Quotes about first (10000 quotes, page 96)

“Unless legal and illegal immigration is halted and reversed, European First World nations across all of Europe from Spain to Russia, North America, Australia and New Zealand — will be destroyed and have their very culture and civilisation changed to that of the Third World. Immigration is now the single most important issue facing all First World nations, and will determine whether Western Civilisation continues to exist or not.”

Arthur Kemp (1962) British writer

Collective Nouns, blog post http://www.arthurkemp.com/?p=140
Quotes from other works:

World , Change

“In these days little need exists for extolling the blessings of our Federal Union. Its benefits are known and recognized by all its citizens who are worthy of serious attention. No one thinks now of attempting to destroy the Union by armed force. No one seriously considers withdrawing from it. But it is not enough that it should be free from attack — it must be approved and supported by a national spirit. Our prime allegiance must be to the whole country. A sentiment of sectionalism is not harmless because it is unarmed. Resistance to the righteous authority of Federal law is not innocent because it is not accompanied by secession. We need a more definite realization that all of our country must stand or fall together, and that it is the duty of the Government to promote the welfare of each part and the duty of the citizen to remember that he must be first of all an American.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Law , Support , Thinking , Parting

“So, too, when it is recorded that he drove the money changers from the temple. This, had it happened, would have been the act simply of one who had respect for this temple and not for the religion taught in it. It would seem that, at first, Christ believed substantially in the religion of his time; that afterward, seeing its faults, he wished to reform it; and finally, comprehending it in all its enormity, he devoted his life to its destruction.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life , Money , Religion , Time

“Hide, oh, hide those hills of snow
Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears!
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.”

John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Jacobean playwright

Act IV, scene i. Compare: "Take, O, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, bring again; Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain", William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, (c. 1617; revised c. 1627–30; published 1639)

Heart

“We can truly say that once the Leader of the Opposition had discovered what the Liberals and the SNP were going to do, she found the courage of their convictions. So, this evening, the Conservative Party, who want the Act repealed and oppose even devolution, will march through the Lobby with the SNP, who want independence for Scotland, and with the Liberals, who want to keep the Act. What a massive display of unsullied principle! The minority parties have walked into a trap. If they win, there will be a general election. I am told that the current joke going round the House is that it is the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1979/mar/28/her-majestys-government-opposition-motion in the House of Commons (28 March 1979). In the No confidence debate which brought his government down on 28 March 1979, Callaghan poked fun at the opposition parties and drew attention to their low showing in opinion polls. In the event the Scottish National Party lost 9 of its 11 seats
Prime Minister

History , Courage , Time , Christmas

“First of all I was like, ‘I’m the most hated celebrity?’ More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do? All I can do is be my authentic self, but I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know, that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment. He [my father] said, ‘You are completely on your own. So he never gave me anything. I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund. So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn’t work for what I have, that’s just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Hate , People , Idea , Thinking

“Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don’t like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts". This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 512 (1957)
Judicial opinions

Communication , Freedom

“The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 8
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Business

“Perched on the southern tip of Africa, far from the centre of anything, many writers have lamented the cultural backwardness, the oppression of living in a divided city. Even as Cape Town evolves, grows more cosmopolitan, holds its first Picasso exhibition, becomes an international convention hub, acquires its very own fashion week … I still can’t help feeling the old unease. Is it the parochialism and cliquishness that outsiders comment on, joking that only third-generation Capetonians are really accepted? Is it the self-satisfied airheads basking at Camps Bay cafés, flicking golden curls and agonising over which cocktail to order? Is it the smug self-sufficiency that comes with having so much beauty on your doorstep that you don’t need to connect with your neighbour? Is it something to do with the schizophrenia of the city not being quite African, of holding onto Europe’s apron strings, of not knowing who or what it really is? Or is it the crime, that ubiquitous topic of so much conversation and so little action, which makes this one of the most violent cities on earth?”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

Beauty , Feeling , Fashion , Help

“Lucas and Sargent’s main argument was that Keynesian economics had ignored the full implications of the effect of expectations on behavior. The way to proceed, they argued, was to assume that people formed expectations as rationally as they could, based on the information they had. Thinking of people as having rational expectations had three major implications, all highly damaging to Keynesian macroeconomics. …
The first implication was that existing macroeconomic models could not be used to help design policy. … The second implication was that when rational expectations were introduced in Keynesian models, these models actually delivered very un-Keynesian conclusions. … The third implication was that if people and firms had rational expectations, it was wrong to think of policy as the control of a complicated but passive system. Rather, the right way was to think of policy as a game between policy makers and the economy. …
To summarize: When rational expectations were introduced, Keynesian models could not be used to determine policy; Keynesian models could not explain long-lasting deviations of output from the natural level of output; the theory of policy had to be redesigned, using the tools of game theory.”

