Quotes about form
page 21

“It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; “good/evil” is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency, … simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 39.

History, Evil, Personality

“Then we have computer science. It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with "bits" in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits.”

Italo Calvino book Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988) , "Lightness"
English translation: Patrick Creagh (1996).

World, Travel, Exercises, Light

“Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects; to them it is a matter of indifference if these objects are replaced by others, provided that the relations do not change. Matter does not engage their attention, they are interested in form alone.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Hypothesis

Les mathématiciens n'étudient pas des objets, mais des relations entre les objets ; il leur est donc indifférent de remplacer ces objets par d'autres, pourvu que les relations ne changent pas. La matière ne leur importe pas, la forme seule les intéresse.
Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. II: Dover abridged edition (1952), p. 20

Study, Change, Indifference

“As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit, or belief, they were called a Republic.”

Evelyn Waugh book Scoop

Scoop (1938)

People, History

“Shakespeare's relations with men and women of the court involved him at the outset in emotional conflicts, which form the subject-matter of his 'Sonnets”

Sidney Lee (1859–1926) English biographer and critic

Dictionary of National Biography, art. "William Shakespeare"

Women, Men

“Although my own previous enthusiasm has been for syntactically rich languages like the Algol family, I now see clearly and concretely the force of Minsky's 1970 Turing lecture, in which he argued that Lisp's uniformity of structure and power of self reference gave the programmer capabilities whose content was well worth the sacrifice of visual form.”

Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist

The Paradigms of Programming (1979)

Family

“Zen is a form of liberation - being liberated from Yin and Yang elements, and enabling you to remain calm and cool when you are troubled. Zen is not something definite and tangible, it is a refuge for mental solace. Zen is about concentration of mind. It is a profound culture, enabling people to gain spiritual tranqulity and be awakened. Even though not a word is spoken, it enables one to gain a thorough understanding of the truth of life. This is what we call the harmony between Yin and Yang. It is like a substance deep in your soul, generating a kind of wisdom and energy in your mind. It is also a kind of energy of self-confidence, helping you to achieve self-emancipation, self-regulation and self-perfection, leading you to the path of success. As such, Buddhism talks about ‘Faith, Commitment, and Action’. The theory, when applied in the human realm, is all about Zen. Concentration gives rise to wisdom. With concentration, the mind will be focused and it will not be drifting apart. Hence, the problem of schizophrenia will not arise. Zen culture is about the state of mind. It is a kind of positive energy! Positive energy is a kind of compassion, which enables people to understand each other when they encounter problems, to understand the country and society at large, and to understand their family and children, colleagues and friends. In this way, people will be able to live in peaceful co-existence and remain calm when they are faced with problems. When you see things in perspective using rationality and positive energy, you are able to change your viewpoint pertaining to a certain issue. This is the moment Zen arises in your mind! In fact, Zen is within you. This theory is very profound.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

10 October 2013
Special Interview by People' Daily, Europe Edition

Life, Wisdom, Children, People

“Under Aristotle the "Reader," whose knowledge of Trojan aretê seems conspicuously absent, forms and substances dominate all. The Good is a relatively minor branch of knowledge called ethics; reason, logic, knowledge are his primary concerns. Aretê is dead and science, logic and the University as we know it today have been given their founding charter: to find and invent an endless proliferation of forms about the substantive elements of the world and call these forms knowledge, and transmit these forms to future generations. As "the system."”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

World, Knowledge, Universe, Science

“At last a growing number of physicians, private citizens and even the Federal Trade Commission are beginning to re-examine these long standing and deeply ingrained beliefs in the virtue of cow milk. And even Richard Nixon and John Connally came to realize that cow milk may not be good for you. The fact is: the drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population, and the cause of multiple forms of allergy as well; and the possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 3

Children, World, Drink, Heart

“The second proposition admits and encourages the very practice we censure so justly, for which the saint [ Augustine of Hippo ] was so famous, and by which he contributed so much to promote contentions in his own days, and to perpetuate them to ours. The practice of deducing doctrines from the scriptures that are not evidently contained in them… Who does not see that the direct tendency of this practice is exactly the same as the event has proved it to be? It composes and propagates a religion, seemingly under the authority of God, but really under that of man. The principles of revelation are lost in theology, or disfigured by it: and whilst some men are impudent enough to pretend, others are silly enough to believe, that they adhere to the gospel, and maintain the cause of God against infidels and heretics, when they do nothing better, nor more, than espouse the conceits of men, whom enthusiasm, or the ambition of forming sects, or of making a great figure in them, has inspired. If you ask now what the practice of the christian fathers, and of other divines, should have been, in order to preserve the purity of faith, and to promote peace and charity, the answer is obvious… They should have adhered to the word of God: they should have paid no regard to heathen philosophy, jewish cabala, the sallies of enthusiasm, or the refinements of human ingenuity: they should have embraced, and held fast the articles of faith and doctrine, that were delivered in plain terms, or in unequivocal figures: they should not have been dogmatical where the sense was doubtful, nor have presumed even to guess where the Holy Ghost left the veil of mystery undrawn.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works http://books.google.com/books?id=E6ATAAAAQAAJ (1754) Vol.III, Essay IV, Sect XVI

