Quotes about force
page 40

“He was burning with a sense of outrage. He had been tricked and made a fool of; he had been used and flung aside. And now there was nothing he could do — he was utterly helpless. What affected him most was his sense of the overwhelming magnitude of the powers which had made him their puppet; of the utter futility of the efforts that he or any other man could make against them. They were like elemental, cosmic forces; they held all the world in their grip, and a common man was as much at their mercy as a bit of chaff in a tempest.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Metropolis (1908)

World, Fools, Sense, Effort

“The term "ideographic" has been used not only by those who espouse its basic meaning but also by others who do not necessarily accept the concept but use the term out of mere force of habit as an established popular designation for Chinese characters. I find, to my chagrin, that in my previous publications I have been guilty of precisely this concession to popular usage without being aware of the damage it can cause. As a repentant sinner I pledge to swear off this hallucinogen. I hope others will join in consigning the term to the Museum of Mythological Memorabilia along with unicorn horns and phoenix feathers.”

John DeFrancis book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 148) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)

Hope

“An idea, a relationship, can go extinct, just like an animal or a plant. The idea in this case is 'nature,' the separate and wild province, the world apart from man to which he adapted, under whose rules he was born and died. In the past, we spoiled and polluted parts of that nature, inflicted environmental 'damage.' But that was like stabbing a man with toothpicks: though it hurt, annoyed, degraded, it did not touch vital organs, block the path of lymph or blood. We never thought that we had wrecked nature. Deep down, we never really thought we could: it was too big and too old; its forces—the wind, the rain, the sun—were too strong, too elemental. But, quite by accident, it turned out that the carbon dioxide and other gases we were producing in our pursuit of a better life… could alter the power of the sun, could increase its heat. And that increase could change the patterns of moisture and dryness, breed storms in new places, breed deserts… We have produced the carbon dioxide—we are ending nature.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature (1989), p. 41

Life, World, Idea, Nature

“The driving forces of the universe, the framework upon which it is built up in all its parts, belong to another phase of manifestation than our physical plane, having other dimensions than the three to which we are habituated, and perceived by other modes of consciousness than those to which we are accustomed.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense

Universe, Parting

“The APT and CAD Projects had one Air Force sponsorship, but it was actually a combination of about five or six projects, all going in parallel on both hardware and software matters, and I couldn't keep track of things, so I would take Polaroid pictures of the blackboard and then say what we had talked about into my dictating machine and my secretary would type it up.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Retrospectives : The Early Years in Computer Graphics at at MIT, Lincoln Lab and Harvard (1989), p. 26.

“Now what are we looking at right here? What’s bang in the middle? Some people think that’s mathematics there. Fine. But if maths is the study that best allows you to think your way to the centre, what’re the forces you’re investigating? Maths is totally abstract, at one level, square roots of minus one and the like, but the world is nothing if not rigorously mathematical. So this is a way of looking at the world which unifies all the forces: mental, social, physical.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), pp. 145-146

People, World, Way, Mathematics

“Once the support of the Nehruvian historians to such utter falsifications of history is tackled and exposed, they have no chance of saving their reputations or even the hold of their theories over the public arena. They have gone too far in their distortions of history, so they are very vulnerable. If they have held out in the role of oft-quoted "eminent historians" for so long, it is only due to the slackness and timidity of the Hindu intellectuals. Only because of a configuration of forces peculiar to India have the anti-Hindu historians been able to completely dominate the scene. In most free countries, they would have been exposed long ago.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Quotes, History, Support, Chance

“His conflict with the Catholic Church arose because deep in his heart Galileo was a believer. There was for him no path of compromise, no way to have separate secular and theological cosmologies. If the Copernican system was true as he believed, what else could Galileo do but fight with every weapon he had in his arsenal… to make his Church accept a new system of the universe. …In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his Copernicanism, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant on the birth of modern science.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

The Birth of a New Physics (1959)

Way, Birth, Sense, Universe

“So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility.”

Jean Genet The Balcony

The Balcony (1956)

Law

“Anarchism is the attempt to eradicate domination. This includes not only such obvious forms as the nation-state, with its routine use of violence and the force of law, and the corporation, with its institutionalized irresponsibility, but also such internalized forms as patriarchy, racism, homophobia. Also it is the attempt to expose the ways our philosophy, religion, economics, and other ideological constructions perform their primary function, which is to rationalize or naturalize — make seem natural — the domination that pervades our way of life: the destruction of the natural world or of indigenous peoples, for example, comes not from the result of decisions actively made and actions pursued, but instead, so we convince ourselves, as a manifestation of Darwinian selection, or God's will, or economic exigency. Beyond that, Anarchism is the attempt to look even into those parts of our everyday lives we accept as givens, as part of the universe, to see how they, too, dominate us or facilitate our domination over others… Most fundamentally, I would see Anarchism as a synonym for anti-authoritarianism.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (2002)

Life, God, People, World

“My poems please the brave:
My poems, short and sincere,
Have the force of steel
Which forges swords.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Source: Simple Verses (1891), V

Sincerity

“It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Death, Men, War, People

“Honestly, ever since I found this way of eating I have endless amounts of energy. I can go all day, and after it all I never find myself getting tired. No matter what kind of shows I have done, or workouts I do on top of it, I still have to force myself to sleep at night. … Right from the first time that I started to really eat vegan I could feel how much it was affecting me. John Salley … always told me how the players who ate that way outperformed the others. I started to see that results for myself as well.”

