Quotes about first (10000 quotes, page 92)

“Nothing is so beautiful as the first few minutes alone with someone who might love one and someone whom one might love. There is nothing so quiet as those minutes, nothing so saturated with sweet expectancy. It is for the sake of those few minutes that one loves, not the many that follow. Never again, they knew, would anything so beautiful happen to them. They would be more joyous perhaps; more ardent too, and immeasurably content with their own bodies, and each other's. But never again would it be so beautiful.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 190

Love , Beauty

“The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Brooks (1975, Chapter 9) as quoted in Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, by Steve C. McConnell

Change

“"Let's dicker, Lord Lyons," Lincoln said; the British minister needed a moment to understand he meant bargain. Lincoln gave him that moment, reaching into a desk drawer and drawing out a folded sheet of paper that he set on top of the desk. "I have here, sir, a proclamation declaring all Negroes held in bondage in those areas now in rebellion against the lawful government of the United States to be freed as of next January first. I had been saving this proclamation against a Union victory, but circumstances being as they are-" Lord Lyons spread his hands with genuine regret. "Had you won such a victory, Mr. President, I should not be visiting you today with the melancholy message I bear from my government. You know, sir, that I personally despise the institution of chattel slavery and everything associated with it." He waited for Lincoln to nod before continuing. "That said, however, I must tell you that an emancipation proclamation issued after the series of defeats Federal forces have suffered would be perceived as a cri de coeur, a call for servile insurrection to aid your flagging cause, and as such would not be favorably received in either London or Paris, to say nothing of its probable effect in Richmond. I am sorry, Mr. President, but this is not the way out of your dilemma." Lincoln unfolded the paper on which he'd written the decree abolishing slavery in the seceding states, put on a pair of spectacles to read it, sighed, folded it again, and returned it to its drawer without offering to show it to Lord Lyons. "If that doesn't help us, sir, I don't know what will," he said. His long, narrow face twisted, as if he were in physical pain. "Of course, what you're telling me is that nothing helps us, nothing at all."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 7

Pain , Law , Way , Understanding

“The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down my colors without a preconceived plan. If at the first step and perhaps without my being conscious of it one tone has particularly pleased me, more often then not when the picture is finished, I will notice that I have respected this tone while I have progressively altered and transformed the others. I discover the quality of colors in a purely instinctive way.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Way

“How much do you think it costs to go to college? Most people are likely to answer by adding together their expenditures on tuition, room and board, books, and the like, and then deducting any scholarship funds they may receive. Suppose that amount comes to $15,000.
Economists keep score differently. They first want to know how much you would be earning if you were not attending college. Suppose that salary is $20,000 per year. This may seem irrelevant, but because you give up these earnings by attending college, they must be added to your tuition bill. You have that much less income because of your education. On the other side of the ledger, economists would not count all of the university’s bill for room and board as part of the costs of your education. They would want to know how much more it costs you to live at school rather than at home. Economists would count only these extra costs as an educational expense because you would have incurred these costs whether or not you attend college. On balance, college is probably costing you much more than you think. And, as we will see later, taking opportunity cost into account in any personal planning will help you to make more rational decisions.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

William Baumol and Alan Blinder, Economics: Principles and Policy (2011), Ch. 1 : What is Economics?

People , Books , Education , School

“Valentine's Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/valentines-day-2010 of Valentine's Day (10 February 2010)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Thinking , Personality

“The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

God , Law , Soul

“Failure in any given subject is the first qualification towards becoming a teacher.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

Articles

Failure , Teachers

“Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Sorrows of Werther, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love

“There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 95. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

War , Help

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me.”

Titus Salt (1803–1876) English industrialist and philanthropist

The speech he made to the 3,500 guests (including his workers) at the banquet on 1853-09-20, which he held to celebrate both his fiftieth birthday and the opening of his new factory at Saltaire. [Inauguration of the works at Saltaire, The Bradford Observer, 1853-09-22, 8, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&orientation=&scale=0.33&sort=DateAscend&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=BNCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253ALQE%253D%2528jn%252CNone%252C17%2529Bradford%2BObserver%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252909%252F22%252F1853%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=11&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C17%29Bradford+Observer%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2909%2F22%2F1853%24&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&enlarge=&bucketSubId=&inPS=true&userGroupName=brad&hilite=y&docPage=article&nav=prev&sgCurrentPosition=0&docId=R3207957429, 2012-06-07 (subscription site)]
A slightly edited version (in the third person) appears in [Holroyd, Abraham, 1873, 2000, Saltaire and its Founder, Piroisms Press, ISBN 0-9538601-0-8, 14-15]

