Quotes about founding
page 27

“No, there is nothing on the face of the earth that can, for a moment, bear a comparison with Christianity as a religion for man. Upon this the hope of the race hangs. From the very first, it took its position, as the pillar of fire, to lead the race onward. The intelligence and power of the race are with those who have embraced it; and now, if this, instead of proving indeed a pillar of fire from God, should be found but a delusive meteor, then nothing will be left to the race but to go back to a darkness that may be felt, and to a worse than Egyptian bondage.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 133.

God, Religion, Hope, Intelligence

“Through Marshall's life and work the Victorian demand for authoritative social doctrine found one of its most important expressions in the Cambridge School of Economics. Maynard Keynes's relationship to that tradition is one of the central themes of this biography. That relationship was never unproblematic, because Marshall's achievement was incomplete. He had shown how the existing moral code could be made to serve society rather than God. But there was nothing in his work to show how it could be altered so as to make it possible for individuals to lead happier or more civilised lives. Marshall himself seems not to have felt any pressure to do so. But Sidgwick had, as had many other thinking Victorians. It was the reorganisation of personal life rather than the reorganisation of society which seemed the urgent problem for the next generation, especially once the soc ail and economic clouds of the 1880s and 1890s had given way to the bright sunlight of the Edwardian age.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003), Ch. 2. Cambridge Civilisation: Sidgwick and Marshall

Life, God, Age, School

“Zoophyta, polyparia, crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea are the orders of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres.”

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

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 60

Animals

“Street design up to the time of the Regency will be found to be loyal, in principle, to what had been developed in Bath. The two most important names in English planning during the period are those of Robert Adam and George Dance II, whose careers will be dealt with in the chapters which follow. Both of them recognized the principle of the monumentally treated block of ordinary houses, with centre and wings emphasized, as the proper solution of the urban street problem.”

John Summerson (1904–1992) British architectural historian

Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830

Problem, Time, Dance, Housing

“…a detailed mathematical discussion shows that whatever kind of wave-packet we select to represent the electron, the product of the two uncertainties of position and momentum can never be less than h, which is precisely what Heisenberg found…”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Mathematics

“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Article 11 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp#art11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers on January 3, 1797 and received ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797; it was signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul); This phrase has also sometimes been misattributed to George Washington, and has also been misquoted as "This nation of ours was not founded on Christian principles". Misattributed

Religion, Law, Sense, Country

“Now, just think about this for a moment: For generations, in many parts of this country, it was illegal for black people to get an education. Slaves caught reading or writing could be beaten to within an inch of their lives. Anyone — black or white — who dared to teach them could be fined or thrown into jail. And yet, just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, this school was founded not just to educate African Americans, but to teach them how to educate others. It was in many ways an act of defiance, an eloquent rebuttal to the idea that black people couldn’t or shouldn’t be educated. And since then, generations of students from all backgrounds have come to this school to be challenged, inspired and empowered. And they have gone on to become leaders here in Maryland and across this country, running businesses, educating young people, leading the high-tech industries that will power our economy for decades to come.”

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

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony 2010s

People, Education, School, Way

“It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself than I can imagine ever having found in any other kind of relationship.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (1983)

Marriage, Imagination, Freedom

“Halo 3 came out in November. I got my mother to buy it for me on the very day it was released. I had a lot of fun playing it while drinking the special mountain dew flavor that was released with the game; Mountain Dew Game Fuel, it was called. The game definitely lived up to its expectations, and to my surprise I found myself playing it more than WoW for the first couple of weeks.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Mountain, Game, Drink

“I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

Introduction.
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)

People, Hope

“Him here he found preparing for the field
His bow, his breast-plate, and his glittering shield:
Whilst beauteous Helen 'mongst her maids in state
Their several works and tasks disposing sate.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book IV
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

“Here with Ajax lies my heart,
a club fascinating, always unique.
By many named after sons of gods,
for me the origin of football icons.
My memories return to De Meer,
there too was found a special atmosphere.
Now I go after my feelings,
and technically enter the Arena.
In my life phase this is a new chance,
and my childhood love gets an extra impulse.
And that's why I state with full conviction,
today the circle is really complete.”

Louis van Gaal (1951) Dutch footballer and manager

Poem to commemorate his installation as technical director of AFC Ajax in October 2003

Love, Life, God, Feeling

“For my spirit hath left her earthly home
And found a nobler dwelling,
Where the music of light is that of life,
And the starry harps are swelling.”

