Quotes about force
page 24

“Let us not be taken in by the howls of contrived grievances which the spokesmen of Islam in India have started hawking in increasingly hysterical voices. In the history of Islam this has always been a prelude to predatory action. Hajjaj had hawked some grievances against Raja Dahir on the eve of equipping an armed force more formidable than any that had ever been sent against Sindh. The Pirpur Report of the Muslim League was only a preparation for the demand for Pakistan.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984; 2001)

History

“Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a series of events — a story — and when we can’t figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.”

Douglas Coupland book Player One

Player One (2010)

Life, Feeling, Time

“Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man who has power is inclined to abuse it; he goes until he finds limits. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?.
To prevent this abuse, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power shall stop power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.”

Montesquieu book The Spirit of the Laws

Book XI, Chapter 4.
The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

Law, Nature

“The newly emerging dominant group is "knowledge workers." The very term was unknown forty years ago. (I coined it in a 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow.) By the end of this century knowledge workers will make up a third or more of the work force in the United States--as large a proportion as manufacturing workers ever made up, except in wartime. The majority of them will be paid at least as well as, or better than, manufacturing workers ever were. And the new jobs offer much greater opportunities.”

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

About the rise of the knowledge worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Books, Knowledge

“When I took to Twitter and I urged Hillary to speak clearly on this topic [Islamic terrorism, following the Orlando shootings in June 2016], I got attacked by even LGBT activists for my bigotry, for inspiring hate against Muslims. This is how confused the left is: just a few hours after this news broke, LGBT activists were so allergic to having someone name the belief system that had just produced a massacre in their community that they lashed out against me as a bigot rather than lash out against the people who won't name the belief system that at this moment is doing more than any other on earth to target gays and to force them into hiding.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2 2010s

Hate, People, Communication

“My dear friends! We move everything back to front. What we are doing is wrong and contrary to Nature. Nature moves in other ways. She primarily employs drawing, i. e. sucking energies, since these are indispensable to Nature for the growth and maintenance of life. Nature uses pressure energies and explosive forces only for reducing quality and destruction. Atomic physicists also work upside down. They would be more correct if they started with simple nuclear fusion. They should set about the cold transformation of hydrogen into helium, as Nature has done over the millions of years of Creation. Today's technology has a tiger by the tail, because it splits the heaviest atoms with the greatest development of heat and an enormous expenditure of energy.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Alick Bartholomew: The Schauberger Keys

Life, Way, Nature, Drawing

“There is an over-informing force which ultimately brings all the ideas together, and does not allow one idea alone to run away with India. And, that has been demonstrated again and again in terms of conflicting ideologies, conflicting social systems, political systems, all these somehow have been contained in an overall framework.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Idea

“We could not field a big enough force to avoid this risk [of rape]. We would need so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As quoted in as quoted in "Silvio Berlusconi criticised for 'pretty girl' rape comment" in The Telegraph (26 January 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/4339817/Silvio-Berlusconi-criticised-for-pretty-girl-rape-comment.html 2009

Women, Beauty

“The fair face painted on the dungeon air,
By the strong force of hope, distinct and sweet,
Is a good omen. Love mine, I will rest.
If my last sleep — it will be full of thee.”

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

The London Literary Gazette (28th March 1835)
Translations, From the German

Love, Hope, Sleep, Strong

“I hasten to add that I had already concluded that the ‘bad apple’ theory was a comforting self-delusion. Police forces throughout Australia only started to come to grips with systemic corruption when they came to the same realisation. Cultural problems are just that; they are systemic and ingrained, not the work of a few rogues.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Problem

“Where would one find an answer? For the belief—the will to believe—was engrained deeply in the human fiber. Not entirely, either, in the matrix of the present situation, but in the blood and bone of Man clear back to the caves. There was in the soul of Man a certain deadly fascination with all things macabre. The situation as it stood had been grasped willingly, almost eagerly, by men for whom the world had become a rather tame and vapid place with no terror in it beyond the brute force terror of atomic weapons and the dread uncertainty of unstable men in power.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 13 (p. 101)

Men, World, Soul

“We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, today, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered.”