Travis Barker (1975) American drummer and music producer

"Blink 182's Travis Barker: Why I'm Vegan" https://web.archive.org/web/20170321220957/https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/articles/blink-182s-travis-barker-why-im-vegan-w473107, interview with Men's Journal (March 2017).

Way, Feeling, Sleep, Time

“Each [ideology], in the oppressive air of conformity which ideologies create, will force public figures to conform or be ruined on the scaffold of ridicule. In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

“The natural cadence of our emotions are the driving force behind our poetic expressions.”

F. S. Flint (1885–1960) English Imagist poet

Otherworld Cadences (1920)

Nature

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Men, Food, Hell

“Taxes cannot be compared to dues paid to a voluntary organization for such services as one expects from membership, because the choice of withdrawal does not exist. In refusing to trade one may deny oneself a profit, but the only alternative to paying taxes is jail. The suggestion of equity in taxation is spurious. If we get anything for the taxes we pay it is not because we want it; it is forced on us.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 276

“The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Freedom Under Siege http://www.dailypaul.com/taxonomy/term/21 (1987). 1980s

“You know my eyes are not very strong. So every day to make them stronger I force myself to look at the sun. I find it very hard. But do you know what I find harder? That is to look into the blue of your eyes.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Early in 1976, speaking to Margaret Trudeau, according to page 317 of Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 https://books.google.ca/books?id=ACC_G_kiR4cC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317 by John English.

Strong, Sun

“The government, with its bayonets, will learn in a single Winter how powerless are armed forces against the will of a united determined, and self-reliant nation.”

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) Irish politician

"No Rent" Manifesto (1881)

Learning, Winter

““Paid off? Do you mean bribery?”
“That is, umm, not an entirely pleasant word for it.” Dreschler’s doughy face took on a pained expression. “It is more in the nature of an advance payment to ensure the labor force will be satisfied with the negotiated wage schedules.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 15, “The Abortion” (p. 265)

Pain, Nature

“We consider the capacity of the Syrian defensive forces as our own and believe that expansion of defensive ties would … help deal with threats of the enemies.”

Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar (1956) Iranian politician

Iranians find tenous refuge in Syria http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0508/p07s02-wome.html?page=2 May 8, 2007

Help

“It is not the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely ‘belief’. As we have pointed out, Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Ma'alim fi'l-Tariq (Signposts on the Road, or Milestones) (1964), Ch. 4, p. 70.

Men, People, Freedom

“For gay men this force of history has been made to come clean; it’s been stripped of its natural look. The very rapidity of change has laid bare the clanking machinery of history. To have been oppressed in the 1950s, freed in the 1960s, exalted in the 1970s and wiped out in the 1980s is a quick itinerary for a whole culture to follow. For we are witnessing not just the death of individuals but a menace to an entire culture. All the more reason to bear witness to the cultural moment.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

Esthetics and Loss, Artforum (1987), printed in in The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Literature and Sexuality 1969-1993, (Picador, London, 1995)
Articles and Interviews

Death, Men, History, Nature

“Why did the [Roman] Empire come into existence at all, and why, having come into existence, did it perish?… Surely the character of the Roman played as great a part in the rise of the Empire as his character played in the fall?… to me the outstanding and peculiar strength of the Roman character lies in the words pietas and gravitas. These were the foundations of a patriotism which alone could carry the burden of Empire, a patriotism innate, a motive force of incalculable power, yet something at its best so holy that it was never paraded, sought no reward, was taken for granted, and had no single word to express it.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 103-104.
1926

Motivation, Parting

“I was deeply moved by the incomparable achievements of the German Wehrmacht, leading to such prodigious successes. I followed the development of operations in minute detail with the aid of maps. Under brilliant leadership all sections of the armed forces displayed the greatest courage to achieve deeds that were quite stunning. The ignominy of November 1918 in the forest of Compiègne has been wiped out and the Diktat of Versailles torn up!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to Kurt Jagow (5 July 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1238
1940s

Courage, Success

“Here, then, appeared in its fullest force, the practical difficulty in education which a mere student could never overcome; a difficulty not in theory, or knowledge, or even want of experience, but in the sheer chaos of human nature.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, Nature, Knowledge, Appearance