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

The Golden Violet - Amenaïde
The Golden Violet (1827)

Life, Music, Home, Light

“Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD, Mr. Vincent Smith says, "…. Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.' " Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of the Buddha in India.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

"The Decline and Fall of Buddhism", in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III (1987), Government of Maharashtra, p. 229-388

Books, Religion, Reading

“Christian philosophers have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the capitalist system, the use of torture, the censorship of the press and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort, from the tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of Geneva and New England.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

War

“Falloppio of Padua conceived that petrified shells had been generated by fermentation in the spots where they were found, or that they had in some cases acquired their form from 'the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations.' Although a celebrated professor of anatomy, he taught that certain tusks of elephants dug up in his time at Puglia were mere earthy concretions, and, consistently with these principles, he even went so far as to consider it not improbable, that the vases of Monte Testaceo at Rome were natural impressions stamped in the soil.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 29
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Nature, Time

“Every evening after dinner, a new life began. There was no hurry. Some walked in the garden. Others smoked. About nine o’clock we made our way alone or in twos and threes to the Study House. Outdoor shoes came off and soft shoes or moccasins were put on. We sat quietly, each on his or her own cushion, round the floor in the centre. Men sat on the right, women on the left; never together.

Some went straight on to the stage and began to practice the rhythmic exercises. On our first arrival, each of us had the right to choose his own teacher for the movements. I had chosen Vasili Ferapontoff, a young Russian, tall, with a sad studious face. He wore pince-nez, and looked the picture of the perpetual student, Trofimov, in The Cherry Orchard. He was a conscientious instructor, though not a brilliant performer. I came to value his friendship, which continued until his premature death ten years later. He told me in one of our first conversations that he expected to die young.

The exercises were much the same as those I had seen in Constantinople three years before. The new pupils, such as myself, began with the series called Six Obligatory Exercises. I found them immensely exciting, and worked hard to master them quickly so that I could join in the work of the general class.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 90–91 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Fontainebleau 1923

Life, Death, Women, Men

“Girls: Please do not offer yourself to Yahtzee. He found that this got old very fast.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Contact page http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/contact.htm Fully Ramblomatic

Girl

“…there is a limited elite that understands the secrets of their own techniques, but not necessarily of all techniques. These men are close to the seat of modern governmental power. The state is no longer founded on the 'average citizen', but on the ability and knowledge of this elite. The average man is altogether unable to penetrate technical secrets or governmental organization and consequently can exert no influence at all on the state.”

Jacques Ellul book The Technological Society

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 274

Men, Secret, Understanding, Knowledge

“In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts are self- chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the court yard, after everything respectable has retired from it. Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.”

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

1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)

Life, Men, People, Fear

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Money, War, Cars, Confidence

“I began to read Capital, just as one reads any book, to see what was in it; I found a great deal that neither its followers nor its opponents had prepared me to expect.”

Joan Robinson book An Essay on Marxian Economics

Preface To The Second Edition, p. vi
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)

Books, Reading

“life is
only
as good as the memories we makeSo long astoria
i found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendshipsand when this hourglass
has filtered out
its final grain of sand
i raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back”

Kris Roe (1978) American composer and singer

Song lyrics, So Long, Astoria (2003)

Life, Home, Memory, Heart

“1 Corinthians 6:9–10 lists homosexual behavior as a sin that will bring judgment by God on the unrighteous. The beautiful truth of Christ’s gospel is found in verse 11, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Yes we should be welcoming of practicing homosexuals with the love of Christ, but with a clear presentation of His death for their sinful perversion of God-ordained sexuality between one man and one woman in Genesis 2:24. Anything less misses the meaning of what the love of God really is, not an inclusive message but a saving gospel (John 3:16). The church shouldn’t encourage people who struggle with same-sex attraction to engage in sinful sexual practices. No, church leaders like those at Highland Baptist should be finding ways to share the gospel with unbelievers and encourage Christians to live in a way that’s pleasing to God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Kentucky Baptist Church allows first 'Gay Marriage'" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/11/kentucky-baptist-church-allows-its-first-gay-marriage/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 11, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Love, Death, God, People

“On the eve of that going out, we gather to participate in this stately and solemn service to Almighty God, in Whose name this University was founded and in Whose name it has labored from generation to generation… Wherever the cause of liberty is in danger, there Columbia's hand will be found to help avert it. Wherever the rule of despotism is extending, there Columbia's hand will be found to remove It. Wherever there is need of scientific skill and genius to serve, to cure, to invent, to construct, there a Columbia hand will be found ready to do its duty for the advancement of the public good and for the glory of Almighty God.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Address The Call to Service (1917); " A world in ferment; interpretations of the war for a new world https://archive.org/stream/worldinfermentinw00butl/worldinfermentinw00butl_djvu.txt"