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

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

Life, Birth, Sleep, Freedom

“The tectonic shifts that gave rise to Trumpism have been gathering force over the last six decades. Over that time, the left won the cultural battle and the right won the economic battle, and Trumpism is a reaction against both.”

Clive Hamilton (1953) Australian economsit

Trumpism as Whitelash (November 19, 2016)

Time

“Americans are farcical when it comes to force majeure and money!
Two things that they worship.
You can't expect a democracy from a society like this.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

Money, Democracy

“The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

Sex

“The life space of Lewin, - the environment as seen by the subject, including the field forces or valences between him and objects in the environment, which can account for his immediately subsequent behavior.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969)

Life, Behavior

“When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph…The rulers of mankind…had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/10/affairs-of-portugal in the House of Commons (10 March 1830). 1830s

Men, People, Nature, Effort

“How could we bear, nursed as we have been in a free atmosphere, to be gagged and muzzled; to have spies, eavesdroppers and delators at every corner; to have even private conversations caught up and used against us by the Secret Police and all their agents and creatures; to be arrested and interned without trial; or to be tried by political or Party courts for crimes hitherto unknown to civil law. How could we bear to be treated like schoolboys when we are grown-up men; to be turned out on parade by tens of thousands to march and cheer for this slogan or for that; to see philosophers, teachers and authors bullied and toiled to death in concentration camps; to be forced every hour to conceal the natural workings of the human intellect and the pulsations of the human heart? Why, I say that rather than submit to such oppression, there is no length we would not go to.”

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

Speech at Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, Paris (24 September 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 788
The 1930s

Death, Men, Secret, Law

“By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of "order." The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force.”

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

Credo (1965)

Love, Death, Suicide

“What was time, after all, except a lead-footed march from the precincts of youth into the country of the grave? Time was the force that crumbled granite, devoured memory, and seduced infants into senility—as implacable as a hanging judge and as poetic as a tank.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 177)

Youth, Memory, Time, Country

“Reconciliation and forgiveness are matters of the heart. They cannot be forced on the people.”

Graeme Leung Fijian lawyer

24 May 2005 letter to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase

People, Forgiveness, Heart

“Our young people are helping us lead the way. Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs, and I answered, "Just say no." Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No club, and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country. Well, their participation and their courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable, even if it means making ourselves unpopular.”

Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) actress and first lady of the United States

Just Say No (1986)

Children, People, Way, Courage

“No honest historian can take part with — or against — the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should be merely a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Study, Parting

“We will have nothing to do with Imperialist or capitalist wars. If the time comes, as we hope it will, when the workers of this country own England as they do not own England to-day; if their policy is a policy of international socialism, then it may be that we may have to defend the system and the country against the marauders of some capitalist Power…the majority of the workers would be prepared to defend the system, but so long as they were being asked to defend something with which they profoundly disagreed, something which they believed to lie at the root of the dangers of the world to-day, then it was their duty to say that they would have nothing to do with the armed forces or with war. It was no exaggeration to say that to-day we were far more in danger of a holocaust than we were in 1913…in 1931 Lombard Street determined that it was time to finish the life of the Labour Government. It was finished not by the traditional method of a hostile vote in the Commons, but by means which [I] dared to mention in Nottingham—and caused a considerable uproar in the Press—the Buckingham Palace influence.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech to the Socialist League in Nottingham (6 July 1935), quoted in The Times (8 July 1935), p. 21.

Life, Hostility, War, Lie

“Nuclear weapons began to exert an important influence on military policy immediately following World War II, although their capabilities, limitations, and political implications were only vaguely understood. But it seemed clear they they represented destructiveness at a cheap price. This point was important because of the need to replace the armed forces demobilized so thoroughly and wastefully at the end of World War II in the furor to "bring the boys home." To have rebuilt similar forces in the succeeding years would have been costly both in dollars and in political "face." Neither the Truman administration nor the American people were prepared to foot such a bill, particularly that part of the program which would have been a tacit admission of lack of foresight. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the idea of relying on nuclear weapons and strategic bombing for national defense had great appeal. Such a military program appeared to offer us a way out of fighting dirty, costly wars with Communist masses on the ground. It was a way to meet manpower with mechanical power. Its apparent cheapness gave rise to the slogan, "More bang for a buck."”