Olivier Blanchard (1948) French economist

Source: Macroeconomics (7th Edition, 2017), Ch. 24 : Epilogue: The Story of Macroeconomics

People , Way , Behavior , Game

“Hillary (Clinton) has spent decades doing the relentless work to actually make a difference in their lives. Advocating for kids with disabilities as a young lawyer, fighting for children's health care as first lady, and for quality child care in the senate.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)

Children , Health , Fight

“The first known life insurance contract was written in 1536 on the life of a British merchant, William Gybbons, for a term of one year. Gybbons died shortly before the policy was to expire, but the insurers refused the claim. They held that that Gybbons had indeed survived "twelve months" - twelve lunar months (of 28 days). The insurers were taken to court and ordered to pay.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 7, The Battle II, p. 112.

Life

“"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the influence of that brute force,—it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I have made the very stroke—the fatal stroke—that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over—the toil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined!"
And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Beauty , Despair

“The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Letter to Price, May 25, 1786

War , Perfection

“The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living.”

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

John Piper (Penguin Books, 1944), p. 12.

“Why does the drum, of all instruments, have the greatest potential for life enhancement? I don't really know but here are some thoughts. First of all, there are no notes, therefore fewer judgments to be made by yourself and by others. There will be less right and wrong—especially if there is no counting. Is it the vibrating membrane? So alive! Is it because of its roundness? What I do know, is that everyone's association with the drum is with Life, with Heart—even more with the Mother.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Way of the Pulse: Drumming with Spirit (1999), p. 79

Life , Heart

“This book did not get for me any general recognition. It got for me, instead, something in every way more valuable. For it was The Cream of the Jest which first made for me in the seventeenth year of my writing, a few warm friends who but a little later were to fight in my behalf very nobly, and with wholly heroic tenacity… If few writers have met with more smug, more prurient, or more disingenuous opponents, no writer whatever, I think has found more faithful allies.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

Books , Faith , Way , Thinking

“I am a minister of Christ first and of the Kirk second. If the Kirk forgets its Master's teaching, we part company.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. XIV "The Counterblast"

Christ , Parting , Forgetting

“It is time now to introduce my friend Peter Duesberg. Where do I begin? At NIH, Peter is sometimes known as the battling bulldog. He gets his teeth into something and 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later those teeth are still sunk in it…[…]…He began working with retroviruses. Peter the biochemist. This really led to the first molecular and genetically defined transforming gene, the Src gene. A great deal of this brilliant and original, the real critical aspects, was and Blood Transfusion vol.29 p. 1, 1985.”

Robert Gallo (1937) American biomedical researcher

On Peter Duesberg

Time

“Nonsatiation (Smith, 1976a). Given a costless choice be ween two alternatives which differ only in that the first yields more of the reward medium (e. g., currency) than the second, the first will always be chosen (preferred) over the second by an autonomous individual, i. e., utility U(M) is a monotone increasing function of the reward medium.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Relevance of laboratory experiments to testing resource allocation theory," 1980, p. 346.

“[Gary] Hart was clearly the most attractive candidate, the only one with even a remote chance of beating Ronald Reagan, so naturally the Democrats selected: Walter Mondale. When Mondale accepted the nomination, he wooed the voter by informing them…that if they elected him as president, his first move would be to jack up their income taxes. Walter you sweet talker!”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Nonfiction, Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway (2001)

Nature , Chance

“He knew what she'd be reading first as she started from the beginning, reading what he'd had to say when he was younger, and then growing older, stories at first about tiny mice who lived in families in back of the wall, and stories about school, and apartments in Greenpoint and Carnasie and Flatbush, elves in Ireland that he'd pictured as Pop had told him about them, and the woman with lace on her sleeves.
She kept turning pages, and then halfway through, she whispered, "Water Street."
Thomas knew she was reading now about a boy who listened at a register, thinking about a family, and a lighthouse, and then she turned the next page and took a breath.
It was the story he really wanted her to see: a story about a girl who though less of herself than everyone else did, who worried about everyone, even when she didn't want to, even when it made her irritable. A girl who was afraid, and who hardly knew it yet, but was on her way to being a healer like her mother, because there'd never be anything else for her, and how lucky they were just to know her.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 135-136

School , Family , Way , Girl

“Throughout the history of our ascent to dominance as the master species, our victimization of animals has served as the model and foundation for our victimization of each other. The study of human history reveals the pattern: first, humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the same to them.”