Life , Happiness , Family , Beauty

“But while in these first years the prospects of success are apt to seem remote and high hopes seem doomed to frustration, the worst thing to do is to eat one's heart out in idleness. There are many occupations which can be devised to improve one's fitness to profit by the chance when it does come.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 39

Hope , Chance , Success , Heart

“I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge". It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Ann Druyan interviewed by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.

Question , Knowledge , Thinking , Tree

“You remember, we were sittin' there, by the water,
You put your arm around me for the first time.
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter.
You are the best thing that's ever been mine.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Mine.
Song lyrics, Speak Now (2010)

Water , Time , Daughters

“Roger: It depends.. A song is melody and lyrics and the music, you know? For our band, Vinnie the drummer writes like 95% of the lyrics so he's the main songwriter if you want to look at it that way. But he doesn't write any chords or melodies or any of that kind of stuff. So, it's kind of hard to split up or dissect a song that way, you know? On this record.. it's pretty fair, you know, pretty even between myself and Chris.. Actually JR and I. JR's the first song writer outside of Chris, Vinnie or I to like actually sit down and reword a song for the record. So he's becoming like a bigger part of that sort of thing. I don't know. It just depends. I definitely write a bunch of them!”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

Music , Way , Parting , Dependency

“Giraffes do use their long necks to browse leaves, at the tops of acacia trees - but such current function, no matter how vital, does not prove that the neck originally evolved for this purpose. The neck may have first lengthened in context of a different use, and then been coopted for better dining when giraffes moved into the open plains. Or the neck may have evolved to perform several functions at once. We cannot learn the reasons for historical origin simply by listing current uses.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 317
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Tree , Learning

“The idea that we are unaware of much of out mental life, first developed by Hermann Helmholtz, is central to psychoanalysis. Freud has added the interesting idea that although we are not aware of most instances of mental processing, we can gain conscious access… by paying attention.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Life , Idea

“I'd have to think about that a lot more and probably study a little bit more. But the easy first answer is the United States. The idea that you have a nation started with what you could term a fork. So a fork from the United Kingdom in terms of the American revolution, definitely went through some bumpy parts along the way but sort of ended up as one of the freest places in the world. Especially in regards to speech and property ownership rights and the democratic system. It isn't perfect, but is one of the best things out there. One of the things that I love is the equality of opportunity where its a meritocracy. It's not as important who you are, but it's more what you do. You can have a huge amount of opportunity and the ability to succeed regardless of what you've done before or been involved in.”

Matt Mullenweg (1984) American entrepreneur

On Steppin' off the Edge http://steppinofftheedge.com/podcast/philosophy-of-open-source/, Podcast Interview, January 2011 when asked a question, related to Web Services as Government http://ma.tt/2010/06/web-services-as-governments/ article, about what he would define as his nation state / empire from history if he had to pick one for WordPress or Automattic.

Love , World , Way , Idea

“Suppose a thorn has pierced a man's foot. He picks another thorn to pull out the first one. After extracting the first thorn with the help of the second, he throws both away. One should use the thorn of knowledge to pull out the thorn of ignorance. Then one throws away both the thorns, knowledge and ignorance, and attains vijnāna. What is vijnāna? It is to know God distinctly by realizing His existence through an intuitive experience and to speak to Him intimately. That is why Sri Krishna said to Arjuna, "Go beyond the three gunas."”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 780

God , Knowledge , Help

“The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation—to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.”