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

But this reliance on Massive Retaliation overlooked the fact that atomic bangs could eventually be bought for rubles as well as dollars.
Source: The Uncertain Trumpet (1960), p. 12-13

War, People, World, Way

“While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power — the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”

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

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Hunger, War, Children, People

“Inherent in human beings are possibilities which we now can't even entertain. Before the space launch, space travel to many of us was the stuff of fantasy, of science fiction. We know what it is to explore the limits of what we consider to be a human being, but if we were to transform our understanding of ourselves, if we were to transform what we knew a human being to be, new possibilities of expression would open. We could function in a more creative way. In a more humane way. In the past we were transformed by the thrust of evolution or by accidental forces. This time we should transform ourselves with a conscious, committed degree of self-awareness.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with USA Today, "Mankind Must Find a New Self Awareness", Dan Neuharth and Miles White, December 14, 1982

Way, Travel, Understanding, Science

“Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western European civilization.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

World, Way

“The King of Prussia seems to have made his models of action Charles the first of England and Charles the Tenth of France and Bismarck is an humble Imitator of the Ministers of those Two unfortunate Sovereigns. I hope the King's fate will not be like theirs. The King…is quite wrong in attempting unconstitutionally to force his opinions upon his Parliament. He ought to give way and he will be compelled to give way.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to King Leopold I of Belgium (15 November 1863), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 569.
1860s

Fate, Hope, Way

“In a strange way, Marcion understood the situation better than the more conventional followers of the church, for Lucifer is merely one of the faces of a larger force. Evil is a by-product, a component, of creation.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Who is Lucifer?
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

Way, Evil

“On land you saw how the pride of Captain Pedel was so much humbled that he with his men, who are as foolish as himself, could not even bear the look of my men; and how, on the mere sight of my warriors, they threw down their arms and willingly awaited their well-deserved punishment with outstretched necks. Are these not sufficient proofs of your incompetency and inability to resist my forces?”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Men

“Is this the end of an old adventure, or the beginning of a new; is this the last attack upon a small state or is it to be followed by others; is this in fact a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force?”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (17 March 1939), quoted in The Times (18 March 1939), p. 12. On 15 March Hitler had invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in contravention of the Munich Agreement.
Prime Minister

World

“I suggest that, if India is to evolve along nonviolent lines, it will have to decentralize many things. Centralization cannot be sustained and defended without adequate force... Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society.”

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

Young India (18 January 1942) p. 5
1940s

“Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.... not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man... The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 192 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre'

Understanding, Heart

“The spirit of the Japanese nation is, by its nature, a thing that must be propagated over the seven seas and extended over the five continents. Anything that may hinder its progress must be abolished, even by force.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "Dragon in the Dust" - Page 229 - by Post Wheeler - 2007

Nature, Sea

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, it turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have been forced to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 9 (p. 300) — from the protagonist’s major speech.

Love, Hunger, Pain, Hate

“The Nazis were ‘convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,’ Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proven time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 3, Ch. 1 § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Evil, Time

“What spectator… would not exclaim… that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Hellenes were holding out beyond their ability? And if the ones (i. e., the enemy) gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the others (i. e., the Greeks) prevail, it will be Virtue and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the only support that Alexander had with him at this time, since Fortune had put a barrier between him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp. Finally, the Macedonians routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads.”

Plutarch book Moralia

On the Fortune of Alexander, II, 344 e-f, Loeb
Moralia, Others

Friendship, Support, Time, Victory

“It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember another truth, to wit, that the correction of political and social evil may come in the form of irremediable catastrophe, and that the innocent, who are the greater number, would then suffer most. It is still less consoling to remember the universal human experience that when evil is redressed by the only partly conscious force of reaction, it is not succeeded by a corresponding good, but by some other new and unexpected evil.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: The Cruise of the 'Nona (1925), pp. 248–9

Truth, Suffering, Universe, Evil

“If the trend continues, Fiji will be left with a large pool of poorly educated, unskilled work force with disastrous consequences on our social and economic infrastructure and levels of investment.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Comments on Fiji's high emigration rate (19 June 2005)

Education

“By what name shall we call this animating principle of the universe, this source of all phenomana? Some call it Force or Energy or Mind, others call it God. Some call this idea a working hypothesis, others call it Faith.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 15