Charles Patterson (author) (1935) American author and historian

Source: Eternal Treblinka (2002), p. 109

People , History , Study , Animals

“If a man has not studied painting, or at any rate black and white drawing, his eyes are wild; learning to draw tames them. The first step towards taming the eyes is to teach them not to see too much.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Seeing
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Study , Learning , Drawing , Painting

“The US and Europe saw large players in foods by the '50s and '60s; but in India, food has always been a disorganised, fragmented value chain. We believe that India's purchasing power will be food-dominated. The first thing we need is safe to eat food that will, in turn, meet many other needs.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

Food

“[13 years old] After almost a month went by after getting World of Warcraft, I was finally able to play it. I made a WoW account with my father, and then I created my first character, a night elf druid. It really blew my mind. My first experience with WoW was like stepping into another world of excitement and adventure. It was a video game world, but they made it so realistic that it was like living another life, a more exciting life. My life was getting more and more depressing at that point, and WoW would fill in the void. It felt refreshing and relieving. I was only able to play it for a few hours for my first session. It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Life , World , Game , Thinking

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love , Life , War , Happiness

“From that time Mr. Moody ceased to urge people to begin their religious life by finding something to do for Christ; but insisted that, first of all, they should let Christ do something for them. If they would only believe, Christ would help them to be and to do.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

W. H. Daniels, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 234.
About

Life , People , Time , Help

“First, utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.”

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

Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries http://books.google.com/books?id=sCK8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q=&f=false (1971), p. 60.

Effort

“It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better…and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you…so that you stepped out of the tiny box’s confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn’t even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 4 “Dependency Principle” section III (p. 120).

Life , Happiness , Books , Mountain

“Arms, and the Man I sing, who first did land,
Fate-forc'd from Troy, on the Lavinian Strand;
Whom angry Gods at Sea and Land engage,
And cruel Juno's persecuting Rage.
Much suffer'd he by War, whilst Walls he rear'd,
And Trojan Gods to Latian Realms transferr'd;
Whence Latins, and the Alban Princes come,
And lofty Tow'rs of all-commanding Rome.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

God , Fate , War , Rage

“His name was Howard, but by the way he said it, none of us were able to figure out what his name was for the first few days. Still, I liked him, so one day I tackled him out on the playground and we started wrestling on the grass.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Way , Grass

“Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods. Ironically, the modern equivalent lies, again, in the desert. This time, the nomads also settled by a river… a river of oil. But what had took the pharaohs 4,000 years to build took the Kuwaitis 4,000 days. What's happened in Kuwait, the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation. Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced, because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years. Here it's been focused. Change has been instant and total. Kuwait has suddenly become like New York, or any other of the great urban islands on technology, totally dependent on that technology. Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect

God , Way , Change , Time

“We must choose between two paths. Either we conclude that Americans have lost control over their government or we reject this information as a mere distortion of history. In the first case we become advocates of the conspiratorial view of history in the later we endorse the accidental view. It is a difficult choice.

The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (1995)

People , History

“That evening I lit many candles and sat in the library wearing fresh linen and drinking good wine while I read a treatise on astronomy by a student of Kepler’s and reflected on my increasing disagreement with Luther, who had judged reason to be the chief enemy of Faith, of the purity of his beliefs. He had considered reason a harlot, willing to turn to anyone’s needs, but this merely displayed his own suspicion of logic. I have come to believe him the madman Catholics described him as. Most mad people see logic as a threat to the dream in which they would rather live, a threat to their attempts to make the dream reality (usually through force, through threat, through manipulation and through bloodshed). It is why men of reason are so often the first to be killed or exiled by tyrants.”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 1 (pp. 11-12)