“When we founded Reclaiming two decades ago, our intention was to bring together the spiritual and the political. Or more accurately, some of us for whom the spiritual and the political were inseparable wanted to create a practice and community that reflected this integration.
Now, with the Bush forces pushing into an aggressive war, with horrific environmental and social problems left unaddressed, the need for activism is stronger than ever. The stakes have never been higher, and the sense of urgency is palpable.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)

War, Communication, Problem, Sense

“Let us look for a moment at the erroneous interpretations given to the Gospel story. The symbolism of that Gospel story — an ancient story-presentation often presented down the ages, prior to the coming of the Christ in Palestine — has been twisted and distorted by theologians until the crystalline purity of the early teaching and the unique simplicity of the Christ have disappeared in a travesty of errors and in a mummery of ritual, money and human ambitions. Christ is pictured today as having been born in an unnatural manner, as having taught and preached for three years and then as having been crucified and eventually resurrected, leaving humanity in order to "sit on the right hand of God," in austere and distant pomp. Likewise, all the other approaches to God by any other people, at any time and in any country, are regarded by the orthodox Christian as wrong approaches […] Every possible effort has been made to force orthodox Christianity on those who accept the inspiration and the teachings of the Buddha or of others who have been responsible for preserving the divine continuity of revelation. The emphasis has been, as we all well know, upon the "blood sacrifice of the Christ" upon the Cross and upon a salvation dependent upon the recognition and acceptance of that sacrifice. The vicarious at-one-ment has been substituted for the reliance which Christ Himself enjoined us to place upon our own divinity; the Church of Christ has made itself famous and futile (as the world war proved) for its narrow creed, its wrong emphases, its clerical pomp, its spurious authority, its material riches and its presentation of a dead Christ. His resurrection is accepted, but the major appeal of the churches has been upon His death.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter IV: The Work of the Christ Today and in the Future, p. 64

Death, Money, God, War

“I do believe we are going to have a major war, with Japan and Germany, and that the war is going to start by a very serious surprise attack and defeat of U. S. armed forces, and that there is going to be a major revulsion on the part of the political power in Washington against all those in command at sea, and they are going to be thrown out, though it won't be their fault necessarily. And I wish to be in a position of sufficient prominence so that I will then be considered as one to be sent to sea, because that appears to be the route.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

On his expectations of war, and that he would someday become the Chief of Naval Operations, in a conversation during the mid 1930s with his son, Chester W. Nimitz, Jr.; as quoted in Nimitz (1976) by E. B. Potter. ISBN 0870214926

War, Appearance, Parting, Sea

“A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Tony Blair's speech in full http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/460009.stm, BBC News online Speech to the Labour Party conference, 28 September 1999. 1990s

People

“The last few decades have witnessed a growing integration of the world system of production on the basis of a new relationship between less developed and highly industrialized countries. The effect is a geographical dispersion of the various production stages in the manufacturing process as the large corporations of industrialized "First World" countries are attracted by low labor costs, taxes, and relaxed production restrictions available in developing countries.
This collection of papers focuses on inequalities among different sectors of the labor force, particularly those related to gender, and how these are affected by the changing international division of labor.”

June Nash (1927–2019) American anthropologist

Book summary
Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor, 1983

World, Change, Country

“apartheid–to which Afrikaners clung for decades as their only hope and salvation from Third World domination–was in fact an impracticable and unworkable system which led directly to the Afrikaners’ demise as a political force in that country.”

Arthur Kemp (1962) British writer

The Lie of Apartheid

World, Hope, Country

“We have been attempting to relieve ourselves and the other nations from the old theory of competitive armaments. In spite of all the arguments in favor of great military forces, no nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or to insure its victory in time of war. No nation ever will. Peace and security are more likely to result from fair and honorable dealings, and mutual agreements for a limitation of armaments among nations, than by any attempt at competition in squadrons and battalions. No doubt this country could, if it wished to spend more money, make a better military force, but that is only part of the problem which confronts our Government. The real question is whether spending more money to make a better military force would really make a better country. I would be the last to disparage the military art. It is an honorable and patriotic calling of the highest rank. But I can see no merit in any unnecessary expenditure of money to hire men to build fleets and carry muskets when international relations and agreements permit the turning of such resources into the making of good roads, the building of better homes, the promotion of education, and all the other arts of peace which minister to the advancement of human welfare. Happily, the position of our country is such among the other nations of the world that we have been and shall be warranted in proceeding in this direction.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Men, Money, War, World

“Blake and Coleridge and Wilberforce were… contemporaries of Arkwright and James Watt. Against this, those who hold the illusion that pre-industrial England was more sensitive and cultured, point to the misery of the manufacturing age. …[T]errible evils …are …far older than 1800 and the machines. But in the factory these evils became naked and public; and the driving force for reform came from the men of the mill, from Robert Owen and the elder Peel.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Men, Age, Evil

“Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3

“Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

in Samuel Levenson, James Connolly (Martin, Brian and O'Keeffe, London, 1973), p. 56.