Theodore Dreiser book The Financier

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXVI

Evil

“So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Horror, disbelief in his voice.
Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 137-138

“The king, in his zeal to propagate the faith, now marched against the Hindoos of Nagrakote [Nagarkot Kangra], breaking down their idols and razing their temples. The fort, at that time denominated the Fort of Bheem, was closely invested by the Mahomedans, who had first laid waste the country around it with fire and sword.'…'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011), Mahmood resolved on the conquest of Tahnesur [Thanesar (Haryana)], in the kingdom of Hindoostan. It had reached the ears of the king that Tahnesur was held in the same veneration by idolaters, as Mecca by the faithful; that they had there set up a number of idols, the principal of which they called Jugsom, pretending that it had existed ever since the creation. Mahmood having reached Punjab, required, according to the subsisting treaty with Anundpal, that his army should not be molested on its march through his country…'The Raja's brother, with two thousand horse was also sent to meet the army, and to deliver the following message:- "My brother is the subject and tributary of the King, but he begs permission to acquaint his Majesty, that Tahnesur is the principal place of worship of the inhabitants of the country: that if it is required by the religion of Mahmood to subvert the religion of others, he has already acquitted himself of that duty, in the destruction of the temple of Nagrakote. But if he should be pleased to alter his resolution regarding Tahnesur, Anundpal promises that the amount of the revenues of that country shall be annually paid to Mahmood; that a sum shall also be paid to reimburse him for the expense of his expedition, besides which, on his own part he will present him with fifty elephants, and jewels to a considerable amount." Mahmood replied, "The religion of the faithful inculcates the following tenet: That in proportion as the tenets of the prophet are diffused, and his followers exert themselves in the subversion of idolatry, so shall be their reward in heaven; that, therefore, it behoved him, with the assistance of God, to root out the worship of idols from the face of all India. How then should he spare Tahnesur?"… This answer was communicated to the Raja of Dehly, who, resolving to oppose the invaders, sent messengers throughout Hindoostan to acquaint the other rajas that Mahmood, without provocation, was marching with a vast army to destroy Tahnesur, now under his immediate protection. He observed, that if a barrier was not expeditiously raised against this roaring torrent, the country of Hindoostan would be soon overwhelmed, and that it behoved them to unite their forces at Tahnesur, to avert the impending calamity….”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God , Faith , Religion , Communication

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence, The New York Times, 19 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0,
"Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence" (2011)

People , World , Exercises , Confidence

“A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.”

Anacharsis Scythian philosopher

As quoted in Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Chapter "Life of Anacharsis", 1702 edition, John Nicholson, p. 55.
Source: [Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes_Laërtius, The Lives of the Ancient Philosophers: Containing an Account of Their Several Fects, Doctrines, Actions and Remarkable Sayings..., http://books.google.com/books?id=SQrULxU3TXMC, 4 September 2013, 1702, John Nicholson, 54, Life of Anarchasis]

Pleasure

“He told me he was having the time of his life and then fell to the floor unconscious. I didn't take this too personally, although he was not the first person to collapse while talking to me; to tell the truth it has happened quite often.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Life , Truth , Time , Personality

“From the time, I have been in politics, your love has kept me going. All Guj[a]ratis have all right on me, but you have now shared that right with the people of India." "It's the first poll in my political life when I didn't have political sabha in Ahmedabad.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014, "Election results 2014 LIVE: 'The era of divisive politics is over', says Modi in Ahmedabad", 2014

Love , Life , People , Time

“That the legislative and executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 5
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

People , Law , Feeling , Parting

“.. we parted in 1914, when Kandinsky, being an enemy alien [because of his Russian nationality], had to flee from Germany to Switzerland, as did Jawlensky and Marianne de Werefkin too [to neutral Switzerland]... Ever since we parted in 1914, I have worked mainly by myself. After the First World War, here in Munich, we found that our Blue Rider group had broken up. Franz Marc and Macke had both been killed [in World War 1. ] Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Marianne were no longer here; Bloch and Burliuk were in America. Those of us who were still in Munich remained friends, of course, but each one of us had learned to work by himself rather than in a group. Besides.... we had always been individualists and our Blue Rider group never had a style of its own as uniform as that of the Paris cubists.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 121