Men, God, Peace, Faith

“Leibnitz, the great mathematician, published his 'Protogaea' in 1680. He imagined this planet to have been originally a burning luminous mass, and that ever since its creation it has been undergoing gradual refrigeration. Nearly all the matter of the earth was at first encompassed by fire. When the outer crust had at length cooled down sufficiently to allow the vapors to be condensed, they fell and formed a universal ocean, investing the globe, and covering the loftiest mountains. Further consolidation produced rents, vacuities, and subterranean caverns, and the ocean, rushing in to fill them, was gradually lowered. The principal feature of this theory, the gradual diminution of the original heat, and of an ancient universal ocean, were adopted by Buffon and De Luc, and entered under different modifications, into a great number of succeeding systems.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 45
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Imagination, Mountain, Universe

“Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

World, Beauty, Music, Heart

“The religions are delusional constructs formed around an infallible core.”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 74

Religion

“Why then should I clothe him to make him look ridiculous in the foolish masculine fashions of his time? There is nothing more banal than these statues of recent notabilities, to be seen in every big city of Europe, masquerading as tailors' models of their ugly period. Man's naked form on the other hand belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Auguste Rodin in: The Cornhill Magazine, (1925), p. 766; Cited in: Anthony Mario Ludovici (1926). Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin. p. 111
1900s-1940s

People, Age, History, Fashion

“affective labor is biopolitical production in that it directly produces social relationships and forms of life. … When affective production becomes part of waged labor it can be experienced as extremely alienating: I am selling my ability to make human relationships, something extremely intimate, at the command of the client and the boss.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

110-111
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Life, Parting

“Only when the habit of one's consciousness to see in paintings bits of nature, Madonna's and shameless nudes.... has disappeared, shall we see a pure painting composition. I have transformed myself into the nullity of forms and pulled myself out of the circle of things, out of the circle-horizon in which the artist and forms of nature are locked.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

as quoted in: Marc Chagall, – a Biography, Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 178
1910 - 1920

Nature, Painting

“Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 26 : The Goodness of the Deity.

Health, Exercises, Knowledge, Affliction

“Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary. By a great effort man has hit upon a method of compensating himself for his basic inferiority. Equipped with various mysterious noise-making instruments, whose potency rests upon their actual form's being unknown to those who hear the sounds — that is, the women and children must never know that they are really bamboo flutes, or hollow logs, or bits of elliptic wood whirled on strings — they can get the male children away from the women, brand them as incomplete, and themselves turn boys into men. Women, it is true, make human beings, but only men can make men.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 84 as cited in: John Whiting, Eleanor Hollenberg Chasdi, Roy D'Andrade (2006) Culture and Human Development: The Selected Papers of John Whiting. p. 240

Women, Men, Children, Boy

“I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

"How It Was", page 55
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984)

God, Night

“Visions are from the imaginative mind, sculpture can come from the found discards in nature, from sticks and stones and parts and pieces, assembled or monolithic, solid form, open form, lines of form, or, like a painting, the illusion of form. And sculpture can be painting and painting can be sculpture..”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1950s, Tradition and Identity' (1959)

Imagination, Nature, Parting, Painting

“Today people live to work rather than work for a living. They have forgotten their true goal in life. Subsequently they have forgotten their dharma. There is no communication between hearts, there is no sharing. Having lost contact with other's hearts, we become totally isolated. But in truth we are not isolated islands, we are links that form one chain.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Conversation in Helsinki (2000)

Life, People, Truth, Communication

“The second level of legitimation contains theoretical propositions in a rudimentary form. Here may be found various explanatory schemes relating sets of objective meanings. These schemes are highly pragmatic, directly related to concrete actions. Proverbs, moral maxims and wise sayings are common on this level. Here, too, belong legends and folk tales, frequently transmitted in poetic forms.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

1991; 112
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

“For, what is slavery? It is the complete and absolute subjection of one person to the control and disposal of another person, by legalized force. We need not argue that no person can be, rightfully, compelled to submit to such control and disposal. All such subjection must originate in force; and, private force not being strong enough to accomplish the purpose, public force, in the form of law, must lend its aid. The Government comes to the help of the individual slaveholder, and punishes resistance to his will, and compels submission. THE GOVERNMENT, therefore, in the case of every individual slave, is THE REAL ENSLAVER, depriving each person enslaved of all liberty and all property, and all that makes life dear, without imputation of crime or any legal process whatsoever. This is precisely what the Government of the United States is forbidden to do by the Constitution. The Government of the United States, therefore, cannot create or continue the relation of master and slave. Nor can that relation be created or continued in any place, district, or territory, over which the jurisdiction of the National Government is exclusive; for slavery cannot subsist a moment after the support of the public force has been withdrawn.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

"The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention" http://alexpeak.com/twr/libertyparty/saw/, in Anti-slavery Addresses of 1844 and 1845 by Salmon Portland Chase and Charles Dexter Cleveland, ed. C. D. C. (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Martson, 1867), pp. 75–125.