God, Faith, Idea, Universe

“Here's a movie that stretches out every moment for more than it's worth, until even the moments of inspiration seem forced. Since the basic idea of the movie is a good one and there are talented people in the cast, what we have here is a film shot down by its own forced and mannered style.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raising-arizona-1987 of Raising Arizona (20 March 1987) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

People, Idea

“Any thief or criminal or robber who enters another country in order to steal should expect to be exposed to murder at any time. For the American forces to expect anything from me personally reflects a very narrow perception. Thousands of millions of Muslims are angry. The Americans should expect reactions from the Muslim world that are proportionate to the injustice they inflict.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'What can the U.S. expect from you now?'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

World, Time, Personality, Country

“How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Letter (4 December 1801), printed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (2002)

“These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, Faith, Hope, Feeling

“Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; he had acute sensibility to the higher forces. Fire taught him secrets that no other animal could learn; running water probably taught him even more, especially in his first lessons of mechanics; the animals helped to educate him, trusting themselves into his hands merely for the sake of their food, and carrying his burdens or supplying his clothing; the grasses and grains were academies of study.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Secret, Education, Food, Study

“I am asking the U. S. A and Great Britain if, just for once, they will kindly consider the problem of Cambodia from the viewpoint of the Khmers instead of that of the French… My people will tell you: 'We don't know what communist slavery means. But the slavery imposed by the French we know well, for we are now living under it. If we fight alongside the French against the Viet Minh and the Issaraks, we are simply strengthening the chains of that slavery…' [The problem is that] in Indochina, you are either a communist or a lackey of the French: there is no middle course. We are not allowed to hope for an independence like that of India or Pakistan within the British Commonwealth… The question is: Does French military power on its own have any chance of defeating communism in Indochina? To fight without having the autochtonous population on one's side makes no sense… What is at stake in this struggle, and what will determine its outcome, is the [native] population. The Viet Minh have understood that from the start. If we [who oppose communism] wish to have the population with us, we must… make [our country's] independence… real and unquestionable, so that [no one] will listen any more to the Viet Minh propaganda about 'liberation'… This is the whole problem. It is a political matter. It has nothing to do with the science of war… If France does not boldly face up to [this]… then one day, sooner or later, it will be forced to abdicate from Indochina.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Secret memorandum drafted for the American and British legations (1953), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, pages 92-93.
Speeches

War, People, Hope, Communication

“Everywhere, when societies originate, we see the strongest, most warlike races seizing the exclusive government of the society. Everywhere we see these races seizing a monopoly on security within certain more or less extensive boundaries, depending on their number and strength.And, this monopoly being, by its very nature, extraordinarily profitable, everywhere we see the races invested with the monopoly on security devoting themselves to bitter struggles, in order to add to the extent of their market, the number of their forced consumers, and hence the amount of their gains.War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.Another inevitable consequence has been that this monopoly has engendered all other monopolies.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 34-35

Nature, Dependency

“When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see there, I am constrained to say, "There is no God." The mind staggers in its attempt to grasp the idea of a being that could do that. It is futile to attempt it. It is not the works of some God that I see there. I am face to face with a power that baffles speech. I see no lineaments of personality, no human traits, but an energy upon whose currents solar systems are but bubbles. In the presence of it man and the race of man are less than motes in the air. I doubt if any mind can expand its conception of God sufficiently to meet the astounding disclosures of modern science. It is easier to say there is no God. The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. XII: God and Nature

God, Way, Idea, Nature

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Life, Hostility, Happiness, World

“All the energy that you spend, trying to hurt somebody else, that energy will turn around and slap you in the face. The same thing is true, Love, what I know is that the energy that put out everyday with the best of intentions that it would reach you where you really live in heart of yourself has come back to me from all of you in full force. So that what we've learnt on this show; You are responsible for your life and when you get that, everything changes, my friends. So don't wait for somebody else to fix you, to save you or complete you…”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

"Oprah Winfrey Show Finale" in CBS (25 May 2011)

Love, Life, Change, Waiting

“Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 8.