War , World , Learning , Parting

“In the first stage, that of jubilatio, a person becomes intensely aware of the dear signs of his love that god has marvelously given us in the heavens and on earth, how marvelously much good he has done for us and all creatures, how everything blossoms, sprouts forth, and is filled with God, and how unimaginable the generosity of God has inundated all creatures with his great gifts and how God has gone searching for him, showered him with gifts, carried him, advised him, waited for him, cared for him…and to what inexpressible nearness he has invited him, and how the most Holy God has expectantly awaited him eternally so that he might be filled with joy forever. And when a person experiences this fully through loving insight, The Lord leads a person out of himself into himself there is born in him great genuine joy. The person who perceives these things with genuine love is so flooded with an interior joy that his frail body cannot contain this joy and erupts in its own way…And in this way our Lord showers him with great sweetness and gives him inwardly an embrace and palpable union. Thus does God lure, pull and yank a person, first of all out of himself, and then out of all dissimilarity to himself…”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, Sermon 3

Love , God , Way , Search

“I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, "You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books."”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s

God , Books , World , Reading

“Now certainly, one could almost preach a sermon from either of these groups. This evening I want to deal mainly with the second group: those individuals that chose the line of least resistance, those individuals who didn’t want to go back to Egypt but who did not quite have the strength to move on to the Promised Land. These are probably the people who wanted to remain stationary. These are the people who probably wanted to stop at a particular point and remain right there in the wilderness. God speaks through Moses to these people. The first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy said, “Ye have been in this mountain long enough. Turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the Amorites.” In other words, God was saying through Moses that you must not allow yourself to get bogged down with unattained goals. You must not allow yourself to get caught up in impeding mountains. Whenever God speaks, he says, "Go forward."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Whenever God speaks, he says, "Move on from mountains of stagnant complacency and deadening pacifity." So this is the great challenge that always stands before men.
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

Men , God , People , Books

“When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Source: The Great War for Civilization (2005), Chapter 8: Drinking the Poisoned Chalice (page 333)

Hate , War , Truth , Understanding

“4851. The worst Spoke in a Cart breaks first.”

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

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1737) : The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“For the first time in history, well-educated, affluent, white males are going to have their say.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

April 17, 2008
The Areas of My Expertise (2005), Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Education , History , Time

“Said Saint Augustine, 'The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.' The Republican Party under Bush did the devil's work. Bar the sainted Ron Paul, not a dog of a Republican lifted his leg in protest of the unjust war on Iraq. To embark on the good, the GOP must come clean about the bad.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Making America great means exposing 'W'," http://praag.org/?p=21693 Praag.org, February 20, 2016.
2010s, 2016

War , Dogs , Evil

“In the first place, there is the Hitler group, among whom are the most guilty of the defendants and about whom very little, if any, good can be spoken. By the Hitler group I include Göring, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, and Streicher. Then there is the group which one might call idealistic. Unfortunately, too many of us were indifferent. Not many belonged to the idealistic group, and I don't care to name them because I think I would be stretching a point to call any of the defendants idealists. I feel that perhaps of all the defendants I was the only idealist, although I suffered from blindness and indifference myself. In this respect, I am not like Speer, Schirach, and Funk. Schacht I consider an opportunist.”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

To Leon Goldensohn, May 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Feeling , Thinking , Suffering , Indifference

“In 1000 Muslim numbers in India were microscopic. In 1200 they were perhaps about three to four hundred thousand. By 1400 their number had risen probably to 3.2 million and they formed about 1.85 percent of the total population. In 1600 they were probably 15 million. And from the 1:9 to 1:10 Muslim-Hindu ratio in 1600 the proportion of Muslims to Hindus had gone up to about 1:7 by the year 1800…Thus at about the middle of the ninteenth century, the Muslim-Hindu ratio stood approximately at 1:6…. By the end of the nineteenth century, the ratio had changed to 1:5, and Stanely Lanepoole, whose Medieval India was first published in 1903, rightly observes: “The population of India in the present day is over three hundred millions, and every sixth man is a Muslim.””