Life, Law, Support, Strong

“Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

People, Study

“Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Love, Wisdom, Happiness, Books

“But if you want to think about something really funny, consider how the titles of tyrants change. We shall suffer no more Emperors, Kings, Czars, Shahs, or Caesars, to lop off our limbs and burn our homes, kiddo, defile our women and bugger our boys; the masses make such appointments now; the masses love tyranny; they demand it; they dance to it; they feel that their hand is forming the First Citizen's Fist; so we shall murder more modestly in future: beneath the banners of Il Duce, Der Führer, the General Secretary or the Party Chairman, the CEO of something. I suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called Coach.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p.155

Love, Women, Feeling, Home

“It is not to be inferred that it would be anything less than courting national disaster to leave our country barren of defense. Human nature is a very constant quality. While there is justification for hoping and believing that we are moving toward perfection, it would be idle and absurd to assume that we have already reached it. We can not disregard history. There have been and will be domestic disorders. There have been and will be tendencies of one nation to encroach on another. I believe in the maintenance of an Army and Navy, not for aggression but for defense. Security and order are our most valuable possessions. They are cheap at any price. But I am opposed to every kind of military aggrandizement and to all forms of competitive armament. The ideal would be for nations to become parties to mutual covenants limiting their military establishments, and making it obvious that they are not maintained to menace each other. This ideal should be made practical as fast as possible.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Hope, History, Nature, Perfection

“Whitman had a profound influence on me. … He was useful to me in the perfection of form, as a sort of compromise between the strict and the free.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The Paris Review interview (1963)

Perfection

“Caring for people often takes the form of concern for the quality of their stories, not for their feelings. Indeed, we can be deeply moved even by events that change the stories of people already dead. We feel pity for a man who died believing in his wife’s love for him when we hear that she had a lover for many years and stayed with her husband only for his money. We pity the husband although he had lived a happy life. We feel the humiliation of a scientist who made a discovery that was proved false after she died, although she did not feel the humiliation. Most important, we all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 4): Daniel Kahneman, bloomberg.com, 24 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-27/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-4-daniel-kahneman.html, <br class="br">"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)

Love, Life, Money, Happiness

“A few centuries ago… the indigenous and often primitive architectural forms of that time had become suited to local climate through a long process of trial and error.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Error, Time

“In a very real sense, every subsidy and privilege … is a form of slavery. Slavery, simply put, is the use of coercion to live off of someone else's labor. For example, consider the worker who pays $300 a month for a drug under patent, that would cost $30 in a free market. If he is paid $15 an hour, the eighteen hours he works every month to pay the difference are slavery. Every hour worked to pay usury on a credit card or mortgage is slavery. The hours worked to pay unnecessary distribution and marketing costs (comprising half of retail prices), because of subsidies to economic centralization, is slavery. Every additional hour someone works to meet his basic needs, because the state tilts the field in favor of the bosses and forces him to sell his labor for less than it is worth, is slavery. All these forms of slavery together probably amount to half our working hours. If we kept the full value of our labor, we could probably maintain current levels of consumption with a work week of twenty hours. As Bill Haywood said, for every man who gets a dollar he didn't sweat for, someone else sweated to produce a dollar he never received.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand (2002)

Sense

“What do we know about the world unseen? What reasonings, what curiosity, what misgivings there have been concerning that impenetrable mystery! Out of this mystery and vagueness and vastness comes the human form of the Divine Redeemer. He assures us that there is an unmixed and endless life, and that all we have to do to secure it is, to trust ourselves to Him who came to declare it and to confer it.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

Life, World

“One of Nietzsche’s most important legacies to us … is his claim that it is desirable and possible to dismantle the Platonic apparatus of Forms, Absolute Truth, the Idea of the Good, etc. and its historical derivatives, such as Kant’s transcendental philosophy, and that this can be done without fear of falling into “relativism.””

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

Source: Outside Ethics (2005), p. 8.

Truth, Fear, Idea

“A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. ii (1790)

World

“What nevertheless subsists is the desire of an absolute ideal form, a form which can adapt itself to any setting and to any scale.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 7.

““Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.” A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.””

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Life, Death, Religion, Fashion

“One day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you lived in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955)

God, Hate, People, World

“Madness blew so violently on the immeasurable air pump of the circuit, that it took the form of a spiral, rising like a screw to the Zenith.. [describing the Brescia automobile races, in 1907]”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

In 'La mort tient le volant...', in La ville charnelle, E. Sansot, Paris 1908, p. 228; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 27, (note 77)
1900's

Madness

“As to those in the World Trade Center… Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U. S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html, September 12, 2001

World, Heart

“Dogmatic religion any form of mind control actually, has been used, and refined to fantastic effect over thousands of years since the "restart" of Modern civilisation-Sumeria/Sumer according to Official history. To incite and exploit emotions like fear, guilt, frustration, anger, and the feeling of 'Emptiness'. Which has assisted our prison warders, who've encouraged the "masses" to hand over their Responsibilty, and right to think and feel to a politician, book, media presenter, priest, experts because they feel and are encouraged to perpetuate the consensus reality, therefore subconcious belief that we/they don't have the ability or confidence for that matter to establish truth for themselves regardless of any external influences and without fear of being "crucified" for doing so. You and I have the right, to take control of our minds and therefore of lives, which is the first step on the road to infinite, now is a good time as any to start to make your own decisions.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

"… and the truth shall set you free", 1995

Truth, Books, Fear, Religion

“[On what she learned from working on The L Word] I think that I learned the most clearly was how connected we all are. And that (does air quotation marks) "gay issues" are also women's issues because homophobia is a form of misogyny…And I feel much more motivated to speak out when I see something that I don't like or that just smells wrong…I see how all women are connected. You know, and that we are all either repressed or we repress ourselves in certain ways, and that's truly codified within the culture. And that I'm not so far removed from that woman in the Congo who's terrified to go out into the woods to look for firewood.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

New York Times Talks Panel (20 April 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeZgJ3EJrbE.