Affliction

“I have been expecting the bull of the benefice of Medole which your Excellency gave me for my son Pomponio last year, and seeing that the matter is delayed beyond measure, and what is worse, that I have not received the income of the benefice — I find myself in a state of great discontent. It would be greatly to my dishonour and infamy, if my boy should be forced to change the priest's dress, which he wears with so much pleasure, after all Venice has been made acquainted with the gift made to him of this benefice by your Excellency.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter of Titian to the Marquess Gonzaga of Mantua, from Venice, 12 July, 1531; published by Pungileoni in the 'Giornale Arcadico' in 1831 and reprinted in Cadorin, 'Dello Amore', p. 37; transl. J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle
The gift made it possible that his son Pomponio could start a career in the catholic church. A fortnight later Titian's note has become humble and thankful, for the Duke has written him, to say that the benefice and its income are his
1510-1540

Pleasure, Boy, Change

“Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Response to the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941)

God, Hostility, People, Confidence

“My party would not have allowed the Taleban to become such a huge force that they would need to sign a peace treaty.”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

Peace

“For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land. Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of its freedom. How many times—in my lifetime and in yours—have the American people gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and tell them of danger? Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that the security and the freedom of this nation required. And they do again tonight in Vietnam. Not too many years ago Vietnam was a peaceful, if troubled, land. In the North was an independent Communist government. In the South a people struggled to build a nation, with the friendly help of the United States. There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was dim. Then, little more than six years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest. And from that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from North to South in a swelling stream that is swallowing the remnants of revolution in aggression. As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed. And we will stay until aggression has stopped.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Love, Children, People, Peace

“His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Love, Men, God

“Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Les discours sont des éléments ou des blocs tactiques dans le champ des rapports de force; il peut y en avoir de différents et même de contradictoires à l'intérieur d'une même stratégie; ils peuvent au contraire circuler sans changer de forme entre des stratégies opposées.
Vol I, pp. 101-102
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

Change

“Among those who were sent to receive political indoctrination in June 1919 was a 30-year-old corporal who had been in the Bavarian army since the beginning of the war and had stayed in it through all the vicissitudes of Social Democracy, anarchy and Communism, taking part in demonstrations, wearing a red armband along with the rest of his comrades, and disappearing from the scene with most of them when they had been ordered to defend Munich against the invading forces in the proceeding weeks. His name was Adolf Hitler.”

Richard J. Evans (1947) British historian

Source: The Coming of the Third Reich (2003), p. 161

War, Democracy, Communication, Parting

“The fact is nearly everyone forces God to fit into his own perception. Even Christians serve a God they perceive rather than the God who truly is. They limit Him according to those special needs of their own psyche. It's actually hard not to do that, but every time we do, it has consequences. Seeing God for who He truly is takes effort and always has one inevitable result that many people cannot accept: our understanding will always fall short.”

Sean Sellers (1969–1999) American murderer

Open Letter To Satanists

God, People, Understanding, Effort

“The Mughal rulers of the Punjab were evidently concerned with the growth of the Panth, and in 1605 the Emperor Jahangir made an entry in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Jahāṅgīrī, concerning Guru Arjan's support for his rebellious son Khusrau Mirza. Too many people, he wrote, were being persuaded by his teachings, and if the Guru would not become a Muslim the Panth had to be extinguished. Jahangir believed that Guru Arjan was a Hindu who pretended to be a saint, and that he had been thinking of forcing Guru Arjan to convert to Islam or his false trade should be eliminated, for a long time. Mughal authorities seem plainly to have been responsible for Arjan's death in custody in Lahore, and this may be accepted as an established fact. Whether death was by execution, the result of torture, or drowning in the Ravi River remains unresolved. For Sikhs, Arjan is the first martyr Guru.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

W.H. McLeod (2009). The A to Z of Sikhism. Scarecrow Press. p. 20 (Arjan's Death). ISBN 9780810863446.

Death, People, Support, Thinking

“There is a greater and thicker plot around this issue which has undermined my confidence in this relationship. The marriage has been hijacked and there is an apparent active political hand that is now driving the processes. State security agents have weighed in to force and direct proceedings, which has resulted in everything regarding this relationship now taking place on camera. The intention is clear: to inflict maximum damage on my person and character for political gain.”