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Change

“Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy-- into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based-- of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Restriction on 'usury' or restrictions on the laws in relation to the collection of interest
Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Fear , Law , Freedom , Help

“First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, deny the class struggle and this almost infallibly fixes their status as friends of capital and enemies of labor. They insist that they can serve both; but the fact is obvious that only one can be served and that one at the expense of the other. Mr. Roosevelt’s whole political career proves it.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

“The CBS crew had arrived: Ed Bradley; his producer, David Gelber; and a cameraman. The 60 Minutes people had government permission to work on other stories in Beijing, but they went first to Shanghai as tourists, which gave them cover to work on the real story. Ordinary Chinese did not recognize Ed Bradley as a television star as he walked down the streets of Shanghai.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Troublemaker: One Man's Crusade Against China's Cruelty, 120, 0970402996, Harry Wu, ‎Hongda Harry Wu, ‎George Vecsey, 1996, Newsmax Media Inc]
About

People , Star

“One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

Aphorisms

Learning

“I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There's no doubt of it in my mind.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, June 27 1999 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_08_3.MP3
1990s

Study

“The absurdity of monetary system which robs people first of their fair share in the "free market economy" and then - through some of the most inefficient procedures imaginable - returns some of this money in the form of welfare payments to the same people, has rarely been exposed by the "experts" nor been discussed in public.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter Three, Who Would Profit From a New Monetary System?, p. 71

Money , People , Imagination

“Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren’t all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I’d light a match.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999 November 12.
After The Justice Department mailed 87 razor blade–laced threats to medical researchers studying news drugs on primates.
On animal research and activism against it

Idea , Light , Time , Animals

“For the first time in sixty years, the priests, the old aristocracy and the people met in a common sentiment—a feeling of revenge, it is true, and not of affection; but even that is a great thing in politics, where a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

1850s and later

Friendship , People , Feeling , Communication

“Sophie's hard first question to the cards had not, precisely, gone without an answer, it had been transmuted into questions about the question. It had branched and rooted like a tree, growing questions like buds, and then at some moment all the questions had become one question: what tree is this?”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 3, Ch. 4
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Question , Tree

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Love , Children , Pleasure , Books

“I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Love , World , Thinking , Passion

“First-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don’t have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth.”

Cory Doctorow book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

"A note about this book, January 9, 2003
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003)

Time

“I remember when I began singing, in 1961, one person said, "run quick, because opera is going to have at maximum 10 years of life." At the time it was really going down. But then, I was lucky enough to make the first Live From the Met telecast. And the day after, people stopped me on the street. So I realized the importance of bringing opera to the masses. I think there were people who didn't know what opera was before. And they say "Bohème", and of course "Bohème is so good."”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

As quoted in Opera News (1998), and The New York Times (7 September 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/arts/music/06pavarotti.html?ei=5090&en=863a6b2459941ec6&ex=1346731200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Life , People , Thinking , Singing

“Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.”

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

1962, Rice University speech

Men , World , Peace , Hope

“There are two things you need for a jolly good hymn. The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper. The second—and perhaps even more important—is a good tune … with a simple popular melody.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

citation needed

Mood

“Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Wassily Kandinsky, 1919 - his self-characterisation in 'Das Kunstblatt', 1919; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 -1920

Painting

“Without communities, no infant will be sufficiently socialized… and that occurs in the first four or five years of life. …The first two years are important. …of vital importance. He has to be loved, above all he has to be talked to.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Love , Life , Communication

“John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw,
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo!”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

John Anderson, My Jo, st. 1
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

“My friends, young men of letters, look carefully upon this golden example! Be prudent, young man; never, when entering upon a literary career, publish poem or story without first taking the precaution of being for some years Prime Minister of England.”

José Maria Eça de Queiroz book Cartas de Inglaterra

Jovens de letras, meus amigos, ponde vossos olhos neste exemplo de ouro! Sê prudente, mancebo; nunca, ao entrar na carreira literária, publiques poema ou novela sem a antecipada precaução de ter sido durante alguns anos – primeiro-ministro de Inglaterra!
"Israelismo"; "Israelism" p. 56.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Men

“As I twirled, cha-cha-ed and clapped my hands to the beat, I began to remember, for the first time in a long time, those moments I used to steal as a kid, dancing alone in my room with headphones on. Those fleeting moments when what I looked like didn’t matter, only what I felt. Only this time, I wasn’t a child anymore. There was no one who could burst in unannounced, laugh at me, punish me, force me to stop. I felt so free, so beautiful, in a way I had written off as impossible for me long ago. … My inner dancer began to emerge from the deep pit where I had kept her all this time. I found the girlhood I was never allowed.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Beauty , Way , Time , Dance

“A poet's first contract is with truth.”