Women, Way, Feeling, Motivation

“Generally speaking, a temple is a 'Place of Worship'. It is also called the 'House of God'. However, for a Hindu, it is both and yet still more. It is the whole cosmos in the miniature form.”

Swaraj Prakash Gupta (1931–2007) Indian archaeologist and art historian

Elements of Indian Art (2002)

God, Housing

“All of my films constitute a reaction against mainstream cinema. Every serious form of art sees the receiver as a partner in the undertaking. In fact, that's one of the preconditions of humanistic thought. In cinema, this fact, which should be self-evident, has been overlooked and replaced by an emphasis on the commercial aspects of the medium.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

In response to the question, "You're well known for not wanting to impose interpretations on your films. Is this because you believe that audiences have become accustomed to being spoon-fed and told what to think?"
as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51

Art

“I have added some ploughmen to the landscape form the park pales which is a great help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can… but I look to do a great deal better in future. I am determined to finish a small picture in the spot for every one I intend to make in future. But this I have always talked about but never yet done – I think however my mind is more settled and determined than ever on this point.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote in his letter to John Dunthorne (14 February 1814), as quoted in Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 151
1800s - 1810s

Thinking, Future, Help

“The first life insurance societies where formed in England in the years between 1692 and 1720. In America, life insurance became available to the clergy through the Presbyterian Ministers Fund, founded in 1759(still in existence), and the Episcopal Corporation, founded ten years later”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

subsequently merged
Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 14, Too Many Salesman, p. 250.

Life

“We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

"The Spanish Element in Our Nationality," http://www.bartleby.com/229/5004.html letter to the Philadelphia Press (20 July 1883), later published in The Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman (1892), part V: November Boughs

Learning

“He [Tolstoy] seems to have felt somehow that social evolution was standing in his way. He did not like the division of labor. He hated all forms of commerce and trade. The State was an abomination in his eyes. He wanted it abolished and with it, indeed, all of modern society based upon machine industry. With Rousseau, he would go back to the primitive state.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 74

Hate, Way

“If the Lord has you saved, you're saved, ok? You can't get out of God's hand. Then this 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying through the solar system. Some of it broke apart. It made craters on Mercury and craters on the Moon. Four of the planets today still have rings around them. And the rings around these planets are made of rock and ice. Very interesting. Now Walt Brown thinks some of the craters on the Moon were formed when the fountains of the deep broke open and rocks went flying up out of Earth's gravitational pull, drifted around for a while, and clobbered into the Moon. He may be right on that. I don't know but it's interesting. He thinks the comets came from Earth, and water on Mars came from Earth, when the fountains of the deep broke upon. You could read about it for yourself if you would like. The super cold snow would land mostly around the north and south poles because super cold ice is not only affected by the magnetic field, it is easily statically charged. […] As this ice meteor came flying towards the earth it broke apart, pieces would settle in around the poles mostly, causing the earth to wobble for a few hundred years. Or maybe even a few thousand years. The canopy of water overhead collapsed, then it rained 40 days, the water underneath the bottom, under the crust came shooting to the surface, and the water kept going up for 150 days. And everybody drowned. It probably took six or eight months to kill everybody during that flood. We all get the idea, "Well it rained and everybody died first day."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

No, it took a long time for people to die. People would be running and fighting for higher ground. As that got more and more rare as the water keeps coming up, and up, and up, for 150 days, the water increased. By the way, they are still discovering chunks of ice flying around in space.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God, People, Way, Idea

“What Kant regarded as a unique (Copernican) turn to transcendental reflection becomes in Hegel a general mechanism for turning consciousness back upon itself. This mechanism has been switched on and off time and time again in the development of spirit. As the subject becomes conscious of itself, it destroys one form of consciousness after another. This process epitomizes the subjective experience that what initially appears to the subject as a being in itself can become content only in the forms imparted to it by the subject. The transcendental philosopher’s experience is thus, according to Hegel, reenacted naively whenever an in-itself becomes a for-the-subject. What Hegel calls “Dialectical” is the reconstruction of this recurrent experience and of its assimilation by the subject, which gives rise to ever more complex structures. … Hegel, it should be noted, exposes himself to a criticism. … Reconstructing successive forms of consciousness is one thing. Proving the necessity of their succession is quite another.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 5

Appearance, Time, Success

“. It therefore is a very clear form of apartheid. I don’t think the Jewish people survived for 20 centuries, mostly through persecution and enduring endless cruelties, in order to now become the oppressors, inflicting cruelty on others. This new law does exactly that. That is why I am ashamed of being an Israeli today.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

About the Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-today-i-am-ashamed-to-be-an-israeli-1.6294754 (July 22, 2018), '.

People, Law, Thinking

“Relations between States and within States are correct to the extent that they respect the truth. When, instead, truth is violated, peace is threatened, law is endangered, then, as a logical consequence, forms of injustice are unleashed.”