God, Universe, Help

“Had he defended the thesis that iconoclasm is rooted in Islam itself, he would have done justice to the evidence from Islamic sources, yet he would have found it very hard to get published by Oxford University Press or reach the status of leading Islam scholar that he now enjoys. One can easily become an acclaimed scholar of Hinduism by lambasting and vilifying that religion, but Islam is somehow more demanding of respect.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

Religion, Justice, Universe

“The theologians depend on assertions. They have no evidence. They claim that their inspired book is superior to reason and independent of evidence. They talk about probability—analogy—inferences—but they present no evidence. They say that they know that Christ lived, in the same way that they know that Cæsar lived. They might add that they know Moses talked with Jehovah on Sinai the same way they know that Brigham Young talked with God in Utah. The evidence in both cases is the same,—none in either. How do they prove that Christ rose from the dead? They find the account in a book. Who wrote the book? They do not know. What evidence is this? None, unless all things found in books are true.”

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

The Truth (1896)

God, Books, Way, Christ

“I have found Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor during her arduous labors for a period of ten years in my library, a lady of cultivated mind, of ability and singular application; likewise her physical endurance was remarkable.”

Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) American writer

Hubert Howe Bancroft, as quoted in OREGON'S TRAILS: PUBLISHER'S AMBITIONS, EGO PLACE A TIRING TOLL ON VICTOR, John Terry, The Oregonian, January 19, 2003.
About

“In adopting a republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better or for worse, but what a few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all of it bad qualities. Neither ingratitude, therefore, nor slander can disappoint expectation nor excite surprise. If, in arduous circumstances, the voice of my country should call for my services, and i have the well founded belief, that they can be useful, they shall certainly be rendered; but I hope that no such circumstances will arise and in the mean time, 'pleas'd let me trifle away.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

Gouverneur Morris to John Dickinson ( May 23, 1803 http://www.bgdlegal.com/clientuploads/Publications/Publications/John%20Bush%20-%20Gouverneur%20Morris.pdf) 1800s

Men, Hope, Disappointment, Time

“The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited, have been certain rooms in which Christ's disciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a "house of mourning," I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 183.

Death, Christ, Housing

“In 1973 I suddenly came into major private problems. I was completely thrown back on myself. Then I found those trousers between the old stuff. A worn-out, eighty times repaired, filthy pair of pants of a milker. I saw myself in it, it reflected the state of my soul. Then I took it with me and painted it [title: Pants of a cow milker]. Moreover because other because people recognized themselves in it, this has become my salvation. I found back my identity through it. As a matter of fact a self-portrait.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: In 1973 raakte ik plotseling in grote privéproblemen. Ik was helemaal op mezelf teruggeworpen. Toen vond ik tussen de rommel die broek. Een afgetobde, tachtig keer verstelde, smerige melkersbroek. Ik zag mijzelf daarin, hij weerspiegelde de toestand van mijn ziel. Toen heb ik hem meegenomen en geschilderd [titel: Broek van een koemelker]. Ook omdat andere mensen zich erin herkenden, is het mijn redding geweest. Ik heb er mijn identiteit door teruggevonden. Eigenlijk een zelfportret.
p 60
Jopie Huisman', 1981

People, Soul, Problem, Time

“Metaphors of space have always been introduced into painting, the play of fullness and emptiness, volumes, surfaces, light and shade... And, in recent painting, in particular, the notion of 'emptiness' has assumed great significance... This interest in emptiness, in nothingness, is found in many disciplines, in particular in an important sector of modern philosophy. We know, for example, that the philosophers such as Heidegger or Sartre have, at a given moment, made nothingness the center of their thought…”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

In 'Celebració de la mel', Antoni Tàpies, in La peinture et le vide, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 1993, p. 41 –46
1991 - 2000

Light, Painting

“It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Delphine

Delphine (1802), Preface

Life, Truth, Feeling, Nature

“I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to his brother (1791).
Letters

Truth, Travel, Imagination, Mathematics

“By themselves, brontosaur gizzards don't indicate how much or what these dinosaurs ate each day; other lines of evidence must be employed to explore these questions. But brontosaur gizzards and teeth together indicate what brontosaurs did not eat. They didn't eat soft, mushy vegetation. Birds that subsist entirely on soft fruits don't possess muscular gizzards and don't use hard pebbles for their gizzard linings. Soft, watery food requires only a short, simply constructed gut - with just enough contractile force to squeeze out all the juices.
Brontosaur teeth, moreover, confirm the heretical idea that they ate a tough vegetable diet. If the brontosaurs dined only on soft water plants, then very little wear would be found on their teeth. But in fact the teeth of Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and their kin manifest very severe wear, which could only have been produced by tough or gritty food.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 136-137
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Food, Idea, Question, Bird