World, Democracy, Freedom

“This book [Zen in the Art of Archery], by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach oneself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Only Geometricians May Enter: Interview with Yves Bourde (1974), p. 65

Books, Art, Sense, Freedom

“Notwithstanding this politico-cultural reality, early Indian nationalists sought to inculcate a spirit of inclusivity and accommodation into the emergent socio-political discourse. As the freedom movement developed however, the Muslim League articulated an ideology committed wholly to its Islamic fountainhead and stressed the need to maintain the community’s political dominance in the country. The League’s refusal or failure to come to terms with the forces of modernization ushered in by the British further pushed it on a trajectory away from the national mainstream.”

Meenakshi Jain Indian historian

"Power Equations in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century India: the Empirical Backdrop to Nationalism", International Forum for India's Heritage, 2003.

Communication, Failure, Reality, Freedom

“[Talking about Euromaidan and referring to his opponents, the Ukrainian armed forces]: A year ago, many of you sincerely believed in the destruction of the oligarchic power and in the return of its dignity to the people. As a result, other thieves came to the place of some thieves - more bloodthirsty.”

Aleksey Mozgovoy (1975–2015) pro-Russian rebel and warlord in Eastern Ukraine

In Russian: Год назад, многие из вас искренне верили в разрушение олигархической власти и в возвращение народу его достоинства. В итоге, в место одних воров пришли другие – более кровожадные.

People, Sincerity

“ Language performs an essentially social function; it helps us to get along together, to communicate and achieve a great measure of concerted action. Words are signs which have significance by convention, and those people who do not adopt the conventions simply fail to communicate. They do not "get along" and a social force arises which encourages them to achieve the correct associations. ”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics, p.69

People, Communication, Help

“The most cursory look at cold-reading and suggestion tells us that Tarot cards are not evil; psychics do not ‘usher in’ the Devil or his minions; and even the creepy old Ouija board can be shown to operate via quite everyday, natural, physical forces.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Nature, Evil, Reading

“Motion and force are our primary objects of experience and consciousness; and in terms of them all other less familiar occurrences may conceivably be studied and grasped.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15, p. 15 The Ether of Space (1909)

Study

“Eastern Prussia was a battlefield during World War I years. And right from here, on September 1, 1939, began the spark of fire for the coming of the second world war. And in 1941, Eastern Prussia invaded Soviet soil with a powerful military onslaught, unleashing a grip of heavy burden, tragedy, and torture into the Soviet pre-Baltic and also the inhabitants of Leningrad, Pskov, and the Novgorod regions. Right from the very first days of the second world war, Eastern Prussia was completely transformed into a diabolic system of concentration camp strongholds for captured military people, and became a cruel prison for the young and females, who were brought from many European countries. In the first place, from the Soviet Union. And, aha! Now, after the winter of 1945, Soviet forces captured the descendants of these royal hounds in their very own doghouse!”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

The Germans are being referred to as dogs in the end of this famous quote. Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987

War, People, World, Winter

“Great news about lots of email is how consistently it forces you to get clear what's really meaningful to your work/life.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

23 March 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/10943941311 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Life

“No British minister was forced to resign over Iraq or has been held properly accountable for it, despite the disastrous decision to go to war made collectively by the Cabinet on 17 March 2003. … Far from paying any price, the British system has rewarded ministers for their fateful decision on Iraq.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

Fate, War, Decision

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thing—and if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine—is: I'm sorry.
I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.
But I want to say something else, too. Over the last few months, all of us—including and especially men who respect women—have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.
For instance, that picture [when Franken appears to grope the breasts of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, while simultaneously smiling towards the photographer] I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It's completely inappropriate. It's obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

November 2017 statement https://www.wdio.com/news/al-franken-statement-leeann-tweeden/4672510/ in response to allegations of sexual harassment and groping made by Leeann Tweeden against Franken.

Women, Men, People, Fear

“The secret of success lies in investing into education, as the wealthy countries do. This means not in technology and machines first. That would come later, with educated and qualified individuals. Considering that we are lagging behind reforms, the only way to make up for such gap is to have a non-linear development by making leaps, all of which would be have an education as a base. Education, training, knowledge, are the major driving forces of progress.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

From Zoran Djindjic's speech at press conference From vision to defined program, 15.01.2002.