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

In Address to the International Diplomats Address to the International Diplomats http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/march/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060318_intern-organizations_en.html (18 March 2006) <br class="br">2006

Truth, Peace, Law

“Protocols:
Number 11, paras. 1,2
The state Council has been, as it were, the emphatic expression of the ruler; it will be, as the “show” part of the Legislative Corps what may be called the editorial committee of the alws and decrees of the ruler. Br> This, then, is the program of the new constitution. We shall make Law, Right, and Justice (1) in the guide of proposals to the Legislative Corps, (2) by the decrees of the president under the guise of general regulations, of orders of the Senate and of resolutions of the State Council in the guise of ministerial orders, (3) and in case a suitable occasion should arise, in the form of a revolution in the State.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Justice, Law, Parting

“Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech, 1858
1850s

Country

“My present opinion favors the following disposition of the troops for winter-quarters. The garrison here should consist of Patterson's, Learned's, Clinton's, and the North Carolina brigades, which, I believe, will forma force sufficient for the purpose. If the horse is posted in Connecticut, as seems to be thought on, I think the troops coming from Rhode Island, in con junction with the horse, will form a sufficient covering party for the exposed parts of Connecticut and Westchester. I would only wish Clinton's brigade to be here, because it may interest the inhabitants to furnish supplies in the winter, and to encourage the militia to turn out with spirit, should the enemy make a sudden move towards the post. The connection between the army and country will have an influence in both these respects.”

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

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Thinking, Learning, Winter, Horse

“Nationality is not the only kind of social membership, nor is it an exclusive tie. However, it is the only form of membership that has so far shown itself able to sustain a democratic process and a liberal rule of law.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Law

“Heroic figures are now obsolete,
So Demigod and Devil find retreat
In minds of children — as rare beasts and men,
Elsewhere extinct, persist in hill or fen
From man protected — where each form assumes
Gigantic stature and intention, looms
From wind-moved, twilight-woven histories:
For them each flower teems with mysteries.”

Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) British baronet

"When First the Poets Sung", line 34 (1927).

Men, Children, History, Flowers

“Comparative anatomy, therefore, proves that man is naturally a frugivorous animal, formed to subsist upon fruits, seeds, and farinaceous vegetables.”

Sylvester Graham (1794–1851) United States reformer

Sylvester Graham's Lectures on the Science of Human Life https://books.google.it/books?id=nRwDAAAAQAAJ, condensed by T. Baker, Manchester: John Heywood, 1881, p. 76.

Nature, Animals

“We have reached the conclusion that what we eat is responsible for a large number of tumors, and that certain foods trigger cancer while others have a protective value. Meat and its derivatives figure among carcinogenic foods of the intestines. Meat, in fact, is particularly rich in saturated fatty acids, substances that lead to damaging activity in regard to our bodies in general. Furthermore, certain forms of tumors, such as intestinal cancer, are directly correlated to the consumption of meat, while others, such as endometrial tumors, are linked to obesity.”

Umberto Veronesi (1925–2016) Italian oncologist and politician

The First Day Without Cancer (2013)

Food

“Smith’s own theory, as given in the first five editions, is for the most part a theory of moral judgement —that is to say, it is an answer to the second question set out in the initial description of the subject of philosophical ethics. […] There is no thoroughgoing inquiry of what constitutes the character of virtue, as required by the first of the two questions, even though the historical survey at the end of the book deals with both questions in turn and, as it happens, gives more space to the first topic, the character of virtue, than to the second, the nature of moral judgement.
The fact is that Smith did not reach a distinctive view on the first topic. He has a distinctive view of the content of virtue, that is to say, a view of what are the cardinal virtues; but he does not give us an explanation of what is meant by the concept of moral virtue, how it arises, how it differentiates moral excellence from other forms of human excellence. […] I think that, when Smith came to revise the work for the sixth edition, he realized that he had not dealt at all adequately with the first of the two questions, and for that reason he added the new part VI, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, to remedy the omission. It is not, in my opinion, an adequate remedy, and it certainly does not match Smith’s elaborate answer to the second question. […]
Since the second of the two topics, the nature of moral judgement, is the main subject of both versions of Smith’s book, I shall give it priority in what follows. There is in fact a clear development in Smith’s view of this topic, especially in his conception of the impartial spectator, the most important element of Smith’s ethical theory.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

Books, Question, Nature, Thinking

“Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicious to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is much more an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, and the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and resolute.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Life, Men, God, Nature

“Classical music has struggled to keep up. Unlike any other art form, it keeps on looking backwards all the time. It used to have a real museum culture. Then it went: "Oh my God, what are we going to do? Call for Nigel Kennedy. Quick!" Classical musicians have got to change or die,' she asserts strongly, 'but they just don't know how to. Audiences for classical music have dropped. The old blue rinse audience is dying out, and young people aren't coming in.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

