Quotes about first
page 83

“As for my birth month, a detail of much interest to poets, obsessed as they are with symbolic systems of all kinds: I was not pleased, during my childhood, to have been born in November, as there wasn't much inspiration for birthday party motifs. February children got hearts, May ones flowers, but what was there for me? A cake surrounded by withered leaves? November was a drab, dark and wet month, lacking even snow; its only noteworthy festival was Remembrance Day. But in adult life I discovered that November was, astrologically speaking, the month of sex, death and regeneration, and that November First was the Day of the Dead. It still wouldn't have been much good for birthday parties, but it was just fine for poetry, which tends to revolve a good deal around sex and death, with regeneration optional.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

On Writing Poetry (1995)

Life, Death, Children, Sex

“You don't like my painting, you only want to help me. If you had given me one franc for my picture I would have taken it [when M. Castaing discovered his art for the very first time and offered him in advance 100 franc to make a new painting - circa 1917 – 1919]”

Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) painter

As quoted in Soutine, Monrou Wheeler, Museum of modern art, New York, 1950; p. 37

Art, Time, Help, Painting

“In October 1945 I returned from America, where I had stayed during the war. I arrived in Le Havre, full of ruins, a carcass of a city. It took one night to reach Paris on a train with no windows. That night I got the idea for the monument. I sketched it on paper and forgot about it, until I visited Rotterdam for the first time in 1947. I saw a city without a heart. I saw a crater in the body of a city. And I remembered that night, the sketches. I made a small terracotta model and sent it to an exhibition of French art in Germany.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from interview in 'Het Vrije Volk', (Dutch newspaper), 4 July 1950; as cited in 'Unveiling of the Dutch City https://www.wederopbouwrotterdam.nl/en/tijdlijn/unveiling-of-the-destroyed-city/ Ossip Zadkine explained in 1950 the genesis of his large bronze sculpture 'Destroyed City', commissioned by the city Rotterdam 1940 - 1960

War, Art, Idea, Time

“To see your own visage up there, it's terrifying. I have to see a film twice, the first time just to get over the shock: the fact that my face seems to be dripping off my skull into my chest.”

William H. Macy (1950) American actor, screenwriter, teacher and director in theater, film and television

Interview in The Guardian (2011)

Time

“Many faith schools achieve excellent results and I’m the first to support the great education they provide. I chose one for my own children. Today I visited King David’s school, a Jewish school here in Birmingham where the majority of children are from faith backgrounds.”

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

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

Children, Education, School, Faith

“When a broad and significant change occurs in the organization, the first question many people ask is “What's in it for me?” or “What's going to happen to me? This is an indication of the anxiety that occurs when people are faced with the uncertainty associated with organizational change.”

David A. Nadler (1948–2015) American organizational theorist

David A Nadler (2010), "Techniques for the management of change," Robert Golembiewski (ed.) Handbook of Organizational Consultation, p. 1067; Quoted in: Diane Dormant, ‎Joe Lee (2011). The Chocolate Model of Change.

People, Question, Change

“I have accepted the challenge of being a Negro in America and of being an American first.”

Pauli Murray (1910–1985) American writer, activist and lawyer

“The consciousness in [Australia and New Zealand] of the elevation of a substandard dialect into a national tongue has been responsible for a mixture of attitudes to citizens of the mother country - inferiority, defiance, contempt. A blending of the first two may be responsible for the upward intonation pattern of answers, more appropriate to questions…. slang is of its nature defiant. It is also demotic…. But the ruling class of Australia is itself demotic.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Question, Nature, Country

“Interviewer: Your first serialized work is a tremendous success all of a sudden. Tell us the whole story of how a newcomer came to have her works serialized.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Success

“In certain tantric rituals the candidate is first beaten by his guru, hashish forced down him, and he is taken at midnight to a dark cemetery for sacred sexual intercourse. Thus he achieves union with his god.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 35

God

“Your hissing and your booing make no impression on me, because from Victor Hugo's "Ernani" to Buñel's "The Age of Gold," Cannes Grand Prize winner, everything I have loved has always been hissed and booed at first. At the premiere of "The Age of Gold" the angry audience broke the theatre seats. What worse can happen to me, and how can that affect me? The seats do not belong to me.”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Chapter II