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

State of the Art (2000)

Truth

“I have learned by experience that there is but one God that pertains to this people, and He is the God that pertains to this earth-the first man. That first man sent his own Son to redeem the world, to redeem his brethren; his life was taken, his blood shed, that our sins might be remitted. That Son called twelve men and ordained them to be Apostles, and when he departed the keys of the kingdom were deposited with three of those twelve, viz.: Peter, James, and John. Peter held the keys pertaining to that Presidency, and he was the head.”

Heber C. Kimball (1801–1868) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 4:1 (June 29, 1856)

Life , Men , God , People

“The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 42
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

“First-rate men will not canvass mobs; and if they did, the mobs would not elect the first-rate men.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, 110, 1861, p. 281

Men

“Analysis… takes that which is sought as if it were admitted and passes from it through its successive consequences to something which is admitted as the result of synthesis: for in analysis we assume that which is sought as if it were (already) done (ɣϵɣονός) and we inquire what it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent cause of the latter, and so on, until by so retracing our steps we come upon something already known or belonging to the class of first principles, and such a method we call analysis as being solution backwards”

Pappus of Alexandria (290–350) Greek mathematician of Antiquity

άνάπαλɩν λὐσɩν
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Success

“First of all, my father inspired me…he is a great social activist and women's rights activist…he spoke out. And he spoke for women's rights…that hard situation, he inspired me, because he spoke. And that's what I learned from him.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Statements in PBS interview with Margaret Warner (October 11, 2013)

Women , Learning

“To build a nation we need to put the country first and tribes second.”

Peter Kenneth (1965) politician

He spoke at Isiolo as he opened the Kenya National Congress party regional offices Kenneth pledges to fight hunger, nation.co.ke, 19 July 2012 http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/Kenneth+pledges+to+fight+hunger/-/1064/1457060/-/1nnb3n/-/index.html,

Country

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People , World , Education , Law

“Included in this “almost nothing,” as a kind of geological afterthought of the last few million years, is the first development of self-conscious intelligence on this planet—an odd and unpredictable invention of a little twig on the mammalian evolutionary bush. Any definition of this uniqueness, embedded as it is in our possession of language, must involve our ability to frame the world as stories and to transmit these tales to others. If our propensity to grasp nature as story has distorted our perceptions, I shall accept this limit of mentality upon knowledge, for we receive in trade both the joys of literature and the core of our being.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Literary bias on the slippery slope", p. 252
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

World , Intelligence , Literature , Nature

“As some of us noted before Saddam Hussein’s 2003 fall, banning the Ba’ath as such was a mistake – for, in a sense, the Ba’ath had also been a victim of Saddam’s savage rule. The Ba’ath, modeled on European fascist parties, was never a democratic movement. Yet, before Saddam turned it into an empty shell to be filled with his personality cult, it had been a genuine political movement, representing a significant segment of Iraqi opinion. It had started as a predominantly Shiite party seeking to downplay sectarianism by promoting pan-Arab ideas. Saddam turned it into a sectarian party, first dominated by the Arab Sunni minority and eventually by his Tikriti clan. The wisest course would’ve been to let those Ba’athists who had been purged, imprisoned and exiled under Saddam to reclaim their party and rebuild it with full respect for Iraq’s new democratic and pluralist political system. Those Ba’athists who committed crimes were known to all and could’ve been blacklisted and tried as individuals. The blanket ban suddenly transformed some 1.4 million civil servants, including tens of thousands of teachers and medical doctors and some half a million military personnel, into pariahs simply because they’d been nominal Ba’ath members. Yet most had joined simply to protect their careers under a brutal regime.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Iraq: Reconciling with the Ba'ath" http://nypost.com/2008/01/16/iraq-reconciling-with-the-baath/, New York Post (January 16, 2008).
New York Post

Idea , Sense , Teachers , Personality

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me... is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

The Taste Gap: Ira Glass on the Secret of Creative Success, Animated in Living Typography http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/ at brainpickings.org
This American Life

People , Disappointment , Way , Game

“Aspiring to lead others, they have never given themselves the fair chance of being first led by other others into something better than they can start for themselves; and that they should first do this is what both those classes of others have a fair right to expect. New knowledge… must come by contemplation of old knowledge… mechanical contrivance sometimes, not very often, escapes this rule.”