On Classical Music

God, People, Art, Music

“Americanization is the science of racial relations in America, dealing with the assimilation and amalgamation of diverse races in equity into an integral part of its national life. By "assimilation" is meant the indistinguishable incorporation of the races into the substance of American life. By "amalgamation" is meant so perfect a blend that the absence or imperfection of any of the vital racial elements available will impair the compound. By "an integral part" is meant that, once fused, separation of units is thereafter impossible. By "in equity" is meant impartiality among the races accepted for the blend, with no imputations of inferiority and no bestowal of favors. With anything less than this in mind, America will fall short of a science and of giving the world anything of lasting value for its racial problems. Nation building is to be in the future a deliberate formative process, not an accidental, dynastic, geographical, and economic arrangement. It is to consider the rights and desires and hopes of races. It is to be a deliberative process, and as such must be selective. If the Allies succeed in freeing the small nations, as now seems certain, the world will witness the most interesting and dramatic re-assemblage of races that has ever taken place in history.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, World, Hope, History

“There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quoted in C.R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Composed Chiefly of His Letters (1843), (Phaidon, London, 1951), p. 280
Reply "to a lady who, looking at an engraving of a house, called it an ugly thing"
posthumous, undated

Life, Beauty, Light

“In every third world age (Dvapara), Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, in order to promote the good of mankind, divides the Veda, which is properly but one, into many portions. Observing the limited perseverance, energy, and application of mortals, he makes the Veda fourfold, to adapt it to their capacities; and the bodily form which he assumes, in order to effect that classification, is known by the name of Veda-vyasa. Of the different Vyasas in the present Manvantara and the branches which they have taught, you shall have an account. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara… and consequently eight and twenty Vyasas have passed away; by whom, in the respective periods, the Veda has been divided into four. The first… distribution was made by Svayambhu (Brahma) himself; in the second, the arranger of the Veda (Vyasa) was Prajapati…”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

and so on up to twenty-eight <br class="br">Vishnu Purana (Book 3, Ch 3), in The Vishńu Puráńa: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition http://books.google.co.in/books?id=bkEpAAAAYAAJ, p. 219. <br class="br">Sources

Age, World, Time, Personality

“As the enemy have the advantage of a water transportation, and the spring is the most difficult part of the year for a land conveyance, it is most probable, if they have any designs upon this post, they will commence their operations before the grass season. Will it not be worth while, therefore, to form a small magazine of provision and forage, at or near Mr. Erskine's Iron Works, for the purpose of subsisting the army on their march to this place? And another considerable magazine of provision and forage at Chester or Warwick for the support of this army in whatever position it may take for the relief of this garrison? These magazines should be formed from the westward, in the winter season, when there is the least call for transportation, and the roads the most favorable for the purpose.”

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

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Spring, Support, Grass, Water

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Life, Death, God, Age

“The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man.”

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

Speech at the New England Woman Suffrage Association (May 24, 1886) Nicholas Buccola, edit., The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings & Speeches, Hackett Publishing Company, 2016, p. 307. Sometimes referred to as his “Who and What is Woman?” speech
1880s

Feeling, Universe, Perfection

“His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man’s animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume I, Chapter XI
Romola (1863)

Fear, Law, Feeling, Animals

“I am for a form of art, that sees itself as one of the many means through which human society can be changed.”

Jörg Immendorff (1945–2007) German artist

Jörg Immendorff (1976), as cited in: William Packer. " Obituary: Jörg Immendorff http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2101396,00.html," The Guardian, 13 June 2007

Art, Change

“All this was obvious enough at the time even though it was not always put forward exactly in this form and in this language. Schlegel found India "the home of universal religion, the cradle of the noblest human race." J. C. Herder asked the question: "All the peoples of Europe, where are they from?" And he answered: "From Asia." Schopenhauer thought that India was the "fatherland of mankind," and he expressed the hope that European peoples "who stemmed from Asia… would re-attain the holy religions of their home." All this however changed under a growing consciousness of Imperial power and Euro-centricity. New theories reflected new power realities and new Imperial needs. Aryan dispersion from a common centre was retained, but its direction was changed and it became the theory of the Aryan invasion of India. The theory was meant to justify and to help the British Imperialism. The theory has little intellectual respectability left, but it has not lost its political usefulness and it is quite popular with the representatives of preceding Imperialisms and their Hindu apologists.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

People, Religion, Hope, Home

“On the most usual assumption, the universe is homogeneous on the large scale, i. e. down to regions containing each an appreciable number of nebulae. The homogeneity assumption may then be put in the form: An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.”

Hermann Bondi (1919–2005) British mathematician and cosmologist

Sir Hermann Bondi, "Review of Cosmology," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 1948, p. 107-8, as cited in: Hermann Friedmann. Wissenschaft und Symbol, Biederstein, 1949, p. 472

Universe, Time

“Phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground of development. We have already seen that various leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest—the human being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a reptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 306

Fish, Appearance, Animals

“Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.”

Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) English physician, botanist; member of the Lunar Society

The Temple of Nature (1802).