Men , People , Faith , Dreams

“The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Men , Age , Law , Support

“My first question [upon ascending to Heaven], believe it or not, will be, 'Did Adam and Eve have a belly button?' I don't know why, but that has bothered me for years.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Question

“When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

As quoted in "Elie Wiesel: Jerusalem is Above Politics" in Arutz Sheva (17 April 2010) http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137057#.VwlePdcYoxA

Time

“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.
A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)
Variant: He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Love , People

“We must… carefully distinguish between two quite different doctrines which Darwin popularised, the doctrine of evolution, and that of natural selection. It is quite possible to hold the first and not the second. Similarly with regard to the doctrines of Darwin's great contemporary Marx, it is possible to adopt socialism but not historical materialism.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, p. 2.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

Nature

“Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Symposiacs, book viii. Question viii
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men , Fish , Help

“At the end of the Middle Ages, castles began to lose their military func tion, but not their psychological impact as a symbol of authority. Gun powder and cannons supported armies of mercenary troops, and the garrison forts built to house them adopted the crenellated walls of private aristocratic castles. By the sixteenth century, professional soldiers lived in barracks, a few officers and the governor had finer quarters, and kings and nobles merely directed the operations from distant palaces where battle ments had become purely symbolic decoration. The Battle of Crecy be tween France and England in 1346 is traditionally considered to be the first use of cannons on the battlefield. At first the noise and smoke cre ated by the explosion terrified horses and men, and wreaked more havoc than the projectiles. Early cannons could be more dangerous for the gun ners than for the enemy, but military engineers rapidly developed the weapons’ power and accuracy. A castle’s high walls and towers made easy targets for gunners whose power and accuracy reduced once formidable medieval buildings to rubble. Mining became more successful because the attackers could put explosives under the walls.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 5 : Impact and Consequences : The Afterlife of the Castle

Men , Age , Support , Distant

“It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.”

Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and sexiest man

biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

Idea

“This culling poem is a blessing. Why do you think it was created in the first place? It will save millions of people from the slow terrible death we're headed for from disease, from famine, drought, from solar radiation, from war, from all the places we're headed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Death , War , People , Disease

“Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Aphorism 102
Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme

Life , Men , Parting

“The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 … was a challenge not just to the ambitions of our neighbour but too many of the accepted views of that time. As a statement of the 'community of the realm', the Declaration of Arbroath may be Europe's first statement of a contractual relationship between government and citizens.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

Communication , Time

“They [Lee’s uncles] were the horsemen and brawlers of another age, and their lives spoke its long farewell. Spoke too, of campaigns on desert marches, of Kruger’s cannon and Flanders mud; of a world that still moved at the same pace as Caesar’s and of that Empire greater than his – through which they had fought, sharp-eyed and anonymous, and seen the first outposts crumble….”

Laurie Lee book Cider with Rosie

Source: Cider with Rosie (1959), pp. 221-222.

Age , World

“I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

First reported in Arnold Gingrich, Coronet, Volume 17‎ (1944), which characterizes the quote as a diary entry. A much earlier report in "Life of the Rev. Matthew Henry", in Christian Biography (1799), p. 66, has Henry writing:
What reason have I to be thankful to God, that having travelled so much, yet I was never robbed before now. 2. What abundance of evil this love of money is the root of, that four men should venture their lives and souls for ubout half-a-crown a-piece. 3. See the power of Satan working in the children of disobedience. 4. The vanity of worldly wealth—how soon we may be stript of it, how loose we ought to sit to it.
Misquoted

Life

“The President put the interest of the PNP as an organization first before his personal friendship and preferences. I commend him for that. However, he still did not name a permanent PNP Chief in order to provide STABILITY and DIRECTION in the PNP, at this difficult time. I urge him to appoint at the soonest. Further, I would have wanted him TO SEND A CLEARER AND TOUGHER MESSAGE to the MILF and to have given DEFINITE instructions to the OPAPP, the GRP panel, and the DOJ insofar as ensuring that justice is exacted from those who brutally and mercilessly massacred the 44 SAF members.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, February 6). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153052428415610/
2015, Facebook

Friendship , Justice , Time , Personality

“It’s almost the not-knowing that’s sexy. When the look is too contrived… Trying to assimilate a look to be sexy to me is pretty transparent in the first place. So… somebody who just kind of stumbles into a sexy look… who’s not been thinking about fashion at all…”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Jonkers, Gert (2003). "Friendly homosexual fashion designer likes dogs but finds fashionable men terribly unsexy" http://www.buttmagazine.com/Issues/7_Jacobs.html buttmagazine.com (accessed April 19, 2007)
On clothes and sex

Fashion , Thinking

“There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Western Civ,” p. 18.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Truth , Knowledge

“History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours.”