Secret, Education, Way, Knowledge

“Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common goal. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism… You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

Source: 2000s, 2008, Liberal Fascism (2008), p. 63

Life, People, Health, Religion

“Let me repeat that the absurd thing about the anti-Islam neo-conservatives is that they are invariably supporters of unrestricted migration, the means by which Islam has quite peacefully established itself as a permanent, growing major social, religious and political force in our country. If Sharia law comes to Britain, as Mr Jacubs fears, it will not be because of violent actions such as the Woolwich outrage, which I think we can safely assume were condemned and disowned by most British Muslims. It will be as the result of the entirely peaceful establishment of a sizeable Muslim population in this country.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2013-12-28
Another attempt at reasoning with Mr Jacubs and the neo-cons
Mail on Sunday
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/12/another-attempt-at-reasoning-with-mr-jacubs-and-the-neo-cons.html
On neo-conservatism

Fear, Peace, Law, Support

“I believe that the Durbar, more than any event in modern history, showed to the Indian people the path which, under the guidance of Providence, they are treading, taught the Indian Empire its unity, and impressed the world with its moral as well as material force. It will not be forgotten. The sound of the trumpets has already died away; the captains and the kings have departed; but the effect produced by this overwhelmingly display of unity and patriotism is still alive and will not perish. Everywhere it is known that upon the throne of the East is seated a power that has made of the sentiments, the aspirations, and the interests of 300 millions of Asiatics a living thing, and the units in that great aggregation have learned that in their incorporation lies their strength. As a disinterested spectator of the Durbar remarked, Not until to-day did I realise that the destinies of the East still lie, as they always have done, in the hollow of India’s hand. I think, too, that the Durbar taught the lesson not only of power but of duty. There was not an officer of Government there present, there was not a Ruling Prince nor a thoughtful spectator, who must not at one moment or other have felt that participation in so great a conception carried with it responsibility as well as pride, and that he owed something in return for whatever of dignity or security or opportunity the Empire had given him.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Budget Speech (25 March 1903), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 308-309.

People, Lie, World, History

“Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Money, Truth, Light, Strong

“We have never yet had upon the earth a society representing on any large scale, the principles of the teaching of Jesus. We have had many societies, whose main reliance was on military force; many societies resting upon slavery or serfdom; many societies founded on feudal distinctions of ruling and serving classes; many societies whose regulative principle was competition, or a struggle for advantage and mastery; but we have never yet seen a society which rested upon the law of brotherhood and the principle of service.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: The Nation and the Kingdom (1909), p. 7

Law

“We know that men cannot be compelled to be good. They can only be prevented from being bad—a negative condition. We know from bitter experience that men cannot be forced into doing the wise thing, for such a forcement is foolishness.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Source: Nature of Man and His Government (1959), p. 81

Men

“In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working with Russia and China and India, in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Peace, Way, Freedom

“Yet the telescope held it rigidly standing on its head; the microscope revealed a universe that defied the senses; gunpowder killed whole races that lagged behind; the compass coerced the most imbruted mariner to act on the impossible idea that the earth was round; the press drenched Europe with anarchism. Europe saw itself, violently resisting, wrenched into false positions, drawn along new lines as a fish that is caught on a hook; but unable to understand by what force it was controlled.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Idea, Understanding, Sense, Fish

“Was there no possibility of saving mankind from self-destruction? The extinct animal species had been forced unwittingly towards elimination, but in man, life for the first time, had mustered sufficient consciousness to recognise dangerous trends in his development. What were these dangers? Progress of science, man's increasing technical mastery? No, the real danger threatening man lay in those gigantic social and political organisations, being an end in themselves instead of means, using the instruments of education and propaganda to suppress individual judgement by creating instinctive mass reaction. These organisations hinder man's spiritual development, reduce the capacity for moral judgement to a low level, and hand over society to the intense lust for power of a few individuals.”

Henno Martin (1910–1998) German geologist

Source: Sheltering Desert; Union Deutsche Verlangsgesellschaft Ulm (1958), p. 180

Life, Education, Science, Time

“The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers… They are denying the reality of a force that — unless we change the way we live pretty fast — will kill millions.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

The shame of the climate change deniers, JohannHari.com, April 24, 2005, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=606,

Way, Reality, Change

“We will seek military assistance from other countries, but it is up to each nation to decide themselves, whether they will dispatch troops. However, we have the resolute determination to defend our nation and protect our homeland. Our armed forces will not back down, and will carry out their combat missions to the death.”

Pu Tze-chun (1956) Taiwanese admiral

Pu Tze-chun (2017) cited in " Military can defend islands, officials say http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2015/10/30/2003631277" on Taipei Times, 30 October 2015

Death, Country

“I condemn in strongest possible terms, the murder of Jennifer Laude (Jeffrey Laude). The police and prosecutors should act fast, lest the prescriptive period to be breached. In the meantime, as before, I call on and urge the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to revisit and seek the amendment of the lopsided criminal jurisdiction provision of the Visiting Forces Agreement”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

VFA Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, October 14). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152785657875610/ 2014, Facebook

“Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 11
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