Morgan Tsvangirai (1952–2018) former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe

On his divorce http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068594/Zimbabwe-prime-minister-Morgan-Tsvangirai-divorces-wife-12-DAYS.html

Marriage, Confidence, Personality

“Rather than protecting music as a sublimely meaningless activity that has managed to escape social signification, I insist on treating it as a medium that participates in social formation by influencing the ways we perceive our feelings, our bodies, our desires, our very subjectivities - even if it does so surreptitiously, without most of us knowning how. It is too important a cultural force to be shrouded by mystified notions of Romantic transcendence.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

"Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music", Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (1994), ISBN 0415907527

Music, Way, Feeling

“All living things sustain each other. All living things depend upon death not as an end, an absolute completion, but as a beginning of a new rhythm, a way of fulfillment in passing on the restless force of life.”

Edmund Cooper book Seed of Light

Seed of Light (1959)

Life, Death, Way, Dependency

“Fortunately, there is a strategy that does double duty: it both helps you keep control of your own insights, and makes those insights accessible to others. The strategy is: always try to express your ideas in the simplest possible model. The act of stripping down to this minimalist model will force you to get to the essence of what you are trying to say (and will also make obvious to you those situations in which you actually have nothing to say). And this minimalist model will then be easy to explain to other economists as well.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

How I Work (1993)

Idea, Help

“It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.”

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

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

War, People, Truth, World

“Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the process that establishes those patterns. Without this creative self-organizing force, the universe would be devoid of biological life, the birth of stars and galaxies—everything we have come to know.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

"Chaos Gets a Bad Rap: Importance of Chaology to Liberty", Strike-The-Root (Feb. 18, 2015) http://www.strike-the-root.com/chaos-gets-bad-rap-importance-of-chaology-to-liberty

Life, Star, Birth, Universe

“Civil service. The merit system has long been recognized as the correct basis for employment in our, civil service. I believe that first second, and third class postmasters, and without covering in the present membership tile field force of prohibition enforcement, should be brought within the classified service by statute law. Otherwise the Executive order of one administration is changed by the Executive order of another administration, and little real progress is made. Whatever its defects, the merit system is certainly to be preferred to the spoils system.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Law, Change

“I won't retire. When you're an actor, you're forced to retire every few months. John Gielgud was 96 when he died, and he was working. It's good to work, whatever it is that keeps you interested. I would like to do that, I would like to keep going. I don't have kids, and I don't have hobbies. I don't particularly like to travel. If you're an actor, you have to travel anyway.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

Dixie Reid (October 24, 2004) "'Bend' it like Walken - Actor has more to say about food and hair than acting", The Sacramento Bee, p. TK31.

Travel

“Evan after I had replaced my civil-libertarian posture with the rigors of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese style, Clark’s [Foreman] advice about the necessity of maintaining individual freedoms stuck in my mind and often forced me into open conflict with Progressive Labor. In many ways it was the need for independence, which Clark helped to instill in me, that led to my eventual break with Communism.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 29

Way, Communication, Freedom, Help

“[A]s I regularly emphasize when discussing Islam, no one is suffering under its doctrine more than Muslims themselves: Muslim jihadists primarily kill other Muslims. And the laws against apostasy, blasphemy, idolatry, and other forms of peaceful expression diminish the freedoms of Muslims far more than those of non-Muslims living in the West. Liberals like [Glenn] Greenwald, who are so eager to swing the flail of Islamophobia, display a sickening insensitivity to the plight of women, homosexuals, and freethinkers throughout the Muslim world. At this moment, millions of women and girls have been abandoned to illiteracy, compulsory marriage, and lives of slavery and abuse under the guise of “multiculturalism” and “religious sensitivity.” And the most liberal Muslim minds are forced into hiding. The best way to address this problem is by no means obvious. But lying about its cause, and defaming those who speak honestly in defense of a global civil society, seems a very unlikely path to a solution.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Reponse to controverys https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/response-to-controversy (June 21, 2014) 2010s

Women, Marriage, World, Peace

“If a firearm is used by a criminal or psychopath with evil intentions, then it is a tool for evil. But if it is used for good (to defend life and property), then it is a tool for good. A firearm by itself has no sentience, no volition, no moral force, and no politics. The proper term for this is an adiaphorous object--something that is neither good nor evil. A firearm is simply a cleverly-designed construction of metal, wood, and plastic in the form of a precision tool.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 150

Life, Evil

“I would not seek to force people to live up to my ideals but rather love them into doing the thing that is right.”