Paddy Ashdown (1941–2018) British politician and diplomat

Radio series for the BBC (2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6662539.stm

Home , History

“And the plaster dented from your fist
in the hall where you had your first kiss
reminds you that the memories will fade.”

Chris Carrabba (1975) American musician

The Brilliant Dance

Kiss , Memory

“A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6670472eec71d00e (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People

“Certainly the people's insistence that their candidates should present themselves ungirt and without a tunic had nothing to do with any suspicion of bribery, for it was not until long afterwards that the abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining the elections. Later on, however, this process of corruption spread to the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of the emperors. For it has rightly been said that the man who first offers banquets and bribes to the people is the first to destroy their liberties.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Gaius Marcius (Coriolanus) 14.2, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Makers of Rome: Nine Lives by Plutarch (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1965) ISBN 0140441581, p. 27
Parallel Lives

Money , People , Law , Parting

“Impressionism is at the root of all modern art, because it was the first movement that managed to free itself from preconceived ideas, and because it changed not only the way life was depicted but the way life was seen.”

Francesco Salvi (1953) Italian actor, writer, comedian, singer and architect

Source: Nancy Bachus The Modern Piano: The Influence of Society, Style, and Musical Trends on the Great Piano Composers http://books.google.co.in/books?id=azsmp3dvjk8C&pg=PA10, Alfred Music Publishing, 1 August 2006, p. 10

Life , Art , Way , Idea

“To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"The Blind Who Would Lead", essay in The Roving Mind (1983); as quoted in Canadian Atheists Newsletter (1994)
General sources

God , People , Books , School

“But whatever its defects, the classification of Linnæus was the first attempt at grouping animals together according to certain common structural characters.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Methods of Study in Natural History (1863), ch. 1, p. 7 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015065771407;view=1up;seq=21

Animals

“Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper… sharp pencils… typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk… roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter… and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.”

Jeff MacNelly (1947–2000) American cartoonist

Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk, in Shoe

Appearance

“Trochu's Vianney book makes me shudder. Positively frightening - and the saint too. The first time I read it I was quite horrified…Actually he is a second Simeon Stylites - and how hard and stern he is - and not only against himself: he would excommunicate his parishioners if they even once went dancing or drinking - like the most rigorous Puritan.. For him sin involved personal, direct single combat with Satan…But there's no glove to Vianney's peasant fist. He's really gruesome.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Books , Drink , Time , Reading

“He’s not the first man I'd like to kill down here, but I was willing to work him onto the list.”

Cherie Priest book Boneshaker

Source: Boneshaker (2009), p. 353

“Khamenei is not the first ruler of Iran with whom poets have run into trouble. For some 12 centuries poetry has been the Iranian people’s principal medium of expression. Iran may be the only country where not a single home is found without at least one book of poems. Initially, Persian poets had a hard time to define their place in society. The newly converted Islamic rulers suspected the poets of trying to revive the Zoroastrian faith to undermine the new religion. Clerics saw poets as people who wished to keep the Persian language alive and thus sabotage the ascent of Arabic as the new lingua franca. Without the early Persian poets, Iranians might have ended up like so many other nations in the Middle East who lost their native languages and became Arabic speakers. Early on, Persian poets developed a strategy to check the ardor of the rulers and the mullahs. They started every qasida with praise to God and Prophet followed by panegyric for the ruler of the day. Once those “obligations” were out of the way they would move on to the real themes of the poems they wished to compose. Everyone knew that there was some trick involved but everyone accepted the result because it was good. Despite that modus vivendi some poets did end up in prison or in exile while many others spent their lives in hardship if not poverty. However, poets were never put to the sword. The Khomeinist regime is the first in Iran’s history to have executed so many poets. Implicitly or explicitly, some rulers made it clear what the poet couldn’t write. But none ever dreamt of telling the poet what he should write. Khamenei is the first to try to dictate to poets, accusing them of “crime” and” betrayal” if they ignored his injunctions.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