World

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Women, Men, Money, Children

“The concept of man as mass robot was both an expression of and a powerful motive force in industrialized mass society. It was the basis for behavioural engineering in commercial, economic, political and other advertising and propaganda; the expanding economy of the 'affluent society' could not subsist without such manipulation. Only by manipulating humans ever more into Skinnerian rats, robots buying automata, homeostatically adjusted conformers and opportunists (or, bluntly speaking, into morons and zombies) can this great society follow its progress toward ever increasing gross national product.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 9. General Systems Theory in Psychology and Psychiatry, p. 206

Motivation

“Only empirical work - analysis based on observation and experience as opposed to theory - can answer the question of how labor force behavior is affected by changes in the tax system. Even intense armchair speculation on this matter must be regarded with considerable skepticism.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 2, Tools of Positive Analysis, p. 22

Behavior, Question, Change

“Deliamber shrugged. “Such things are never fairly distributed. What makes you think that only the guilty are punished?”
“The Divine—”
“Why do you think the Divine is fair? In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is balanced with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that’s in the long run. We must live in the short run, and matters are often unjust there. The compensating forces of the universe make all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.””

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 5 “The Book of the Castle”, Chapter 4 (pp. 424-425)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

Thinking, Universe

“…the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior”

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

Source: 1980s, Evolutionary Economics, 1981, p. 104

Fear, Hope, Behavior, Loss

“It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect.”

Byron White (1917–2002) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985).

“A taxation so forced as not only to maintain a budgetary equilibrium but to yield as well “large, continuous, progressive surpluses –even in years of trials and suffering –is, I submit, against all accepted canons of finance.”

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915) social and political leader during the Indian Independence Movement

Sources of Indian Tradition

Suffering

“Much if not all we know about the complex mechanism responsible for the development (and stagnation) of productive forces, and for the rise and decay of social organizations, is the result of the analytical work undertaken by Marx and by those whom he inspired.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter One, A General View, p. 5

“The speeches by the Minister and the former Minister were an absolute disgrace in complacency, especially the assumption that market forces will solve the housing problem. If that is so, why is it that there are record numbers of homeless people? Why is it that tonight, as on every night of the year, people will be sleeping under the national theatre, in Covent Garden, around the tube stations in London and alongside the main roads? The Government, in their obsession with market forces and the triumph of the rich over the poor, are creating a hobo society. That is all they are trying to do with their housing policies…They are proposing a return to Rachmanism. They are proposing all the horrors of the Rent Act 1957: nothing but homelessness and exploitation for the unemployed, the poor and the homeless.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/apr/28/housing in the House of Commons (28 April 1987). 1980s

People, Problem, Sleep, Housing

“Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life, Sister, Freedom, Suffering

“The dispatch of a naval force and the peremptory outcome that Great Britain tried to impose are clear demonstrations that that country persists in addressing the question with arguments based on force, and that the solution is sought through the simple refusal to recognize Argentinian rights. In view of that unacceptable intention, the Argentine Government could have no other response than the one it has just made by taking action. The Argentinian position can in no way be considered a form of aggression against the present inhabitants of the islands. Their rights and ways of life will be respected with the same generosity with which we respected those peoples we liberated during our independence movement. Yet we will not yield to the intimidatory deployment of the British forces; far from using peaceful diplomatic channels, they have threatened the indiscriminate use of those forces. Our forces will act only to the extent strictly necessary. They will in no way disrupt the life of the islanders. On the contrary, they will protect those institutions and persons who agree to coexist with us, but they will not tolerate any excesses either in the islands or on the mainland. We have a clear appreciation of the stance adopted and it is in defence of this stance that the Argentine nation has risen, the whole nation, spiritually and materially.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982

Life, People, Peace, Way

“We voluntaryists believe that no true progress can be made until we frankly recognize the great truth that every individual, who lives within the sphere of his own rights, as a self-owner, and has not himself first aggressed upon others by employing force or fraud in his dealings with them [and thus deprived himself of his own rights of self-ownership by aggressing upon these same rights of others], is the only one true owner of his own faculties, and his own property.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life

Truth, Fraud

“The world is full of signals that we don't perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us. […] What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But “parahuman” powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Natural Attraction: Bacteria, the Birds, and the Bees", p. 313
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Lie, World, Nature, Bird

“Since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, mass media has ushered in a new era of collective consciousness – a set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes that operate as a unifying force within society. Notwithstanding the danger of assimilation akin to the Borg in Star Trek, the Internet is accelerating collective consciousness and revolutionizing economy, politics, and education, among others.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Education, Star, Idea

“The dictator Powers of Europe are striding on from strength to strength and from stroke to stroke, and the parliamentary democracies are retreating abashed and confused. … Austria has been laid in thrall, and we do not know whether Czechoslovakia will not suffer a similar attack. … It is because we have lost these opportunities of standing firm, of having strong united forces and a good heart, and a resolute desire to defend the right and afterwards to do generously as the result of strength; it is because we have lost these successive opportunities which have presented themselves, that, when our resources are less and the dangers greater, we have been brought to this pass. I predict that the day will come when at some point or other on some issue or other you will have to make a stand, and I pray God that when that day comes we may not find that through an unwise policy we are left to make that stand alone.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/feb/22/foreign-affairs#S5CV0332P0_19380222_HOC_332 in the House of Commons (22 February 1938) after the resignation of the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden The 1930s