Love, Age

“What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every bulwark of defence—first the timely creation of an Air Force superior to anything within striking distance of our shores; secondly, the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations; and thirdly, the making of alliances and military conventions, all within the Covenant, in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this Power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_370 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement The 1930s

Pleasure, Sense, Time, Success

“The heroism of our soldiers is especially inspiring because most of them were in their 20s, inexperienced in the art of warfare, who answered the call of the motherland with unflinching courage - so very much like the revolutionaries who won freedom and founded Asia's First Republic.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: A Call for Heroism

Art, Courage, Freedom

“It wasn’t businessmen who developed new technology and science but amateur inventors or salaried professors instead; from the foundation of this country to the invention of the Internet, continuing with Einstein and finally, the arrival of the first man on the moon. Not to mention, the basis of the sciences—which were shaped by those horrible and uncivilized Arabs centuries before—from the numbers that we use to Algebra to algorithms and many other sciences and philosophies that are part of Western civilization today, continuing with the Europeans in the 17th century. None of these men were businessmen, of course.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Carta abierta a Donald Trump http://www.huffingtonpost.es/jorge-majfud/carta-abierta-a-donald-tr_b_10218246.html Translation at The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/57dc39fee4b0d5920b5b2aac?timestamp=1474051083758.

Men, Science, Parting, Country

“I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was it that the weak do not deserve life?”

Pierce Brown book Red Rising

Source: Red Rising (2014), Ch. 20: The House Mars

Life

“First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Art, Science

“I was so glad to get my first boots that for a few days I didn't take them off. I wore them to school, to visit people, and simply to walk on the street.”

Alan Dzagoev (1990) Russian association football player

2008, http://www.sports.ru/football/5845060.html

People, School

“.. it was Seurat who first and most successfully established a balance between subject, composition and technique.... the modern world that Seurat wished to paint... I understood his importance as soon as I arrived in Paris [1906]... I chose Seurat as my master for once and for all.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 35; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 12

World, Painting

“After your first job, is anyone asking you what your GPA was? No, they don't care. They ask you: Are you a good leader? Do people follow you? Do you have integrity? Are you innovative? Do you solve problems? Somebody's got to do that homework and redesign the educational system so that it can actually train people to be successful in life.I think the greatest teachers are not the ones that are best trained at educational tactics. I don't know a person who's ever said, "Boy, that teacher is so good! The teacher gives such good exams. That teacher gives such good homework sets!"”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

No one has said that about a great teacher. That's not what people remember about the great teachers they've had.
2000s, Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)

People, Education, Boy, Problem

“Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

1946. Quoted in "Nuremberg: The War Crimes Trial" by Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicolas Kent - Drama - (1997)

People, History, Country

“This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Law, Behavior, Mathematics, Idea

“It was a fantastic result and credit has to go to the players. The application they have shown since I got the job has been first class. They've just asked for four or five days off this week, but I've said I want them back in on Tuesday.”

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

30-Apr-2007, Hull City OWS
When the players ask for a holiday, that shows their hard-working attitude!

“Washington was the right man at the right time – sometimes he was the first man, but sometimes he simply knew when to ride the crest of a wave or the leading edge of a trend.”

Alan Axelrod (1952) American historian

Alan Axelrod in an interview with Frank R. Shaw, Aug 23, 2007 http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/axelrod.htm.

Time

“At the end of my first term's work, I attended the usual college board to give an account of myself. The spokesman coughed, and said a little stiffly: "I understand, Mr. Graves, that the essays which you write for your English tutor are, shall I say, a trifle temperamental. It appears, indeed, that you prefer some authors to others."”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 27.

Understanding, Appearance

“Unless we act anew, with dispatch and resolution, we shall sanction a sad and sorrowful course for the future. For if the Fifteenth Amendment is successfully flouted today, tomorrow the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment-the Sixth, the Eighth, indeed, all the provisions of the Constitution on which our system stands — will be subject to disregard and erosion. Our essential strength as a society governed by the rule of law will be crippled and corrupted and the unity of our system hollowed out and left meaningless.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Sadness, Law, Future

“Dead labour is far harder to control than the live stuff was, which is why the enlightenment project of interring gothic superstition was the royal road to the first truly vampiric civilization, in which death alone comes to rule.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 7: "Fanged noumenon (passion of the cyclone)", p. 79