“The calculus is probably the most useful single branch of mathematics. …I have found the ability to do simple calculus, easily and reliably, was the most valuable part of mathematics I ever learned.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Mathematics, Learning, Parting

“I knew, by the smoke that so gracefully curl'd
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near;
And I said, "If there's peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here."”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Ballad Stanzas.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World, Peace, Hope, Heart

“This will be the grandest entrance ever made! Hollywood tries to make their stars look important with special effects, fireworks and noise as they enter the stage. HA! Wait till Jesus comes! EVERYONE will stop what they are doing and look up. His entrance will be seen worldwide! There is no “secret coming” found in the Bible.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 156

Secret, Star, Waiting

“[Y]ou can't have grievance politics without endless whining. I think if you got the Founding Fathers or the first hundred guys killed at Anzio Beach, brought them back to life, and said, "What do you think of all this?" "What a bunch of whiners. Have you ever had 400 Germans coming at ya? Put on a red hat and say Make America Great Again? What have you done, pal?"”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard 2010s

Life, Guy, Thinking

“Well, I certainly was not going to study physics, and I knew I was not going to study biology, but I could have become a sociologist or an anthropologist. However, I found sociology a little soft. I think that somewhere in my mind, I probably already had the notion – which turned out to be right – that if I was going to be a social scientist of some kind, I would like a rigorous social science. The analytical aspect of economics already appealed to me. That must have been so. It was not really a matter of chance. But if my wife had said ‘oh, no, economics was terribly boring’, I would probably have found something else to do.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)

Thinking, Study, Science, Chance

“"Heat, ma'am!" I said; "it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, p. 267
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“And yet I don't know. And yet I don't know!
The handkerchiefs that cost me three shillings or so -
And that seems a lot for poor Uncle John
And anything goes to blow noses on. Talking of noses, hers is red enough.
I know what I'll buy her. A nice powder puff. Now she can't powder her nose with a grand piano.
Nor yet with a sewing machine.
She can't powder her nose with an Ingersoll watch -
Well that's silly, you know what I mean.
She can't powder her nose with a jumper.
She'll find that a little bit rough.
So I'll pop round to Woolworth's tomorrow, God bless her
And buy her a nice powder puff. And yet I don't know. And yet I don't know!
Sixpence ha'pennies aren't found in back yards.
I'll not buy her a powder puff at all - no.
I'll just send her my kindest regards.”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

"And Yet I Don't Know" monologue http://monologues.co.uk/And-Yet1.htm And Yet I Don't Know!

God

“Truly man is a marvellously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.
Book I, Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book I

“But though all the general rules of art are founded only on experience and on the observation of the common sentiments of human nature, we must not imagine, that, on every occasion, the feelings of men will be conformable to these rules.”

David Hume book Four Dissertations

Four Dissertations (1757)

Men, Art, Feeling, Imagination

“The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

IRON, article in Details Magazine, January 1993

God

“We believe this to be the work of thieves, and I'll tell you why. The whole pattern is very reminiscent of past robberies where we have found thieves to be involved. The tell-tale loss of property — that's one of the signs we look for.”

Peter Cook Beyond the Fringe

"The Great Train Robbery" (1964)
Beyond the Fringe (1960 - 1966)

Loss, Past

“The American Revolution wasn’t about replacing a hereditary tyrant with an elective despotism. It is time to remind our ruling elites of that point. It is time to remind them that the founding principle of our nation holds that when those who profess to govern us perpetrate a “long train of abuses” designed to “reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” It is not just our right - but our duty - to send a loud, clear and unequivocal message to the president and Congress that it is time to stop the war on liberty and freedom, today and in the 2012 election.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2011, " America Is Not a Battlefield http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7002"

War, Freedom, Time, Future

“I found a fox
Caught by dogs.
He let me take him in my hands.
His little heart,
It beats so fast,
And I'm ashamed of running away
From nothing real —
I just can't deal with this,
But I'm still afraid to be there,
Among your hounds of love…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985)

Love, Dogs, Heart

“He felt himself melting away, but he still remained firm with his gun on his shoulder. Suddenly the door of the room flew open and the draught of air caught up the little dancer, she fluttered like a sylph right into the stove by the side of the tin soldier, and was instantly in flames and was gone. The tin soldier melted down into a lump, and the next morning, when the maid servant took the ashes out of the stove, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. But of the little dancer nothing remained but the tinsel rose, which was burnt black as a cinder.”