God, Democracy, Strong, Suffering

“Actually the crimes of the Maoists against human rights have gone much too far, and the Chinese people are now in much greater need of help from the world's democratic forces to defend their rights than in need of the unity of the world's Communist forces, in the Maoist sense, for the purpose of combating the so-called imperialist peril somewhere in Africa or in Latin America or in the Middle East.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

People, World, Sense, Help

“To fortify London by works is impossible—London must be defended by an army in the Field, and by one or more Battles,—one I trust would be sufficient; but for this Purpose we must be able to concentrate in the Field the largest possible Military Force. In order to do so we must have the means of defending our Naval arsenals with the smallest possible Military Force, and this can be accomplished only by Fortifications which enable a small Force to resist a larger one. Thence it is demonstrable that to fortify our Dockyards is to assist the Defence of London. As to Time we have no time to lose. I deeply regret that various circumstances have so long delayed proposing the Measure to Parliament, but it would be a Breach of our public Duty to put it off to another year. There may be some Persons in the House of Commons with peculiar notions on things in General and with very imperfect notions as to our National Interest who will object to the proposed Measures, but I cannot bring myself to believe that the Majority of the present House of Commons, or the House of Commons that would be elected on an appeal on this Question to the People of the Country would refuse to sanction Measures so indispensably necessary.”

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

Letter to Gladstone (16 July 1860), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 142-143.
1860s

People, Question, Time, Housing

“Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.”

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

Speech to officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast, 18 December 1940. [Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932-1945 (English Volume III: 1939-1940), Domarus, Max, Max Domarus, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1997, 2162, 0865166277]
1940s

Life, People, World, Nature

“Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 63.

Love, Life, Wisdom, God

“Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new.”

A. E. van Vogt (1912–2000) Canadian writer

As quoted in "Man Beyond Man : The Early Stories of A.E. van Vogt" http://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html by Alexei Panshin in The Abyss of Wonder

Childhood

“In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art, Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Fascinating Fascism" (1974), published in The New York Review of Books (6 February 1975) and reprinted in Sontag's Under the Sign of Saturn (1980), p. 93

Art, Communication, Joy, Perfection

“Protocols:
Number 3, para. 16
It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism. It is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier-dictators of the present day the goyim peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuse as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.
Graves: An obvious ineptitude!…Notice “humanity” in the “dialogue” becomes “goyim” in the “protocols,” a Yiddish word taken from the Hebrew that Jews use for gentiles. Could anyone believe that the elders would be so naïve and careless as to employ a common ethnic word in such a formal tract as the Protocols?””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.78

People, Suffering

“There really is an ideological, secular aggressiveness that gives cause to worry. Recently in Sweden a Protestant parson was put into jail for one month because - referring to biblical texts - he preached about homosexuality. Laicism is not any longer that element of neutrality that opens fields of freedom for everybody. It’s now turning into an ideology, which – with the help of politics – forces itself into the public and leaves no space for the Christian and Catholic conception – thereby turning it into a merely private and essentially mutilated concern. In this sense a fight has really begun in which we have to defend the religious freedom against the pretension of an ideology, that acts as if it were the only voice of reason – whereas it is only the expression of “a certain” rationalism…. A society that is not at all concerned with God destroys itself. We saw that in the totalitarian experiments of the last century.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

in an interview in the German newspaper Die Welt, April 20, 2005
2005

God, Sense, Freedom, Help

“If we merely wait for the appropriate moment we will never live to see it, because this [appropriate moment] cannot arrive without the subjective conditions of the maturity of the revolutionary force being fulfilled - it can only arrive after a series of failed attempts.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

62
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Waiting

“The young bamboo can be easily bent, but the full grown bamboo breaks when it is bent with force. It is easy to bend the young heart towards God, but the untrained heart of the old escapes the hold whenever it is so drawn”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 233

God, Heart

“We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation"…In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003…the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once.That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible…Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer…In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally…Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country…And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

Life, War, Children, Secret

“Karl Marx did not call for an opposition to the forces of history. On the contrary he accepted all of them, the drive of technology, the revolutionizing effects of democratic striving, even the vagaries of capitalism, as being indeed the carriers of a brighter future.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter I, Part 8, The Marxian Blow, p. 41

History, Future

“According to the second law of thermodynamics, the sum of the entropies of the participating bodies must increase. Yet, living organisms seem to exhibit a deliberate anti-entropic force that hints at “by design” rather than “by chance.””

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Law, Chance

“I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 214

“I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress, and in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge.
There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

As quoted at "Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative" at CBS News, (2006-07-22).