Death, Dead

“It is to the influence of the opinion of those whom the multitude [the populous] judges best informed, and to whom it has been accustomed to give its confidence in regard to the most important matters of life, that the propagation of those errors is due, which in times of ignorance, have covered the face of the earth. Magic and astrology offer us two great examples. These errors… having for a basis only universal credence, have maintained themselves during a very long time; but at last the progress of science has destroyed them in the minds of enlightened men, whose opinion consequently has caused them to disappear… through the power of imitation and habit which had so generally spread them… This power, the richest resource of the moral world, establishes and conserves in a whole nation ideas entirely contrary to those… elsewhere… What indulgence ought we not then to have for opinions different from ours, when this difference often depends only upon the various points of view where circumstances have placed us! Let us enlighten those whom we judge insufficiently instructed; but first let us examine critically our own opinions, and weigh with impartiality, their respective probabilities.”

Pierre-Simon Laplace book Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

p, 125
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)

Life, Men, World, Error

“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.”

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

On the design of the iPod, as quoted in Newsweek (14 October 2006)
2000s

People, Problem, Time

“Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

1967, cited in Lee Kuan Yew: race, culture and genes, Michael Barr in Journal of Contemporary Asia (01/1999)
1960s

Women

“The distinction between micro- and macroinventions is useful because, as historians of technology emphasize, the word first is hazardous in this literature.. Many technological breakthroughs had a history that began before the event generally regarded as “the invention,” and almost all macroinventions required subsequent improvements to make them operational. Yet in a large number of cases, one or two identifiable events were crucial. Without such breakthroughs technological progress would eventually fizzle out.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 14

History, Literature

“In the religious traditions of humankind there are at least four ways in which people have encountered the divine. First of all, there is the experience of God in nature, as the power behind natural phenomena. Such an experience usually leads to belief in nature gods. This is clearly seen in Hinduism. Secondly, there is the experience of God in the depths of one’s being. God-ward movement often takes an inward direction. This leads to the cultivation of interiority. The Upanishads bear witness to this kind of an experience of God. It is also found among the Christian mystics. Thirdly, there is the experience of God mediated through the rites and doctrines of religions. This is probably the most valued form of God-experience in popular Catholicism, in which the frequent reception of the sacraments is highly esteemed. Such an approach to the experience of God is found also among the followers of other religions. Finally, there is the experience of God in inter-human relationships and socio-political involvements. This form of God-experience is, I believe, typical of the biblical tradition.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

God, People, Religion, Way

“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth… How far from here was 34th street?… All those buildings, all smashed — and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

On his emotional reaction after the first uses of the atomic bomb.
Part 3: "Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military", "Los Alamos from Below", p. 136
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

People, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

“When we first started, we were able to take our undercover video to 60 Minutes or 20/20, and they would fight over it and do these thought-provoking exposés. Now that society has become less interested in these programs and more interested in sensationalism and the tabloids, we have to reinvent ourselves to keep our issues on the front burner; we have had to do a lot of theatrical things. … Much of what we do is geared toward kids, who have a great sense of justice. This is the first generation in which kids have grown up with this issue. Twenty-five years ago, parents were petrified when their kids went vegetarian — some still are.”

Dan Mathews (1964) American activist

About PETA's activities. “Sir Paul McCartney and PETA VP Dan Mathews Reflect on Two Decades of Activism” (April 2005), in PETA.org http://www.peta.org/features/paul-mccartney-interview/.

Justice, Parent, Sense, Fight

“He’d caused the First Native War on Mars, by taking advantage of the fact that at that time human law had not defined the killing of Martians as murder.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

The Aliens, p. 92 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1957).
Short fiction, Anthropological Note (1957)

War, Law, Time

“Hindu society may like to forget the first phase of this history during which it suffered defeat after defeat in spite of a succession of great heroes who tried to blunt the sword of Islam, and block the path of Islamic invasion. But Hindu society cannot help taking pride in the phase which opened with the rise of Shivaji, and unfolded further under Chhatrasal, Banda Bairagi, Surajmal and Ranjit Singh.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

History, Suffering, Success, Help

“The old “double standard” gave men a sexual liberty denied to women. Marxist feminists reduced the historical cult of woman’s virginity to her property value, her worth on the male marriage market. I would argue instead that there was and is a biological basis to the double standard. The first medical reports on the disease killing male homosexuals [i. e., AIDS] indicated men most at risk were those with a thousand partners over their lifetime. Incredulity. Who could such people be? Why, it turns out, everyone one knew. Serious, kind, literate men, not bums or thugs.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 27