Hans Christian Andersen The Steadfast Tin Soldier

The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Fairy Tales (1835)

Heart

“Others might have found us eccentric, but I didn’t care. I had discovered my calling. I was a programmer.”

Paul Allen (1953–2018) American inventor, investor and philanthropist

Idea Man (2012)

“Success comes because you have found your ecological niche and can flourish by doing your own valuable thing.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 78.

Success

“From the Kantian doctrine of the a priori carried to its genuine completion, as we have now seen it, we infer that the objects which present themselves in course of the normal and critical action of human consciousness are all that objects as objects can be; that beyond or beneath what completed human reason (moral, of course, as well as perceptive and reflective) finds in objects and their relations, or can and will find, there is nothing to be found; that our universe is the universe, which exists, so far as we know it, precisely as we know it, and indeed in and through our knowing it, though not merely by that. To state the case more technically, the cognition belonging to each mind is the indispensable condition of the existence of reality, though it is not the completely sufficient condition. If one asks, What then is this sufficient condition, the answer is, The consensus of the whole system of minds, including the Supreme Mind, or God.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.170

God, Reality, Universe

“I set my hand to the art of writing early on. Publishing was easy for me, and I at once found favor and understanding. But it was a long time before I realized and convinced myself that this was anything but mere chance.
Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb.
Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.”

Italo Calvino book The Path to the Nest of Spiders

The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), Preface
English translation: Archibald Colquhoun (1957), HarperCollins.

Life, Books, World, Art

“The 16 August, 1946 communal riots broke out in Calcutta after a few days. I would have been killed by a Muslim mob in the early hours of that day as I walked back towards my home from the coffee house which I had found closed. My fluent Urdu and my Western dress saved me. My wife and two year old son had joined me a few days earlier in a small room in a big house bordering on a large Muslim locality. On the evening of the 17th we had to vacate that house and scale a wall at the back to escape murderous Muslim mobs advancing with firearms. Had not the army moved in immediately after, I would not have lived to write what I am writing today.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Home, Communication, Coffee, Housing

“Nick: I've also found someone to take an option on the photographs.
Mrs Prentice: What photographs?
Nick: I had a camera concealed in the room.
Mrs Prentice: When I gave myself to you the contract didn't include cinematic rights.
Nick: I'd like a hundred quid for the negatives. You've got until lunchtime.
Mrs Prentice: I shall complain to the manager.
Nick: It will do you no good. He took the photographs.
Mrs. Prentice: Oh, this is scandalous! I'm a married woman.
Nick: You didn't behave like a married woman last night.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

Night

“When I do ties, I bid them out. And I go all over the place. You have companies over in different countries where they devalue their currency and they make it impossible for American companies to compete. The hat, Make America Great Again. I fought like crazy to find a company in this country that could make the hats. And I found one. And they're American-made, but it's -- because I knew the first thing people would do is, where is the hat made. OK, Make America Great.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, This Week Interview (July 30, 2016)

People, Country

“I found you a thousand times;
I guess you done the same;
But then we lose each other;
It's like a children's game;
As I find you here again;
A thought runs through my mind;
Our love is like a circle;
Let's go 'round one more time.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Circle
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Love, Children, Game, Time

“I was on top of the mountain. But there was nothing there. Just clouds. And I found that you can't live on that mountain. But when it throws you off — oh, how you long for it! I would kill to climb it again. I would sell my soul. It is so stupid. […] I took the standard. And now I can't even become a farmer again. The mountain won't let me.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 1

Stupidity, Soul, Mountain

“The tree of deepest root is found
Least willing still to quit the ground;
'Twas therefore said by ancient sages,
That love of life increased with years.
So much, that in our latter stages,
When pains grow sharp and sickness rages,
The greatest love of life appears.”

Hester Thrale (1741–1821) Welsh author and salon-holder

"Three Warnings", line 1, in Abraham Hayward (ed.) Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (1861) vol. 2, p. 165.

Love, Life, Pain, Tree

“Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 18 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Context: The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite Matter. As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other properties, is also endowed with Freedom; but philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through Freedom; that all are but means for attaining Freedom; that all seek and produce this and this alone. It is a result of speculative Philosophy, that Freedom is the sole truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self- destructive, as verging towards its opposite [an indivisible point]. If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer, it would have perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in Unity it exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially.