God , People , Books , Faith

“Will the tax cut destroy America’s prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there’s a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies.
Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Introduction
Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan (2001)

Life , Death , Feeling

“Peter was dull; he was at first
Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
Still with this dulness was he cursed!
Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Peter Bell the Third (1819), Pt. VII, st. 11

“You'll have to excuse my friend, Ryan. That's the first time he's ever touched a woman.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Is... Not Nicole Kidman (2005)

Time

“Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels…. They must not be turned into a plaything of one’s mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (January 2, 1889)
Letters

Children , Angels , Mood , Kiss

“(Tatiana nervously looked down at the present.)
"Thank you".
Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper.
"No. Open first. Then say thank you."
She smiled.
"What do I do? Do I take the paper off?"
"Yes. You tear it off."
"And then what?"
"And then you throw it away."
"The whole present or just the paper?" Slowly he said, "Just the paper."
"and but you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?"
"It’s just paper."”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

"If it’s just paper, why did you wrap it?"
The Bronze Horseman (2001)

Smile , Tear

“In many respects, the Second World War was a continuation of the First, a conflict triggered by the mismatch between industrial power and imperial reach.”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 4, The Colour Of Money, p. 150

War , World

“Human beings cannot endure emptiness and desolation; they will fill the vacuum by creating a new focus of meaning. The idols of fundamentalism are not good substitutes for God; if we are to create a vibrant new faith for the twenty-first century, we should, perhaps, ponder the history of God for some lessons and warnings.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

God , Faith , History

“Faye…this is Davies…Anelka, still looking for his first Bolton goal…Nicolas Anelkaaa…HE GETS IT! A terrific goal. From the minute he picked that ball up, I think he had one thing in mind. And Bolton half time lead is commanding.”

Jonathan Pearce (1959) British football commentator

Nicolas Anelka's screamer described by Jonathan for Match of the Day in November 2006.

Thinking , Time

“There are then, at least two dialectical truths. The first is that you and I are reasonable creatures; the second that you and I ought to be reasonable. Because of the second, we can say not merely that we cannot reasonably deny the first, but also that we ought not to deny it. If these dialectical propositions are errors, they are irrefutable errors: there is no way for men qua rational creatures to find out what is wrong with them, just as there is no way for men qua rational creatures to cast doubt on their truth.”

Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher

"The Logic of Common Morality" http://web.archive.org/web/20060616233942/http://www.stephankinsella.com/texts/vandun_philosophy_argument.pdf, from E.M. Barth and J.L. Martens, eds., Argumentation Approaches to Theory Formation: Containing the contributions to the Groningen Conference on the Theory of Argumentation, October 1978 (Benjamins, 1982; original from the University of Michigan, digitized Mar 12, 2007. ISBN 9-027-23007-2, 333 pages).

Men , Truth , Way , Error

“It was necessary for our salvation that there be a knowledge revealed by God, besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because the human being is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason. "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Part I, Question 1, Article 1; tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920, New York: Benziger Bros.)
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Men , God , Truth , Knowledge

“The socio-technical concept arose in conjunction with the first of several field projects undertaken by the Tavistock Institute in the coal-mining industry in Britain. The time (1949) was that of the postwar reconstruction of industry in relation to which the Institute had two action research projects.(2) One project was concerned with group relations in depth at all levels (including the management/labor interface) in a single organization - an engineering company in the private sector. The other project focused on the diffusion of innovative work practices and organizational arrangements that did not require major capital expenditure but which gave promise of raising productivity. The former project represented the first comprehensive application in an industrial setting of the socio-clinical ideas concerning groups being developed at the Tavistock.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 7

Idea , Time

“I have succeeded in structuring my intimate life according to my own standards and I make no secret of my love experiences anymore than does a man. Above all, however, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life inasmuch as creativity, activity, struggle always occupied the foreground.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love , Life , Pain , Secret

“Freud spoke of oceanic consciousness as that in which we feel our individual existence lost in mystic union with the universe. Nothing could be more appropriate to contemporary experience, when for the first time man has left the boundaries of this globe. The oceanic effect of synaesthetic cinema is similar to the mystical allure of the natural elements: we stare in mindless wonder at the ocean or a lake or river. We are drawn almost hypnotically to fire, gazing as though spellbound. We see cathedrals in clouds, not thinking anything in particular but feeling somehow secure and content. It is similar to the concept of no-mindedness in Zen, which also is the state of mantra and mandala consciousness, the widest range of consciousness.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 92, as cited in: " Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood, Studio Vista, 1970 http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/books/gyngbld.html" at hohlwelt.com, January 21, 2012