Women, Men, Marriage, People

“Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Watergate Follies, p. 98
The Joke's Over (2006)

“The world suddenly opened up, and she was coming to new realizations and a greater awareness, concerning the nature of reality, and the world, which her mortal mind had previously been unable to conceive. She smiled her radiant goddess smile and began to laugh. Her omnipresent peals of mirth resonated through the forest, seeming to echo to the edges of the universe and back. She was getting her first glimpses of the world, seen through the eyes of a goddess; the first sweet tastes of a consciousness empowered beyond all human levels of comprehension, and her spirit was in exultant bliss.”

Alexei Maxim Russell (1976) Canadian writer

from Forgotten Lore - Volume II.

World, Smile, Nature, Reality

“I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Rachel Whiteread, " Kisses for Spiderwoman http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/oct/14/art2," The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2007:

Women, People, Art, Way

“I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997)

Understanding, Freedom

“We should try to return to our youth, to work naively; this is what I see, and it is why I have such success, because our century has tried to return to the primitive. I work as if no art had ever been made, before me, as if I had never learned anything. I am the first man to do sculpture.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), pp. 406-407

Youth, Art, Learning, Success

“From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XIX
Adonais (1821)

God, World

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last… A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Essay in the American Daily Advertiser (28 August 1794)

Law

“One demand for a concept of need arises because the concept of demand itself has serious weaknesses and limitations. It assumes away, for instance, a serious epistemological problem. The very idea of autonomous choice implies first that the chooser knows the real alternatives which are open to him, and second that he makes the choice according to value criteria or a utility function which he will not later regret. Both the image of the field of choice and the utility function have a learning problem which, by and large, economists have neglected. This problem is particularly acute in the case of medical care, where the demander is usually a layman faced with professional suppliers who know very much more than he does. The demand for medical care, indeed, is primarily a demand for knowledge or at least the results of knowledge…”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1967) "The Concept of Need for Health Services" as cited in: Gregory Parston (1980) Planners, Politics, and Health Services. p. 99
1960s

Idea, Knowledge, Problem, Learning

“First come I; my name is Jowett.
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am master of this college:
What I don't know isn't knowledge.”

Henry Charles Beeching (1859–1919) English clergyman, author and poet

The Masque of Balliol http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2735.html (1880)

Knowledge

“The moment you meet him you're like 'this dude's famous,' whether a million people know it or no one knows it. The first time I met him, when I was like 16, I was like, 'This is a dude I want to know.' He just has a magnetic personality. And I think there's something kind of cool about the front man of our band being the bassist who doesn't sing.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

On Pete Wentz
TV.com

People, Thinking, Singing, Time

“When this book was first conceived (more than 25 years ago) few mathematicians outside the Soviet Union recognized probability as a legitimate branch of mathematics.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Preface to the Third Edition, p. vii.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Books, Mathematics

“I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security. It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299. (June 19, 1787)
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)

God, People, Truth, World

“He who would valiant be against all disaster;
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent;
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

This has appeared on the internet attributed to Buchan, but is actually John Bunyan, as quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (2001) by Martin H. Manser
Misattributed

“Through the constant revolution of the fifth element, with all contained therein, the four elements are forced to move and to change their respective positions, so that fire and air are driven into the water, and again these three elements enter the depth of the earth. Thus are the elements mixed together; and when they return to their respective places, parts of the earth, in quitting their places, move together with the water, the air and the fire. In this whole process the elements act and react upon each other. The elements intermixed, are then combined, and form at first various kinds of vapours; afterwards the several kinds of minerals, every species of plants, and many species of living beings, according to the relative proportion of the constituent parts. All transient beings have their origin in the elements, into which again they resolve when their existence comes to an end. The elements themselves are subject to being transformed from one into another; for although one substance is common to all, substance without form is in reality impossible, just as the physical form of these transient beings cannot exist without substance.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part I, pp.294-295 (1881) Tr. Friedlander

Reality, Water, Change, Parting

“Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Los Angeles Times interview (1956)

Law, History, Sense

“Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design.”

