyptians had used them in the construction of pyramids
Achimedes (1920)

Way, Problem, Sea

“If, however, thou art sailing upon the sea of creation, know thou that the First Remembrance, which is the Primal Will of God, may be likened unto the sun. God hath created Him through the potency of His might, and He hath, from the beginning that hath no beginning, caused Him to be manifested in every Dispensation through the compelling power of His behest, and God will, to the end that knoweth no end, continue to manifest Him according to the good-pleasure of His invincible Purpose.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

God, Pleasure, Art, Sun

“Ever since the first day I arrived in this town, the general impression has been that I'm like a queen holding court on chosen days.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

How To Get Along In Hollywood (1948)

“I love May's first storms:
chuckling, sporting spring
grumbles in mock anger;
young thunder claps.”

Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873) Russian poet

A Spring Storm

Love, Spring, Sport, Anger

“It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (June 1888). 1880s

Justice, Effort

“Thus, we have three principles for increasing adequacy of data: if you must work with a single object, look for imperfections that record historical descent; if several objects are available, try to render them as stages of a single historical process; if processes can be directly observed, sum up their effects through time. One may discuss these principles directly or recognize the “little problems” that Darwin used to exemplify them: orchids, coral reefs, and worms—the middle book, the first, and the last.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Worm for a Century, and All Seasons", p. 132
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Books, Problem, Time

“Minister doth not always import an inferior to him to whom he doth minister: for the Psalm saith, God hath made man paulo inferiorem Angelis; and yet in the first chapter to the Hebrews it is said, that the Angels are ministering spirits, sent forth for the good of God's saints.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Pits v. James (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 124-125

God, Angels

“When I first began working with baboons, my main problem was learning to keep up with them while remaining alert to poisonous snakes, irascible buffalo, aggressive bees, and leg-breaking pig holes. Fortunately, these challenges eased over time, mainly because I was traveling in the company of expert guides—baboons who could spot a predator a mile away and seemed to possess a sixth sense for the proximity of snakes. Abandoning myself to their far superior knowledge, I moved as a humble disciple, learning from masters about being an African anthropoid. Thus I became (or, rather, regained my ancestral right to be) an animal, moving instinctively through a world that felt (because it was) like my ancient home.”

Barbara Smuts (1950) American anthropologist

Source: Reflections (1999), p. 109

World, Travel, Home, Knowledge

“On a bus ride into town, I wondered out loud, "Why am I going to town?"
As I looked around at the billboards and the stores I thought, "Why do I look around?"
And I kissed the filthy ground… the first dry spot I found…
I didn't have to wonder why I was laying down.”

Aaron Weiss

Carousels.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Kiss

“The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Truthfulness, p. 138.

Men, God, Truth, Question

“Now (Burt Lancaster) was a guy, terrific. I've worked with some Hollywood actors, but he was worth all of them. He used to be a circus acrobat. He had this marvellous physique, and while other actors would choose to act like primadonnas when it came to dangerous scenes, Lancaster would do most of the stuff himself. And he was a friendly guy, always helping us little-knowns when we had problems. This was one of my first more important parts and I was very unsure of myself. He was always telling us what we could do to improve our stuff. A great guy.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Guy, Problem, Help, Parting

“In the development of any science, the first received paradigm is usually felt to account quite successfully for most of the observations and experiments easily accessible to that science’s practitioners. Further development, therefore, ordinarily calls for the construction of elaborate equipment, the development of an esoteric vocabulary and skills, and a refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes. That professionalization leads, on the one hand, to an immense restriction of the scientist’s vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change. The science has become increasingly rigid. On the other hand, within those areas to which the paradigm directs the attention of the group, normal science leads to a detail of information and to a precision of the observation-theory match that could be achieved in no other way.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 64 (2012 ed.)

Way, Sense, Science, Change

“I would tell you that my first priority as a president of the United States is to repeal Barack Obama's healthcare plan. I think it's the most dangerous piece of legislation, well, in many generations. It is the reason that I'm running for office. Because I believe Obamacare is a game changer. I believe Obamacare will rob America, the best way I can put it is, rob America of its soul. I say that without any kind of fear of being discredited, I really believe that. That the reason the left for a hundred years has been trying to get a national healthcare plan done is because they realize that once they have you dependent on the government for your health, freedom as we know it in America is forfeit.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Health, Fear, Way, Soul

“The outburst of the first crusade was splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyond comparison in its reflexion in architecture, ornament, poetry, color, religion and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and its women were worth all the rest.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Women, Men, Religion, Color

“Alchian: Two things you [Hayek] wrote that had a personal influence on me, after your Prices and Production, were 'Individualism and Economic Order' [sic — Alchian certainly has in mind Hayek's 'Economics and Knowledge'] and 'The Use of Knowledge in Society.' These I would regard as your two best articles, best in terms of their influence on me.
Hayek: 'Economics and Knowledge' — the '37 one — which is reprinted in the volume, is the one which marks the new look at things in my way.
Alchian: It was new to you, too, then? Was it a change in your own thinking?
Hayek: Yes, it was really the beginning of my looking at things in a new light. … I was aware that I was putting down things which were fairly well known in a new form, and perhaps it was the most exciting moment in my career when I saw it [i. e. 'Economics and Knowledge'] in print.
Alchian: Well, I'm delighted to hear you say that, because I had that copy typed up to mimeograph for my students in the first course I gave here [i. e. UCLA]. And Allan Wallace … came through town one day, and I said, 'Allan, I've got a great article!" He looked at it, started to laugh, and said, "I've seen it too; it's just phenomenal!' I'm just delighted to hear you say that it was exciting, because it was to me, too … that was a very influential article, I must say.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Interviewing Friedrich Hayek, 1978