George Albert Smith (duchowny mormoński) (1870–1951) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

"President George Albert Smith's Creed," Improvement Era, Apr. 1950, 262 (via Teachings of Presidents of the Church: George Albert Smith, Chapter 14: How to Share the Gospel Effectively).

Love, People

“The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

Nature

“People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do — after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Paris Review interview (1958)

People, World, Strong, Learning

“Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

"Why We Are Anti-Semites," August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager. https://carolynyeager.net/why-we-are-antisemites-text-adolf-hitlers-1920-speech-hofbr%C3%A4uhaus 1920s

Health, Justice, Idea, Knowledge

“Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Treasury of Positive Answers

“I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity — not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour — but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Life of Robert Owen (1857) his autobiography, as quoted by Jim Herrick, in "Bradlaugh and Secularism: 'The Province of the Real'" (1990) http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/s1990c33.htm.

Religion, Error, Feeling, Universe

“Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering.
One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

BuzzFlash interview (2004)

People, World, Way, Democracy

“I would not feel a lot of trust or hope in God if He was simply in touch with me without any impetus, power, or force to accomplish things. You may not always know the end game, but He is working for you.”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

God, Hope, Feeling, Game

“Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry... I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

Imagination, Hell, Business, Universe

“The Internet is powerful because it allows people to organise around issues at unprecedented speed, broadcast their thoughts and challenge those in charge. A wave of such groups banded together in early 2011 to demand the removal of authoritarian leaders in the Middle East as one country after another rose up with varying degrees of success. But the Internet doesn't cause revolution. It is a communications network. What people choose to do with technology - that is where we can make moral judgements. Some people will use it for ill, others for good. Security forces tend to focus on the ills, while the majority use it for good. In the name of protecting us from 'bad things on the Internet' there are increasing moves to suppress communications networks in both repressive and democratic countries. Demands to shut down, censor, filter or in other ways oversee and control the way people communicate are on the rise.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page xi.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

People, Way, Communication, Success

“Tho' Doubt's beleaguering forces hem us in,
Yet Truth upon the Serpent's head shall trample.
The cause of Love shall win”

Henrik Ibsen Love's Comedy

Falk, Act III
Love's Comedy (1862)

Love, Truth

“The chief function of the disciplinary power is to 'train', rather than to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Part Three, The Means of Correct Training
Discipline and Punish (1977)

Way, Training

“Obama's now conducting the world's greatest international terrorist campaign – the drones and special forces campaign. It's also a terror-generating campaign. The common understanding at the highest level [is] that these actions generate potential terrorists. I'll quote General Stanley McChrystal, Petraeus' predecessor. He says that "for every innocent person you kill", and there are plenty of them, "you create ten new enemies."”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2010s, 2013, Speech at DW Global Media Forum

World, Quotes, Understanding, Personality

“To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe … not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it … except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life … if you're into it.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in a 1976 interview, published in Desert Plants by Walter Zimmermann.

Life, Music, Feeling, Idea

“In today's business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is change. Somehow there are organizations that effectively manage change, continuously adapting their bureaucracies, strategies, systems, products, and cultures to survive the shocks and prosper from the forces that decimate their competition. They move from strength to strength, adjusting to crises that bedevil others in their industry. They are masters of Renewal. No organization can maintain excellence without renewing. No organization can strive for excellence, or even attempt to improve, without the ability to renew.”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Source: The Renewal Factor, 1987, p. xv

Business, Change

“Our recommitment to Afghanistan must include increasing NATO forces, suspending the debilitating restrictions on when and how those forces can fight, expanding the training and equipping of the Afghan National Army through a long-term partnership with NATO to make it more professional and multiethnic, and deploying significantly more foreign police trainers.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In Foreign Affairs Magazine http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86602/john-mccain/an-enduring-peace-built-on-freedom.html?mode=print on the idea of sending NATO troops to Afghanistan instead of US forces, November 2007 2000s, 2007

Fight, Training, Partnership