Jef Raskin book The Humane Interface

The Humane Interface (2001)

“His [Marcel Duchamp's] idea was that anything could be art by focusing the mind to think of it as art. My images are similar but at the time my work was first being shown, 1958-'59, I was unfamiliar with Duchamp and Dada. Everyone said my work was Dada, so I read on it, went to Philadelphia to see the Arensberg Duchamp collection, was delighted by it and later met him (Duchamp)... But it was all more a coincidence. Perhaps it’s that certain ideas get into the air, ideas that come out of our living and out of the environment automatically.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Daily Close-up, after the Flag, Roberta Brandes Gratz, New York Post, 30 December 1970, p. 25
1970s

Art, Idea, Thinking, Time

“Nothing is more commonplace than the reading experience, and yet nothing is more unknown. Reading is such a matter of course that at first glance it seems there is nothing to say about it.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Reading as Construction (1980)

Reading

“When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 49 (26 April 1711)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

“The gutters in the lane overflowed with an odd, languid grace. Water filled the lane; rose from ankle-deep to knee-deep. Insects swam in circles. Urchins splashed about haphazardly, while Saraswati returned from market with a shopping-bag in her hands; insects swam away to avoid this clumsy giant. Her wet footprints printing the floor of the house were as rich with possibility as the first footprint Crusoe found on his island.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)

Water, Housing

“Kingsley fell over. And this was no brisk trip or tumble. It was an act of colossal administration. First came a kind of slow-leak effect, giving me the immediate worry that Kingsley, when fully deflated, would spread out into the street on both sides of the island, where there were cars, trucks, sneezing buses. Next, as I grabbed and tugged, he felt like a great ship settling on its side: would it right itself, or go under? Then came an impression of overall dissolution and the loss of basic physical coherence. I groped around him, looking for places to shore him up, but every bit of him was falling, dropping, seeking the lowest level, like a mudslide.”

Martin Amis book Experience

Part II: One Little More Hug
Experience (2000)

Cars, Loss

“When God first created man, He endowed him with the spirit of goodness. As a result, men were born with wisdom …. they took the Name of God and …. were liberated from the bonds of life. God thought, 'This will not do…. In the end….. He mingled in profuse quantities of the spirit of materialism and that of vanity. Now the game of life went on with a swing!”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 212-213]

Life, Wisdom, Men, God

“Security is an impostor; little can be achieved while each seeks his own freedom from want, from war, or from fear. The general nature of all fear is the awareness that development is threatened. Fear and its consequences can be eliminated only by action leading to continuous development. Action can bring the assurance of a development which is more welcome than either spiritual or material security. Only through the pursuit of a general development can the species acquire the unity of purpose which may, as one of its secondary consequences, eliminate unemployment and war. In the individual life the same is true: only in unitary development can fear be overcome. Every individual experiences countless shocks from his first breath to his last, and these challenges are necessary to his development. But a unitary tradition can assist the members of each maturing generation to turn these challenges to advantage and to retain their basic integrity.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 256

Life, War, Fear, Nature

“Senators say they fear the N. R. A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them. On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip, The New York Times, 2013-04-18, April 17, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?hp&_r=0,

Love, Children, People, Fear

“It can hardly be a matter for surprise that our race has not succeeded in solving any large part of its most difficult problems in the first millionth part of its existence. Perhaps life would be a duller affair if it had. For to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives the greater interest to thought - to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Life, Travel, Knowledge, Problem

“Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don't know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.
So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians… maybe one or two of 'em… were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there.”

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

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Fear, Cars, Soul

“Organizing without first capturing & clarifying what needs organizing is simply rearranging your angst.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

31 January 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/164480736064311296 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“The first charge against 'measurement', in the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics, is that it anchors there the shifty split of the world into 'system' and 'apparatus'. A second charge is that the word comes loaded with meaning from everyday life, meaning which is entirely inappropriate in the quantum context.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

Against 'measurement' (1990)

Life, World

“30 Proposition. The marke of the Romane beast, is that invisible profession of servitude and obedience, that his subjects hath professed to his Empire, since the first beginning thereof, noted afterward by the Pope, with divers visible markes.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

“If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. […] For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV. […]
And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus (2008)

Way, Time

“My object in all my proceeding has been simply to establish the independence of Ireland for the benefit of all the people of Ireland - noblemen, clergymen, judges, professional men - in fact, all Irishmen. I sought that object first, because I thought it was our right; because I thought, and think still, national independence was the right of the people of this country. And secondly, I admit, that being a man who loves retirement, I never would have engaged in politics did I not think it necessary to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible scenes the country presents - the pauperism, and starvation, and crime, and vice, and the hatred of all classes against each other. I thought there should be an end to that horrible system, which while it lasted, gave me no peace of mind, for I could not enjoy anything in my country, so long as I saw my countrymen forced to be vicious, forced to hate each other, and degraded to the level of paupers and brutes. This is the reason I engaged in politics.”