Life, Spring, Success

“You will come in any case — so why not now?
How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall.
I have put out the light and opened the door
for you, because you are simple and magical.
Assume, then, any form that suits your wish,
take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot,
or strangle me like an efficient mugger,
or else infect me — typhus be my lot”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), To Death

Light, Time, Waiting

“The idea that humans form pair bonds, and that males often invest in their young, has a long history in biological anthropology. Early incarnations of the idea were criticized for painting an overly simplistic picture, according to which “Man the Hunter” provisioned his dependent wife and children with meat in a stable nuclear family, suspiciously reminiscent of a 1950s-style Western family. However, with appropriate amendments and qualifications, the idea that pair bonding and biparental care are a central part of our evolutionary endowment appears to be viable.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 145

Children, Family, History, Idea

“Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatic about [the go to statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a simple trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1973) in personal communication to Donald Knuth, quoted in Knuth's "Structured Programming with go to Statements".
1970s

Religion, Feeling, Problem

“Revolutions have nowhere ended, and least of all in ROme, without demanding a certain number of victims, who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone fro the fault of defeat as though it were a crime.”

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

Vol. 3, Pg. 268, Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 3

Justice

“The trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

Death, People, World, Time

“This path cannot be followed by human thinking. It is the path that is being formed by the law of nature.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 17, "The Law of Nature," p. 13.
Anecdotes of Oyasama

Law, Nature, Thinking

“Whenever a form is infused with life (prana), consciousness (chetana) appears by reflection of awareness in matter.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Awareness and consciousness
Source: "I am That." P.65.

Life, Appearance

“The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book The Necessity of Atheism

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)

World, Light, Dead

“These two characteristics make revenge the most suitable source for the formation of ressentiment. The nuances of language are precise. There is a progression of feeling which starts with revenge and runs via rancor, envy, and impulse to detract all the way to spite, coming close to ressentiment. Usually, revenge and envy still have specific objects. They do not arise without special reasons and are directed against definite objects, so that they do not outlast their motives. The desire for revenge disappears when vengeance has been taken, when the person against whom it was directed has been punished or has punished himself, or when one truly forgives him. In the same way, envy vanishes when the envied possession becomes ours. The impulse to detract, however, is not in the same sense tied to definite objects—it does not arise through specific causes with which it disappears. On the contrary, this affect seeks those objects, those aspects of men and things, from which it can draw gratification. It likes to disparage and to smash pedestals, to dwell on the negative aspects of excellent men and things, exulting in the fact that such faults are more perceptible through their contrast with the strongly positive qualities. Thus there is set a fixed pattern of experience which can accommodate the most diverse contents. This form or structure fashions each concrete experience of life and selects it from possible experiences. The impulse to detract, therefore, is no mere result of such an experience, and the experience will arise regardless of considerations whether its object could in any way, directly or indirectly, further or hamper the individual concerned. In “spite,” this impulse has become even more profound and deep-seated—it is, as it were, always ready to burst forth and to betray itself in an unbridled gesture, a way of smiling, etc. An analogous road leads from simple *Schadenfreude* to “malice.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

The latter, more detached than the former from definite objects, tries to bring about ever new opportunities for *Schadenfreude*.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Men, Smile, Way

“There are who separate the eternal light
In forms of man and woman, day and night;
They cannot bear that God be essence quite.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All

God, Light, Night

“Davis was winning a position as a leader in the Senate. Successor to Calhoun, he had become the spokesman for southern nationalism… not independence but domination from within the Union. This movement had been given impetus by the Mexican War. Up til then the future of the country pointed north and west, but now the needle trembled and suddenly swung south. The treaty signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo brought into the Union a new southwestern domain, seemingly ripe for slavery and the southern way of life: not only Texas down to the Rio Grande, the original strip of contention, but also the vast sun-cooked area that was to become Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, part of Colorado, and California with its new-found gold. Here was room for expansion indeed, with more to follow; for the nationalists looked forward to taking what was left of Mexico, all of Central America down to Panama, and Yucatan and Cuba by extension. Yet the North… had no intention of yielding the reigns. The South would have to fight for this… using States Rights for a spear and the Constitution for a shield. Jefferson Davis, who had formed his troops in a V at Buena Vista and continued the fight with a boot full of blood, took a position, now as then, at the apex of the wedge.”

Shelby Foote book The Civil War: A Narrative

The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958)

Life, War, Way, Sun

“Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 149.

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“From the point of view of the development of Marx’ s theories, his early journalistic writings are important for two main reasons. In his sharp attacks on the censorship law he spoke out unequivocally for the freedom of the Press, against the levelling effect of government restriction (‘ You don’ t expect a rose to smell like a violet; why then should the human spirit, the richest thing we have, exist only in a single form?’), and also expressed views concerning the whole nature of the state and the essence of freedom. Pointing out that the vagueness and ambiguity of the Press law placed arbitrary power in the hands of officials, Marx went on to argue that censorship was contrary not only to the purposes of the Press, but to tbe nature of the state as such.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders, pp. 120-1

Law, Nature, Freedom

“The role of expectations is not limited to monetary policy but is crucial in many areas of economics, as Bob showed in his later research on investment, unemployment, taxation, public debt management, and asset pricing. In all of these situations, the appropriate evaluation of policy takes account of the way that expectations would be rationally formed.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 29

Way

“Now these three concepts form the foundation-stones of the philosophy of materialism and determinism to which the physics of the nineteenth century seemed to lead. Thus, as soon as any one of the three has to be rejected, the philosophical implications of physics undergo a great change; the mechanical age has passed, both in physics and philosophy, and materialism and determinism again become open questions…”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Age, Question, Change