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

Introductory p.5
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872)

Knowledge , Chance

“Greb gave me a terrible whipping. My jaw was swollen from the right temple down the cheek, along the chin and part way up the other side. The referee, the ring itself, was full of my blood. If boxing was afflicted with the commission doctors that we have now, the first fight probably would have been stopped and no one would have heard of me today.”

Gene Tunney (1897–1978) American boxer

On Harry Greb, as quoted in "Harry Greb, The Human Windmill...“A Perpetual Motion Machine.”" by Monte D. Cox

Way , Affliction , Fight , Parting

“We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2006- 2010
Source: Annual Address to the Federal Assembly http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/10/1823_type70029type82912_105566.shtml, (May 2006)

Time , Country

“To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses.”

Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) Georgian Soviet NKVD police chief under fellow Georgian and Soviet leader Stalin

Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics

Peace , Communication , Problem

“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Birthday

“Public administration is a process or a theory, not merely an accumulation of detailed facts. It is Verwaltungslehre. The object of administrative study should be to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost both of money and of energy.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 29

Money , Study

“Speaking in front of a large crowd is not pleasant. Once it gets rolling, it's okay. But beforehand, it's murder. I'm getting a lot better. The first interview I ever did was in 1972, I believe, and I couldn't speak. I couldn't speak one word. I only said, "I painted it black."”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

That was my one sentence. And so I have improved.
GreenCine interview (16 November 2005) http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=254

Painting

“Ever since [ Copernicus], writers eager to drive the lesson home have urged us […] to abandon all sentimental egoism, and to see ourselves objectively in the true perspective of time and space. What precisely does this mean? In a full 'main feature' film, recapitulating faithfully the complete history of the universe, the rise of human beings from the first beginnings of man to the achievements of the twentieth century would flash by in a single second. Alternatively, if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust, relieved only at brief intervals by a survey of incandescent masses of hydrogen — not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second's notice. It goes without saying that no one — scientists included — looks at the universe in this way, whatever lip-service is given to 'objectivity.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 3

Way , Home , History , Sense

“When they accepted their assignments they were not very confident, especially the assistant head surgeon who simply believed in his own past experience, in the statistics of international medical literature, and in the medical equipment and resources of the hospitals in capitalist countries. Therefore when he first heard the talk of the vice-superintendent, who was the secretary of the general Party branch, he had some inner feeling of resistance. He thought to himself, "This is simply coercing people to try and do the impossible! But since I have accepted the assignment I'll do what I can. At any rate, the patients will die either in the shock stage or later."”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

With such downhearted feelings he entered the ward to see his patients.
A Battle For Life (July 1958)

People , Feeling , Confidence , Literature

“"Our family comes first" Strong families support each other's dreams; they sacrifice to show support. A friend turned down a company trip to the Bahamas so he could attend his son's championship soccer game. "the beach will always be there," he said, "but my son won't always be 14 and team captain." this "family first" attitude begins with a bond of loyalty between marital partners. But single-parent families (28% of all families with children, according to the latest census) can be just as successful in raising strong children if they develop a "family first" attitude.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Children , Family , Dreams , Game

“A kid copies what is good. I remember the first time I saw Lefty O'Doul, and he was as far away as those palms. And I saw the guy come to bat in batting practice. I was looking through a knothole, and I said, "Geez, does that guy look good!"”

Ted Williams (1918–2002) American professional baseball player

And it was Lefty O'Doul, one of the greatest hitters ever.
The Sporting News (1994)

Guy , Time

“He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.”

Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time

The Acceptance World (1955), ch. 1.
A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975)

Love , Faith , Passion

“First, Greece: for modem Greeks, as I intimated, the future could mirror ‘the past’ past’ in more than one way, since there was a clear split in that past. One school argued for the Byzantine roots and glory of Greece. They pointed to the massive influx of Slavic immigrants in the sixth and succeeding centuries throughout the Balkans and Greece, and claimed that this had weakened the links with a decayed Hellenic (or Hellenistic— Roman) culture. What was Byzantine was essentially Orthodox Christianity only the Greek language and liturgy retained any connection with a pre-Christian past. In the Orthodox millet of the Ottoman empire, Christianity had kept a Byzantine Greek ethnic alive, as in a chrysalis, ready to be transformed under the impact of Western ideas and commercialization in the late eighteenth century.8’ For the Byzantine-Orthodox clergy and their flocks, for the notables in the Mores and Phanariots in Constantinople, this grandiose dream of a restored Byzantine empire under Greek control located the re-nascent Greek people and charted their future in the Aegean and Ionia. It also pointed the way to a restored agrarian society of peasants, notables and clergy, essentially smallholders, but led by educated Orthodox elites under the Patriarch.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987), p. 203.