John Martin (1812–1875) (1812-1875) Irish nationalist activist

Love, Men, Hate, People

“… and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Men

“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

Thinking, Change

“Apollonius then asked him [Iarchas] whether they knew themselves also, thinking that he, like the Greeks, would regard self-knowledge as a difficult matter. But the other, contrary to Apollonius' expectations, corrected him and said: "We know everything, just because we begin by knowing ourselves; for no one of us would be admitted to this philosophy unless he first knew himself." And Apollonius remembered what he had heard Phraotes say, and how he who would become a philosopher must examine himself before he undertakes the task; and he therefore acquiesced in this answer, for he was convinced of its truth in his own case also.”

Philostratus book Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Book 3, § 18.
Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Truth, Knowledge, Thinking

“One of the first people I met outside of the group [Pearl Jam] was this next human and I had no idea how he would affect my life and my views on music and my views on friendship and what a big impact he would have. These guys [the other members of Pearl Jam] know him much longer than me and his impact is profound. I'd like to introduce with great pleasure my old neighbor, Chris Cornell.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Eddie Vedder introducing Cornell during a Pearl Jam concert on September 4, 2011
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbG9CNCettk, PEARL JAM Chris Cornell *Hunger Strike* PJ20 night 2 @ Alpine Valley Temple of the Dog 9/4/2011, YouTube, 5 September 2011

Life, Friendship, People, Pleasure

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart… I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T. V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius…. and a very stable genius at that!”

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

Tweets published https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949618475877765120 by @realDonaldTrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949619270631256064 (6 January 2018) 2010s, 2018, January

Life, Star, Thinking, Success

“We shall never recover the true apostolic energy, and be endued with power from on high, as the first disciples were, 'till we recover the lost faith.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 237.

Faith

“Some day we too will fly off in some communal capsule, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hippies, liberated women, young workers on the line, and G. I.'s sitting in stockades because they don't want to go to Vietnam. There will be a whole mess of us laughing and getting stoned on our way to OUTERSPACE, and the first thing we're gonna do out there is to rip down that fuckin flag on the moon.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Moonshine
Woodstock Nation (1969)

Women, Way, Communication, Flying

“They’d have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian régime, because I’m not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (8) “Ill Wind”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People, Idea

“For myself the balance came from always driving my children to school. So that every day we had that first half-hour, 45 minutes of nothing but uninterrupted time. Sometimes it was just a bunch of sarcasm. Sometimes it was just listening to the radio. But sometimes it was real explanation of what the kids were thinking what they were worried about.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U1a8pYMJDM, March 18, 2016, Life Lessons Learned, DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference, February 15, 2013, Georgetown University Law Center]; also excerpted quote in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference (2013)

Children, School, Thinking, Time

“The "Second System Effect":
An architect’s first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used “next time.” Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Page 55.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)

Confidence, Idea, Time, Parting

“Marc Goodman, global security advisor and futurist, spoke at the TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh about his ominous warning: “If you control the code, you control the world. This is the future that awaits us.” First source code, then genetic code. Transhumanists are well aware of that danger and are highly respectful of individual freedom and privacy in the new era of total information awareness.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

World, Freedom, Future

“First delight, then instruct (original German: ).”

Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794–1868) German art historian

From an 1828 proposal "On the Purpose of the Berlin Gallery" (
This quotation is occasionally attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, which appears to be erroneous; von Humboldt had quoted Schinkel and Waagen in a report.