Nature, Freedom, Dependency

“Nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis: The bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was in- violable. All the strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness, cunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not only been honoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous, and by degrees branded as immoral and criminal. Creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts classed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. An immense despondency, a dejection without parallel, then took possession of them. And all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on the man himself feelings of enmity, cruelty, … violence, persecution, destruction and thus the bad conscience originated.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 39

Life, War, Feeling, Strong

“In the minds of many writers systems engineering is synonomous with component selection and interface design; that is, the systems engineer does not design hardware but decides what types of existing hardware shall be coupled and how they shall be coupled. Complete agreement that this function is the essence of systems engineering will not be found here, for, besides the very important function of systems engineering in systems analysis, there is the role played by systems engineering in providing boundary conditions for hardware design.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Source: A Mathematical Theory of Systems Engineering (1967), p. 193.

“This is a comparative study of six organizations operating in the same industrial environment. The subsystems (sales, research, and production) in each organization were differentiated from each other in terms of subsystem formal structures, the member's goal orientation, member's time orientations and member's interpersonal orientations. This differentiation was related to the requirements of the particular subenvironment with which each subsystem dealt. A relationship was found between the extent to which the states of differentiation and integration in each organization met the requirements of the environment and the relative economic performance of the organizations.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 1

Study, Time

“Starting in 1918 at General Motors I found to my surprise] that if I followed the prevailing practice of intercorporate relations I would no longer be able to determine the rate of return on investment for these accessory divisions individually or as a group. This would necessarily mean that I would lose some degree of managerial control over my area of operations. At that time, material within General Motors was passing from one operating division to another at cost, or at cost plus some predetermined percentage. My divisions in the United Motors Corporation had sold both to outside customers and to their allied divisions at the market price. I knew that I operated a profit-making group, and I wished to continue to be able to demonstrate this performance to the general management, rather than to have my operating results on interdivisional business swallowed up in the extra bookkeeping profits of some other division. It was a case of keeping the information clear.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 48

Business, Time

“Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers. … Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Faith, Effort

“We have had enough of white presidents. So, let's this time elect a president from the Negro race. What will you do if I say so? There's no question there. We must never forget that we are brothers and sisters in a huge human family. In any level of community, we must become like a family. Even in the Israelite nation, there were Negro people. God has mixed whites, yellow, and blacks all over the world, but especially in the United States. If you go to Israel, you will see many black people there, and you would perhaps ask them, "Are you an Israelite, too?" And he would say "Yes." Maybe in his ancestry, one of the Israelites married an African Negro. I don't know, but they are Israelites by lineage. Most of the people in Israel have black hair, but I very often found blonde hair. Then I would ask them, "Are you an Israelite, too?" And he would say "Yes."”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

I imagine that in his ancestral line, one Israelite woman married a white man. Still, he's an Israelite. Restoration Through Indemnity And America's Role http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon75/SunMyungMoon-750323.htm 1974-03-23

God, People, World, Family

“This noble pledge has endured trying hours in the United Nations history, and it still guides our work today. Yet the ideals of the charter are now facing a challenge as serious as any since the U. N.'s founding, a global movement of violent extremists. By deliberately murdering the innocent to advance their aims, these extremists defy the fundamental principles of international order. They show contempt for all who respect life and value human dignity. They reject the words of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or any standard of conscience or morality. They imperil the values of justice and human rights that gave birth to the United Nations, values that have fueled an unprecedented expansion of freedom across the world.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Life, World, Justice, History

“It doesn’t take much refection—and indeed only a little research—to discover that the kind of conservative readings of the Genesis story that are often put up in opposition to what it is thought Darwin said (often without bothering to read what Darwin himself had to say) bear almost no relation to what we find in the refection of the fathers on the account found in Genesis. Such Christians have imagined a tradition that has no right to call itself tradition.”

Andrew Louth (1944)

"Being Human," The Wheel, Spring/Summer 2018

Imagination, Reading

“I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately - the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.”

Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People

Dr. Stockmann, Act IV
An Enemy of the People (1882)

Life, Communication

“The brigand's life is a very fine life
For men of generous mind;
We rob the rich to help the poor
And succour oppressed mankind.
The rich, dear souls, are close around
And it's easy work to skelp 'em;
But the poor — damn their eyes — can never be found
When we're in the mood to help them.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Golden Ass (1999)

Life, Men, Soul, Mood

“It is necessary to study not only parts and processes in isolation, but also to solve the decisive problems found in organization and order unifying them, resulting from dynamic interaction of parts, and making the the behavior of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole.”

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

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 31

Behavior, Problem, Decision, Study

“The fame of his bravery and news of his plundering raids spread abroad, attracting to his standard a body of Khalji warriors then found hanging about all over Hindustan. His exploits were reported to Qutbuddin Aibak, who sent him a robe of honour and appointed him to invade Bihar as the Sultan’s general in 1202 C. E.15 Ikhtiyaruddin Bakhtiyar Khalji conquered extensively in Bihar and Bengal but then died unhonoured and unsung.”

Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji Turkic military general of Qutb al-Din Aibak

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4

“Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (2012). Indian muslims: Who are they.

Women, Men, Children, Evil

“Pozzolana.—There is… a kind of powder which from natural causes produces astonishing results. It is found in the neighborhood of Baiae and in the country belonging to the towns round about Mt. Vesuvius. This substance when mixed with lime and rubble not only lends strength to buildings of other kinds, but even when piers of it are constructed in the sea, they set hard under water.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VI "Pozzolana" Sec. 1

Nature, Water, Sea, Country

“Harry Dresden: Murphy had found a spot on the street, which made me wonder if she didn't have some kind of magical talent after all. Only some kind of precognitive ESP could have gotten us a parking space on the street, in the shadow of a building, with both of us in sight of the apartment building's entrance.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, White Night (2007)

“The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Books, Age, Optimism, Knowledge

“Fellini has sometimes been accused of not being interested in the work of other directors but I never found this accusation to hold true. The Federico I knew was not only a voracious reader but extremely interested in hearing about international directors, most notably, Nanni Moretti, Pedro Almodovar, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Clearly, part of the pleasure of discussing these directors was the stimulus for new ideas that their latest films gave him. Although we never explored Portuguese film in any depth, the films of Manoel de Oliveira and Joao César Monteiro genuinely fascinated Federico. At the urging of Mastroianni, he went to see A Divina Comédia (1991), Oliveira’s superb allegory about Western civilization, and returned enthralled. He had long been obsessed by the theme of insane asylums and Oliveira’s masterful blend of philosophy and religion appealed to him at a time in his life when such questions as death and resurrection had become pressing concerns. I do not know where or in what format Federico saw Monteiro’s Recordaçoes de Casa Amarela (1989) but it was a film he described as “deliriously eccentric, a satirical bizarrie that Bunuel would have adored."”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini’s favorite directors
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Life, Death, Pleasure, Religion

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Preface
Taken Care Of (1965)

Truth

“Therefore our Constitution will always be the measure of our national morality; and if we were all sorry, it would still be true. I am not sorry, for it founds the government in the character of the people, and hence everything in the future depends upon the popular faith in the original principles of the government. If the people of this country do believe with the fathers that there are self-evident, original, and indefeasible human rights, then slavery will surely, quietly, and legally be terminated, under the Constitution of the United States. If they do not believe that there are such rights, then slavery will, just as surely, quietly, and legally, be established under the Constitution, which, as the paramount law of the land, will legalize it in New York as well as in Alabama, leaving the policy of adopting it to be decided by individual judgment.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Faith, Law, Future

“Even the children of Carmona were divided into two camps, and below the ramparts, among the brushwood and rocks, we battled with stones shouting "Long live the duke!" and others, "Down with the tyrant!" We fought viciously, but I was never satisfied with this game — the fallen enemy rose again, the dead came back to life. The day after a battle, victors and vanquished both found themselves unharmed.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 72

Life, Children, Game, Dead

“I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural. From that moment I became so embedded in boxing. I found a friend in boxing.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Sugar Ray Leonard on his first taste of boxinghttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20061006/ai_n16774982/pg_2

Nature, Box

“I've always subconsciously looked out for the total Christian and when I found him he turned out to be a non-practicing Jew.”

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

Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches (2000) ISBN-13: 978-0761525516 Referring to Richard M. Clurman (1924 - 1996), a journalist, editor and administrator best known for his long association with Time magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/06/03/1996_06_03_056_TNY_CARDS_000376587

“If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.”

Edward Condon (1902–1974) physicist

Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman, by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster (1955), p. 102

Question, Effort

“In [the story of Jesus] I found … a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

This Hebrew Lord (1974), p. 13

Life, Freedom

“Every measurable thing except numbers is imagined in the manner of a continuous quantity. Therefore, for the mensuration of such a thing, it is necessary that points, lines, and surfaces, or their properties, be imagined. For in them… measure or ratio is initially found… Therefore, every intensity which can be acquired successively ought to be imagined by a straight line perpendicularly erected on some point of the space or subject of the intensible thing, e. g., a quality… And since the quantity or ratio of lines is better known and is more readily conceived by us—nay the line is in the first species of continua, therefore such intensity ought to be imagined by lines… Therefore, equal intensities are designated by equal lines, a double intensity by a double line, and always in the same way if one proceeds proportionally.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Tractatus de Configurationibus et Qualitatibus et Motuum (c. 1350)

Way, Imagination, Success

“Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.”