Feeling , Nature , Thinking , Universe

“What Phædrus thought and said is significant. But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane. There seems little doubt that he was insane, but much of his writing at the time indicates that what was driving him insane was this hostile opinion of him. Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached. In Phædrus' case there was a court-ordered police arrest and permanent removal from society.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 6

Hostility , Behavior , Time , Madness

“Just as the mother influence is formative with a man's anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter. The father imbues his daughter's mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter. For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death. A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead. Again and again she presses him to say who he is. At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand. Then suddenly he tells her he is death. The young woman is so frightened that she dies. Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone). He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man. A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things "ought to be," prevents all contact with life. The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives.”

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

Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man, p. 319 - 320

Love , Life , Death , God

“Later evolutionary theorists of linear progress had to advance the overtly physical and historical claim that an ancestral lineage of arthropods actually turned over to become the first vertebrates (for the classical statement of the inversion theory, see William Patten, The Grand Strategy of Evolution, 1920).”

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

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998) "Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327

“There was a beauty here, refined from country pastures, a game of solitariness, of waiting, waiting for the pitcher to complete his gaze toward first base and throw his lightning, a game whose very taste, of spit and dust and grass and sweat and leather and sun, was America.”

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Rabbit Redux (1969)

Beauty , Game , Grass , Waiting

“I was never really in love with acting. I always love movies and going to the theater. But did I love being in this business? Not for five minutes. I did it because I needed a job. For the first year or two, it's like a poison that enters your body. It's like a virus, and your body has to release antidotes. But it would be very unfair to say that it's that way all the time. It's just like anything this overwhelming that you enter suddenly. It's like being a contact at West Point. You're thrown into an intense environment. From the word go, you realize it's sink or swim.”

Alec Baldwin (1954) American actor, writer, producer, and comedian

As quoted in "The Hunt for Alec Baldwin", by Phoebe Hoban, in New York magazine, Vol. 23, No. 9 (5 March 1990).

Love , Way , Business , Time

“Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

"We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" on Democracy Now (4 September 2006) http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/04/1416217&mode=thread&tid=25

“The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.”

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

Letter to Elbridge Gerry (13 May 1797)
1790s

“Augustine's description of Ambrose's silent reading (including the remark that he never read aloud) is the first definite instance recorded in Western literature.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Silent Readers, p. 43.
A History of Reading (1996)

Literature , Reading

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004)
If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

Death , People , Books , Art

“As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

Birth , Nature

“Nothing is certain—that is the first lesson.”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 67

“[B]elief in multiculturalism by the elites suits many Muslims just fine. Unlike immigrants who come to America in pursuit of the American dream, many Muslims come to Britain and other European countries determined not to assimilate into cultures they despise. They insist that neither British food is served, nor traditional British tolerance practiced, in the schools their children attend, demands the authorities find reasonable. Many of those children, unlike first-generation Americans, hold to their traditional ways with greater tenacity than their parents. This is especially true of young Muslim men eager to maintain their traditional dominance over women, a role threatened by the fact that Muslim girls are outperforming boys in school and in the workplace.”

Irwin Stelzer (1932) American economist and columnist

Letter from Londonistan (2005)

Women , Men , Children , School

“p>The sportive hopes that used to chase their shifting shadows on,
Like children playing in the sun, are gone—for ever gone;
And on a careless, sullen peace, my double-fronted mind,
Like Janus, when his gates are shut, looks forward and behind.Apollo placed his harp, of old, awhile upon a stone,
Which has resounded since, when struck, a breaking harp string's tone;
And thus my heart, though wholly now from early softness free,
If touch'd, will yield the music yet, it first received of thee.

Edward Coote Pinkney A Picture Song

A Picture Song.

Children , Peace , Hope , Music

“The morning after I die. And the first 12 copies go to the Inland Revenue”

Bernie Ecclestone (1930) British business magnate

Financial Times. November 23, 2004
Bernie Ecclestone's response from a tongue in cheek interview question that asked: “So when’s your autobiography going to be published, Bernie?”