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul…“On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Muhammad bin Qãsim (AD 712-715)Debal (Sindh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Life, Death, Women, Children

“The problem of the direct determination of the primitive roots of a prime number is one of the 'cruces' of the Theory of Numbers. Euler, who first observed the peculiarity of these numbers, has yet left us no rigorous proof of their existence; though assuming their existence, he succeeded in accurately determining their number. The defect in his demonstration was first supplied by Gauss, who has also proposed an indirect method for finding a primitive root.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

Report on the Theory of Numbers (1859) Part I, p. 49.
The Collected Mathematical Papers of Henry John Stephen Smith (1894) Vol. 1

Problem

“The first half of your life is spent getting over yourself. You think you’re amazing, unique. Young people walk around going, "You know the funny thing is I was just in the kitchen but now I’m here in the bedroom, get a load of me! I just go on and on!" And that’s around the age when you meet somebody else – when you’re totally unbearable. Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world! Going around going, "I can’t believe I met you cause you’re amazing and I’m amazing and we’re surrounded by shitheads, it’s just amazing! Hey, I know this really good bar, let’s go and make it better."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

In the second half of your life you realise how like every other hump who drew breath you really are. Except you’re MORE boring.
On young people.
What It Is (2009)

Love, Life, People, Age

“I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation of existence is not consumption; a world in which "man" is the end, first and last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Life, World, Way, Motivation

“Some books I buy for their title, others for brevity. I love short books - the way you know from the first page that it's going to end.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Love, Books, Way

“Bohr's investigation had typified what had become a standard procedure in problems of theoretical physics. The first step was to discover the mathematical laws governing certain groups of phenomena; the second was to devise hypothetical models or pictures to interpret these laws in terms of motion or mechanism; the third was to examine in what way these models would behave in other respects, and this would lead to prediction of other phenomena-predictions which might or might not be confirmed when put to the test of experiment. For instance, Newton had explained the phenomena of gravitation in terms of a force of gravitation; a later age had seen the luminiferous ether introduced to explain the propagation of light and, subsequently, the general phenomena of electricity and magnetism; finally Bohr had introduced electronic jumps in an attempt to explain atomic spectra. In each case the models had fulfilled their primary purpose, but had failed to predict further phenomena with accuracy.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Age, Law, Way, Mathematics

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism. There is no record of Gandhi saying this. A close variant of the quotation first appears in a 1918 US trade union address by Nicholas Klein: :* And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. ::* Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1918), p. 53 http://books.google.com/books?id=QrcpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA53&dq=%22First+they+ignore+you%22 In Freedom's Battle (1922), Gandhi wrote this: :* Unfortunately for His Excellency the movement is likely to grow with ridicule as it is certain to flourish on repression. No vital movement can be killed except by the impatience, ignorance or laziness of its authors. A movement cannot be 'insane' that is conducted by men of action as I claim the members of the Non-co-operation Committee are. … Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect. … It will be admitted that non-co-operation has passed the stage [of] ridicule. Whether it will now be met by repression or respect remains to be seen. … But the testing time has now arrived. In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect. ::* Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Freedom's Battle, 2nd edition, by Mahatma Gandhi, 1922 http://www.gutenberg.net/1/0/3/6/10366/10366-h/10366-h.htm Misattributed

Fight

“I think about my father being called 'boy,' my uncle being called 'boy,' my brother, coming back from Vietnam and being called 'boy.' So I questioned myself: 'What does a black man have to do before he's given the respect as a man?' So when I was 18 years old, when I was old enough to fight and die for my country, old enough to drink, old enough to vote, I said I was old enough to be called a man. I self-ordained myself Mr. T so the first word out of everybody's mouth is 'Mr.”

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

That's a sign of respect that my father didn't get, that my brother didn't get, that my mother didn't get.
Attributed

Boy, Drink, Question, Thinking

“A scientist can be tactful and PC with his mouth, but not his ears or eyes and certainly not his mind. Truth must reign there above all. For your first allegiance is either to Truth or to Ignorance. Worry about offending, and you are choosing Ignorance.”