Emily Dickinson Life, and Death, and Giants —

Life, p. 54
Collected Poems (1993)

Love, God

“Good love is hard to find.
You got lucky, babe.
You got lucky, babe, when I found you.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

You Got Lucky, written with Mike Campbell
Lyrics, Long After Dark (1982)

Love

“I say that some things can be said to belong to the law of nature in two ways: One way is as first practical principles known from their terms or as conclusions necessarily entailed by them. These are said to belong to the natural law in the strictest sense, and there can be no dispensation in their regard… But this is not the case when we speak in general of all the precepts of the second table. For the reasons behind the commands and prohibitions there are not practical principles that are necessary in an unqualified sense, nor are they simply necessary conclusions from such. For they contain no goodness such as is necessarily prescribed for attaining the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what is forbidden is there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from the last end, for even if the good found in these [precepts] were not commanded, the ultimate end could still be loved and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them were not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition of the ultimate end.”

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

Scotus (c. 1300), Ordinatio 3.37 as cited in: Peter A. (2004) "Kwasniewski William of Ockham and the Metaphysical Roots of Natural Law" in: The Aquinas Review, 2004

Love, Law, Way, Nature

“I found a man who claimed he used to be a radio engineer. And if he was an engineer, I was Albert Einstein’s mother, but at least he knew which end of a soldering iron was hot.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

The Knights of Arthur (p. 398)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

“I found a book on how to be invisible
You take a pinch of keyhole,
And fold yourself up,
You cut along the dotted lines.
You think inside out.
You're invisible.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Books, Thinking

“The schools, having found the object of their long, blind searching, shall teach directness, simplicity, naturalness: they shall protect the young against palpable illusion. They shall teach that, while man once invented a process called composition, Nature has forever brought forth organisms. They shall encourage the love of Nature that wells up in every childish heart, and shall not suppress, shall not stifle, the teeming imagination of the young.
They shall teach, as the result of their own bitter experience, that conscious mental effort, that conscious emotionality, are poor mates to breed from, and that true parturition comes of a deep, instinctive, subconscious desire. That true art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life.
That Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile: that in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man's life.
That, thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Love, Life, School, Art

“This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; CCCCXII
Lacon (1820)

Men, Universe, Time

“I find that I have great faith in human nature. I believe that people are good. I believe they are to be trusted. So far as I know, no one has ever betrayed my faith, in any way. If they ever have, I've been spared the knowledge of it.
If I couldn't have faith in human nature, I wouldn't want to live. It is the one thing that could destroy for me the joy of living.
I've come to believe that life, under almost any conditions, is worth while.
I found that out when I had my accident some years ago, and was in the hospital.
I thought, for a couple of weeks, that I would be blind for life. I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life, People, Faith, Way

“They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to his congregation, p. 171
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

World, Dreams, Hell, Solitude

“No kid really wants a cool parent. "Cool" parents, when I was a kid, meant parents who let you smoke weed in the house – or allowed boyfriends to sleep over with their daughters. That would make Sarah Palin “cool.” But, as I remember, we thought those parents were kind of creepy. They were useful, sure, but what was wrong with them that they found us so entertaining? Didn’t they have their own friends?”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

Parent, Sleep, Housing, Daughters

“"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials." --December 2003”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/26/elec04.prez.dean.bin.laden/

People, Fashion

“Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Geerup's Terrible Lizard Classification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhZeowON8l8 (July 28, 2009)

Bird, Universe, Heart

“In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote c. 1870; cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 22
taken from Millet's youth-memories, about the years he lived as an boy close to the wild coast of Normandy, written down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier
1870 - 1875

Men, People, Fear, Home

“First contact with occult, magical and enchanting forces. One of his best friends, a very intelligent and affectionate pink cockatoo, died in the night of 5 January. It was a terrible shock for Max when he found the dead bird in the morning, at the same moment as his father told him of the birth of his sister, Loni. The boy's consternation was so great that he fainted. In his imagination, he linked the two events and made the baby responsible for extinguishing the bird's life. A series of psychological crises and depressions followed. A dangerous amalgamation of birds and human beings became firmly established in his mind and later found expression in his paintings and drawings.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies', Max Ernst; as cited in 'Room 7, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to a childhood experience in 1906, when Max Ernst was c. 15 years old
posthumous

Life, Imagination, Intelligence, Boy

“I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March.”

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

Letter to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph (7 February 1809) on the termination of the American embargo.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

War, People

Quotes about founding page 27

Quotes about founding
page 27