“It is the same with art. Art will become the product of another duality in man: the product of a cultivated externality and of an inwardness deepened and more conscious. As a pure representation of the human mind, art will express itself in an aesthetically purified, that is to say, abstract form.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Art

“What Elizabethan playwrights learned from the Greek classics was not theories of insanity, but dramatic practice — that is, madness is a dandy theatrical element. It focuses the audience's attention and increases suspense, since you never know what a mad person may get up to next; and Shakespeare himself makes use of it in many forms. In King Lear, there's a scene in which one man pretending to be mad, another who has really gone mad, and a third who has probably always been a little addled, are brought together for purposes of comparison, irony, pathos, and tour de force acting. In Hamlet, there are two variations — Hamlet himself, who assumes madness, and Ophelia, who really does go winsomely bonkers. In MacBeth, it's Lady MacBeth who snaps.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Learning, Personality, Madness

“If in the case of a notion whose specialisations form a continuous manifoldness, one passes from a certain specialisation in a definite way to another, the specialisations passed over form a simply extended manifoldness, whose true character is that in it a continuous progress from a point is possible only on two sides, forwards or backwards. If one now supposes that this manifoldness in its turn passes over into another entirely different, and again in a definite way, namely so that each point passes over into a definite point of the other, then all the specialisations so obtained form a doubly extended manifoldness. In a similar manner one obtains a triply extended manifoldness, if one imagines a doubly extended one passing over in a definite way to another entirely different; and it is easy to see how this construction may be continued. If one regards the variable object instead of the determinable notion of it, this construction may be described as a composition of a variability of n + 1 dimensions out of a variability of n dimensions and a variability of one dimension.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Way, Imagination

“Just stare up at the stars at night, and you'll have those corny thoughts like we all do. How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant? How on earth can we be it? It doesn't make sense. … It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there.”

Ridley Scott (1937) English film director and film producer

Esquire interview (2012)

Life, Faith, Feeling, Star

“One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

Appearance, Change, Past, Future

“We need a new form of capitalism, a contemporary form of capitalism. I would like to add “humanistic” to that equation.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

“Structures of lines, surfaces, forms, colours. They try to approach the eternal, the inexpressible above men. They are a denial of human egotism. They are the hatred of human immodesty, the hatred of images, of paintings.. Wisdom [is] the feeling for the coming reality, the mystical, the definite indefinite, the greatest definite.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Arp's quote from his text in a catalogue of his exhibition, in Zürich 1915; quoted by Arp himself in his text 'Abstract Art, Concrete Art,' Hans Arp, c. 1942; as quoted in Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, by Herschel Browning Chipp, Peter Selz, p. 390
1910-20s

Wisdom, Men, Feeling, Reality

“The more freely abstract the form becomes, the purer, and also the more primitive it sounds. Therefore, in a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completely abstracted... Here we are confronted by the question: Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract? This is a question that naturally arises, the answer to which is at once indicated by an analysis of the concordance of the two elements of form (the objective and the abstract). Just as every word spoken (tree, sky, man) awakens an inner vibration, so too does every pictorially represented object. To deprive oneself of the possibility of this calling up vibrations would be to narrow one's arsenal of expressive means. At least, that is how it is today. But apart from today's answer, the above question receives the eternal answer to every question in art that begins with 'must.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

There is no 'must' in art, which is forever free.
Quote from: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, 2 Vols. (transl. Peter Vergo); Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., (1982), p. 195; as cited in: Samet, Jennifer Sachs. Painterly Representation in New York, 1945-1975. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010. p. 25
1910 - 1915

Art, Question, Nature, Tree

“Don't tell God they were only little globs of tissue. They were real live persons, being formed in their mother; s womb.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Who Murdered Clarice? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1009/1009_01.asp" (2000)

God, Personality

“Omnisexuality is the term that I use in Hysteria. There seems to be a strain of pure sexuality that can embody itself in any possible way, female, male, something else. This is the first time I’ve ever articulated this, but I think I’m most interested in that essence of sexuality that seems to be able to take many forms but has still a specific feel and tone to it that we all recognize. You can’t really define it as male or female. I’m very fascinated with the way in which maleness and femaleness is specifically physical. but not necessarily purely sexual. There is a difference amongst all those things. This takes you right back to the mind/body schism that I go crazy with all the time.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Time

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 402-403; As cited in: Edwin Inglee Megargee, Charles Donald Spielberger (1992) Personality assessment in America: a retrospective on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Personality Assessment. p. 20-21

Life, World, Way, Feeling

“Before we continue our story we must stop to ask, “What is a castle?” Once a castle was defined simply as the fortified and self-sufficient dwelling of an individual feudal lord. Today we know that castles had many functions, both practical and symbolic. The castle was a new ar chitectural form—part fortress, part residence, part statehouse, part the atrical stage. Furthermore, every castle was different, depending on the wealth of the builder, the reason for the castle (control of territory, bor der, coastlines), the local geography (availability of naturally defensible sites), the knowledge of the master builder or patron, the available ma terials, the degree of urgency (speed), and finally the building traditions of the region (the techniques the workmen knew and used). In short, there is no such thing as a typical castle; a castle was a very special build ing whose form and function answered the needs of people living in Eu rope from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

People, Nature, Knowledge, Parting

Quotes about form page 21

Quotes about form
page 21