Problem, Thinking

“In these discussions we are not asking you to accept anything on blind faith. We are definitely asking that you not immediately reject anything either. We suggest that you do some research for yourself. Just ponder the basic points, investigate them and, most importantly, try to know better how to protect yourself against subtle forces so that you will not become a casualty. If you take these simple steps, you will be one of those who helps to bring about a new era for humankind.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 3: Angels and Demigods, p. 55

Faith, Help

“Cursory inspection of the world suggests it is a giant complex with dense connections between its parts. We cannot cope with it in that form and are forced to reduce it to some separate areas which we can examine separately.”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

..
Source: Systems thinking, systems practice: includes a 30-year retrospective, 1999, p. 60 cited in: Frederik Pretorius (2008) Project Finance for Constructions and Infrastructure. p. 36

World, Parting

“There are two ways in which a science develops; in response to problems which is itself creates, and in response to problems that are forced on it from the outside.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Source: The Emergence Of Probability, 1975, Chapter 1, An Absent Family Of Ideas, p. 4.

Way, Problem, Science

“We did not suspend our democracy in our darkest hours why are we suspending it now? the fawning over Thatcher had gone too far. We have had enough of this, It has gone on too long and it has gone too far. This put the tin hat on it the idea that we should suspend a vital part of our democratic process for a party political and private funeral, Mr Churchill didn’t ask for Parliament to be silenced, for confrontations across the House to be forbidden. When our soldiers were being laid waste in the Norway debate, the House of Commons perhaps rose to its finest 20th Century moment. Nobody said: ‘Our armed forces have suffered a disaster, the House of Commons cannot meet, the clash of ideas cannot be heard, we must muffle the drums and silence ourselves The so-called Beast of Bolsover said the argument was about class and that it was "one rule for those at the top and another for those at the bottom. We are here talking about the thing that we sometimes suggest has gone away class, That's what it is, it's about class. It's about the fact that people out there have to live their lives in a different way and there's one rule for those at the top and there's another for those at the bottom. It's never changed, I wish it had, but it hasn't. So when I heard about the chain of events it seemed to grow like topseed - first of all there was going to be some sort of ceremonial funeral, and then the next thing you (Mr Speaker) tell us that the chimes of Big Ben are going to stop and then we hear about the fact that we are going to abandon Prime Minister's question time, I mean, what's it all about? That's why the people out there are angry, a lot of them.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-fawning-gone-far-1836314 George Galloway blasts cancellation of PMQs for Margret Thatchers funeral 16 April, 2013

People, Way, Democracy, Idea

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1960s, Farewell address (1961)

Money, Idea, Fashion, Universe

“The Republican Party insists that slavery originated in force, by the stronger against the weaker party, and not by natural right; that it is maintained and upheld by oppression and wrong, and against the law of nature. This usurped ownership in man is not that kind of property which is recognized by the general consent of mankind.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Law, Nature

“Conditions to the north of us, in the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts zone of action, and our offensive on Kharkov demands that we not lose time and we commit all forces so that we can draw off as many divisions as possible from Kharkov. And even if we do not draw them off, at least we will not give Manstein the ability to take any of his units from our part of the front. If we attract one or two German tank divisions - it will be the best contribution to the defeat of the enemy in the south.”

Aleksandr Vasilevsky (1895–1977) Soviet military commander

To Vasily Chuikov. Quoted in "Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War" - Page 228 - by David M. Glantz - History - 1989.

Time, Parting, Drawing

“He began to think about semblance, as Ansky had discussed it in his notebook, and he began to think about himself. He felt free, as he never had in his life, and although malnourished and weak, he also felt the strength to prolong as far as possible this impulse toward freedom, toward sovereignty. And yet the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance troubled him. Semblance was an occupying force of reality, he said to himself, even the most extreme, borderline reality. It lived in people's souls and their actions, in willpower and in pain, in the way memories and priorities were ordered. Semblance proliferated in the salons of the industrialists and in the underworld. It set the rules, it rebelled against its own rules…it set new rules.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

2666: A Novel (2008)

Life, Pain, People, Way

“Paris was attacked not because of what the French do, as some Blame-The-West intellectuals claim, but because of what the French are: infidels who refuse to see the light of Islam. The hope is that just as the Prophet forced the Arab tribes to accept Islam in exchange for protection, the “infidel” nations will also decide that it is in their best interest to submit. Today, however, I see no sign the French tend toward submission. As always, the terrorists may end up like the man who, having won a great many tokens at the roulette table, is surprised when the casino tells him his winnings cannot be cashed.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The jihadis’ master plan to break us" http://nypost.com/2015/11/15/the-jihadis-master-plan-to-break-us/ New York Post (November 15, 2015). New York Post

Hope, Light

Quotes about force page 40

Quotes about force
page 40