People , Education , School , Dreams

“Suicide is a form of murder—premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Motivation , Thinking , Suicide , Time

“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, May 1, 2009, "Torture? No. Except …" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer050109.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

Life , Guy , Evil , Time

“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.”

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

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 667.

People , Appearance

“The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right?”

Haruki Murakami book Man-Eating Cats

Man-Eating Cats

World

“I don't know what it's like to be God — obviously …until that very first moment when you get to sit down and type the words in your script: INTERIOR. TARDIS. … Suddenly I got a very good idea of what it must feel like. I went: "I'm writing it now this scene in the Tardis. I'm writing it!"”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

And that was amazing, it was wonderful.
On writing the script for the episode of Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Wife" (originally titled "House of Nothing"), as quoted in "Neil Gaiman reveals power of writing Doctor Who" by Tim Masters at BBC News (24 May 2010) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10146657

God , Feeling , Idea

“There can be but two modes of cantonment, to prevent the enemy from disturbing us in quarters. One is, to keep such a force together as to bid defiance to all their menaces; the other is, to disperse the troops in such a manner as to afford no object. The first is infinitely the most favorable to discipline and economy. To disperse the troops among the inhabitants, will be attended with a certain loss of discipline to the soldiers and a general corruption of manners among the people. They will mutually debauch each other. Besides these disadvantages, the expense and waste of stores will be nearly double, and a great addition to the list of Staff Officers (al ready too numerous from the state of our money) will be found necessary. For these, and many other reasons too obvious to need explanation, dispersing the troops should be avoided at all events.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Money , People , Loss

“I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Troubles with Bird Dogs (1975)

Love , Death , Making love , Dogs

“Speaking of the report, I want to say that there are three key innovations of this report compared to the Millennium Development Goals. First, the call for civil and political rights combined with transparent and accountable public institutions as intrinsic to development. Second, the importance of ensuring peace and inclusive sustainable growth. And third, a need for urgent action to enhance the ability of women and youth, like you, to take part in the transformation of their societies.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2000s, Youth Q&A on the U.N. High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report (2009)

Women , Youth , Peace , Parting

“… I began at the beginning, and read Hind's Logic, Whately's Logic, Reid's Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. But the book which was of most use to me on these subjects was Stewart's Elements. I found on odd volume of this in my father's study at Hauxwell. It attracted me; I read and re-read it with increasing satisfaction. To Dugald Stewart, an author now obsolete, I owe the first infusion of a taste for philosophical inquiry…..”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Memoirs (1885)

Books , Sense , Study , Reading

“Who was the first discoverer of the horrible sword? How savage was he and literally iron!”
Quis fuit, horrendos primus qui protulit enses?<br/>quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit!

Tibullus (-50–-19 BC) poet and writer (0054-0019)

Quis fuit, horrendos primus qui protulit enses?
quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit!
Bk. 1, no. 10, line 1.
Elegies

“When I was a kid and saw Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope for the first time, it blew my mind and around the same time, I had friends who were huge fans of Star Trek and I don’t know if I was smart enough to get it, or patient enough. What I loved about Star Wars was the visceral energy of it, the clarity of it, the kind of innocence and big heart of it. Star Trek always felt a little bit more sophisticated and philosophical, debating moral dilemmas and things that were theoretically interesting, but for some reason I couldn’t get on board. It really took working with all these guys and actually working on Star Trek for me to fall in love with that.”

J. J. Abrams (1966) American film and television producer and director

Pirelli interview (2015)

Love , War , Hope , Guy

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Women , People , Books , Faith

“[T]hey and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy; that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them; and that consequently to assert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation, and form for the first time but one people.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

His objective was to convince the Dissenters to join with their fellow countrymen.
Attributed, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland by a Northern Whig. (September, 1791)

People , Time , Country , Forgetting