Patri Friedman (1976) American libertarian activist and theorist of political economy

in Quotable Patri http://patrifriedman.com/quotes/patri.html

Truth

“At first no one spoke. Boule de Suif dared not even raise her eyes. She felt at once indignant with her neighbors, and humiliated at having yielded to the Prussian into whose arms they had so hypocritically cast her.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“the Cubists in Paris made me see that there was also a possibility of suppressing the natural aspect of form. I continued my research by abstracting the form and purifying the colour more and more. While working, I arrived at suppressing the closed effect of abstract form, expressing myself exclusively by means of the straight line in rectangular opposition; thus by rectangular planes of colour with white, grey and black. At that time, I encountered artists with approximately the same spirit, First Van der Leck, who, though still figurative, painted in compact planes of pure colour. My more or less cubist technique - in consequence still more or less picturesque - underwent the influence of his exact technique. Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Van Doesburg. Full of vitality and zeal for the already international movement that was called 'abstract', and most sincerely appreciative of my work, he came to ask me to collaborate in a review he intended to publish, and which he [Theo van Doesburg] was to call 'De Stijl.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

I was happy with an opportunity to publish my ideas on art, which I was engaged in writing down: I saw the possibility of contacts with similar efforts. Quote of Mondrian c 1931, in 'De Stijl' (last number), p. 48; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, pp. 44-45 published in the memorial number of 'De Stijl', after the death of Theo Van Doesburg in 1931 1930's

Pleasure, Art, Idea, Nature

“That we have first rais'd a Dust, and then complain, we cannot see.”

George Berkeley book A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)

“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Actually said by Charles de Gaulle, on leaving his presidency, Life, May 9, 1969.
Misattributed

Love, Hate, People

“Not only was there a layer of ice above the atmosphere, the Bible teaches that the earth also had a layer of water UNDER the crust of the earth. The earth’s crust today is about 10-25 miles thick. Many who have studied this topic agree that the earth had huge reservoirs of water maybe ten miles down, when the earth was first created. Psalm 24:1-2, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it UPON the seas, and established it UPON the floods..””

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Was the earth founded on the water? Psalm 136:6 tells us that God “stretched out the earth ABOVE the waters.”
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 46

God, World, Study, Water

“Winter Light — suppose we discuss that now?… The film is closely connected with a particular piece of music: Stravinski's A Psalm Symphony. I heard it on the radio one morning during Easter, and it struck me I'd like to make a film about a solitary church on the plains of Uppland. Someone goes into the church, locks himself in, goes up to the altar, and says: 'God, I'm staying here until in one way or another You've proved to me You exist. This is going to be the end either of You or of me!' Originally the film was to have been about the days and nights lived through by this solitary person in the locked church, getting hungrier and hungrier, thirstier and thirstier, more and more expectant, more and more filled with his own experiences, his visions, his dreams, mixing up dream and reality, while he's involved in this strange, shadowy wrestling match with God.
We were staying out on Toro, in the Stockholm archipelago. It was the first summer I'd had the sea all around me. I wandered about on the shore and went indoors and wrote, and went out again. The drama turned into something else; into something altogether tangible, something perfectly real, elementary and self-evident.
The film is based on something I'd actually experienced. Something a clergyman up in Dalarna told me: the story of the suicide, the fisherman Persson. One day the clergyman had tried to talk to him; the next, Persson had hanged himself. For the clergyman it was a personal catastrophe.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jonas Sima interview 
Bergman on Bergman (1970)

God, Dreams, Music, Way

“…the Reformers of this country will remember… with gratitude, that it was the great leaders of the Reform Party who first gave perfect civil and religious rights to the people of Canada”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Speech 1877

People, Perfection, Country, Gratitude

“The “animal rights movement” … is at once colossally powerful but ultimately hobbled by a weak spot both miniscule and fatal. … That colossal power emanates from hundreds of thousands of everyday activists who justifiably believe that conscientious consumers can, through a wide variety of measures, take gradual steps toward removing animal products from their diet. These true believers do the grunt work of activism: they hand out pamphlets, write books, blog, make documentaries, start campus veg societies, publish vegan recipes, open vegan food carts, work for animal sanctuaries, run veganic farms, and do basically anything they can to encourage consumers to contemplate the face on their plate. I consider myself a member of this noble tribe. The heel of the movement, by contrast, consists of a handful of radicals, mostly academics, who do little more than set an unrealistic benchmark of success … First, it seeks to eliminate all animal exploitation, in every realm of life, immediately, and without compromise or strategic capitulation; and second, it aims to eliminate all forms of oppression … The heel does not want the good, or even the better. It wants perfection.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Radical Activism and the Future of Animal Rights", in Pacific Standard (3 July 2013) https://psmag.com/social-justice/radical-activism-and-the-future-of-animal-rights-61789.

Life, Books, Food, Success