“Keep in mind that when the first A-bomb was developed as a defense against Nazism, moral objections and conscience of scientists and many others involved were lulled by assurances that everything would be over after production of a few bombs.”

Yevgeniy Chazov (1929) Russian physician

Tragedy and Triumph of Reason (1985)

“I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb, but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night, but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke into the stratosphere…It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature…Fire was the first discovery; this is the second.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Conversation with his doctor, Lord Moran (23 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 305
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People , Secret , Nature , Light

“At first glance, My Super Sweet 16 appears to be a sugary bit of reality drizzle about some irritating American brats, but the more you watch it the more you realize it’s actually a stonehearted exposé of everything that’s wrong with our faltering so-called civilization.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe

Reality , Appearance

“Something he had heard some wise man say. About the three stages of empire, the three generations. First came the conquerors, unstoppable in war. Then came the administrators, who bound it all together into one apparently unshakable, immortal edifice. Then came the wasters, who knew no responsibility and squandered the capital of their inheritance upon whims and vices. And fell to other conquerors.”

Glen Cook book The Silver Spike

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 58 (p. 629)

War

“The case which the French present to us with regard to the Left Bank of the Rhine is very forcible, but very one-sided. They draw a lurid picture of future Franco-German relations. They assume that the German population will always far outnumber the French; that as soon as the first shock of defeat has passed away, Germany will organise herself for revenge; that all our attempts to limit armaments will be unsuccessful; that the League of Nations will be impotent; and, consequently, that the invasion of France, which was fully accomplished in 1870, and partially accomplished in the recent War, will be renewed with every prospect of success.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Memorandum, 'France's Fear of German Aggression' (28 March 1919) written for the Paris Peace Conference, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 204.

War , Revenge , Success , Future

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Men , People , Lie , Secret

“My family and I left Yokohoma in June, 1939, in time for me to enter the Army War College in what turned out to be the last class before the school closed for World War II. As we left Japan, I would have said that war between the two countries was certainly possible but I had no premonition that it was only two years away. On the opening day of the war college, a number of senior officers from the War Department attended to welcome the new class. The first man to speak I had never seen before, but he was just as impressive at first glance as he remained in my eyes in later life- George Marshall, the new Army Chief of Staff. What he said that day I do not remember, but the way he said it, I do. General Marshall never spoke anywhere without receiving the undivided attention of every listener to the words of a man who obviously knew what he was talking about. One could never imagine questioning the accuracy of his facts or challenging the soundness of his conclusions on any subject he undertook to discuss. He did not give the impression of great brilliance of mind, as General MacArthur did, but of calm strength and unshakeable will. I was to owe much to him- my service on his staff at the outbreak of the war, later the command of a division in Europe, and assignment as the Superintendent of West Point following the war. Bu my greatest privilege was the opportunity to see General Marshall in action at close range at the outbreak of World War II.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 37

Life , War , World , School

“The holiday humour that ought to have prevailed in the tent that evening — our first on the plateau — did not make its appearance; there was depression and sadness in the air - we had grown so fond of our dogs.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Upon slaughtering some dogs to feed other dogs and themselves
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

Sadness , Dogs , Appearance , Holiday

“A symbol is first of all a finite reality of this world.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Seven, The Symbolic Structure of Religion, p. 133

World , Reality

“Be it understood, then, that what we have to do, as students of phenomenology, is simply to open our mental eyes and look well at the phenomenon and say what are the characteristics that are never wanting in it, whether that phenomenon be something that outward experience forces upon our attention, or whether it be the wildest of dreams, or whether it be the most abstract and general of the conclusions of science.
The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear. When the ground is covered by snow on which the sun shines brightly except where shadows fall, if you ask any ordinary man what its color appears to be, he will tell you white, pure white, whiter in the sunlight, a little greyish in the shadow. But that is not what is before his eyes that he is describing; it is his theory of what ought to be seen. The artist will tell him that the shadows are not grey but a dull blue and that the snow in the sunshine is of a rich yellow. That artist's observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology. The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.41 - 42
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Dreams , Color , Nature , Study

“The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other older trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.”

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

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part I, p. 136 (tendency of the rate of profit to fall).

Quotes about first page 96

Quotes about first
page 96