Way, Knowledge, Thinking, Light

“Kuhn acknowledges having used the term "paradigm" in two different meanings. In the first one, "paradigm" designates what the members of a certain scientific community have in common, that is to say, the whole of techniques, patents and values shared by the members of the community. In the second sense, the paradigm is a single element of a whole, say for instance Newton’s Principia, which, acting as a common model or an example… stands for the explicit rules and thus defines a coherent tradition of investigation. Thus the question is for Kuhn to investigate by means of the paradigm what makes possible the constitution of what he calls "normal science". That is to say, the science which can decide if a certain problem will be considered scientific or not. Normal science does not mean at all a science guided by a coherent system of rules, on the contrary, the rules can be derived from the paradigms, but the paradigms can guide the investigation also in the absence of rules. This is precisely the second meaning of the term "paradigm", which Kuhn considered the most new and profound, though it is in truth the oldest.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Truth, Communication, Question, Problem

“The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

As quoted in Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality (1988) by Rudy Rucker. ~ ISBN 0395468108

World, Mathematics

“Say: All matters must be referred to the Book of God; I am indeed the First to believe in God and in His signs; I am the One Who divulgeth and proclaimeth the Truth and I have been invested with every excellent title of God, the Mighty, the Incomparable. Verily I have attained the Day of the First Manifestation and by the bidding of the Lord and as a token of His grace, I shall attain the Day of the Latter Manifestation”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

God, Truth, Books

“The thought struck me for the first time today that our duty to our country may not terminate with the peace – apart, I mean, from the duty of begetting children to bear arms for the King in the next generation. To be more explicit, I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were; and if the present hostilities do not actually merge into a war with our terrible enemy, America, it will remain for those of us who have the necessary knowledge and insight to do what we can where we can to help Britain be victorious again in her next crisis.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter to his parents (16 February 1943), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 75.
1940s

Hostility, War, Children, Peace

“Could I forget that the event [Mehmet Ali Ağca’s assassination attempt] in Saint Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fatima in Portugal? For, in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source: [Pope John Paul II, 2005, Memory and identity: conversations at the dawn of a millennium, Rizzoli]

Appearance, Christ, Forgetting

“I see again what I thought I saw the first time, when I sent forth the little book that was compared to and in fact could best be compared to “a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest””

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Preface Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 111 (From Without Authority)
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

Books, Flowers, Time

“The first cut is the deepest, Baby I know —
The first cut is the deepest
'Cause when it comes to being lucky, she's cursed
When it comes to lovin' me, she's worst
But when it comes to being loved, she's first
That's how I know
The first cut is the deepest.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

The First Cut Is the Deepest, from New Masters (1967)
Song lyrics

Love, Baby

“(On her role in The Locket) My character was the greatest challenge I ever had – a destructive young woman who's a kleptomaniac. The form of the film – flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks – was criticised by some reviewers of the time as too confusing. Today, though, its style is highly regarded by film historians... Many movie fans seem to remember me best from the Dr. Kildare series but, first and foremost, I remember The Locket.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

Time

“Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch 4, p. 98 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=116

Law, Mountain, Sea

“First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

World

“Miss Manners doubts that there is anything in the world like an elegantly dressed Bostonian lurching across the room and diving face first into a bowl of guacamole dip while simultaneously disengaging her bodice from her bosom. Therefore, Miss Manners has a wee bit of trouble preparing a general rule for dealing with this eventuality.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

World

“A certain type of outdoor activity has been much developed in recent years and calls great throngs together, which may properly be designated as exhibition games. Under this head comes first in importance baseball, which is often known as the national game. Football and polo come in the same class. These activities require such long and intensive training that participation in them is necessarily confined to a class and can not be said to be open to the general public. But for creating an interest which extends to every age and every class, for giving an opportunity for a few hours in the open air which will provide a change of scene, a new trend of thought, and the arousing of new enthusiasm for the great multitude of our people, these have no superior.”

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

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

People, Age, Game, Change

“In 1980s the African National Congress was still setting the pace, being the first major political formation in South Africa to commit itself firmly to a Bill of Rights, which we published in November 1990. These milestones give concrete expression to what South Africa can become. They speak of a constitutional, democratic, political order in which, regardless of colour, gender, religion, political opinion or sexual orientation, the law will provide for the equal protection of all citizens.
They project a democracy in which the government, whomever that government may be, will be bound by a higher set of rules, embodied in a constitution, and will not be able govern the country as it pleases.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Inaugural speech (1994)

Religion, Law, Democracy, Country

“I really enjoy writing. Much more than other people enjoy reading it. What do I write? Nonsense. Diary stuff - when I want to have a conversation but need to clarify my thoughts first.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

THIS CULTURAL LIFE: SIENNA GUILLORY Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040523/ai_n12754898. The Independent on Sunday. May 23, 2004.

People, Reading

“Well, in the first place, I deny that Lincoln acted unconstitutionally at any time during the Civil War. It was a civil war. There were traitors in the midst of all of the free states. The possibility of recruiting soldiers and keeping them from deserting. There was lots of desertion on both sides of the Civil War, and it just happens that there were more Confederate soldiers executed for desertion than there were Union soldiers. But there were plenty of executions on both sides.”

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

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

War, Time

Quotes about first page 81

Quotes about first
page 81