Quotes about founding (4933 quotes, page 43)

“Mr. Lelar gave me a paper for the arrest of Crow Dog. Found defendant on a hill between White River and Rosebud Creek, where I made the arrest. Defendant had no clothes at the time, except a blanket, breechclout, and leggings and was on horseback. I did as I was ordered and took defendant to Fort Niobara.”

Hollow Horn Bear (1850–1913) 19th century Lakota chief and policeman

On the arrest of Crow Dog, in [Harring, Sidney L., Crow Dog's Case: A Chapter in the Legal History of Tribal Sovereignty Harring, American Indian Law Review, 1989, 14, 2, 191-240, http://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/aind14&i=202, 1 March 2018]

Dogs , Time , Clothes

“Truth may be found in the heart of a philosopher but seldom in the figures of a statistician; it is far too delicate a thing to be pinned down to columns of numbers on ruled paper.”

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) American author and conservationist

The Work of Robert Nathan (1920)

Truth , Heart

“He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 17, “To Reset the Clock” (p. 173)

Sleep , Night

“Welcoming Hegel’s idea of reconciliation as akin to his own enterprise of public reason, Rawls drew the line at his vision of the international realm as a domain of violence and anarchy, in which contention between sovereign states was bound to be regulated by war. Habermas’s gesture enlisted Hegel, on the contrary, as a patron of cosmopolitan peace. The first could not square his Law of Peoples with the lawlessness of Hegel’s states, the second could only enrol Hegel for pacific progress by turning him philosophically inside out. Bobbio, by contrast, could take the measure of Hegel’s conception of world history, as a ruthless march of great powers in which successive might founds overarching right, and invoke it in all logic to justify his approval of American imperial violence. Law was born of force, and the maxim of the conqueror – prior in tempore, potior in jure”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

still held.
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 7. "Arms and Rights, The Adjustable Centre" (1998)

War , People , World , Peace

“Sharpe, Lossow suspected, often got what he wanted, but the achievements never seemed to satisfy. His friend, the German decided, was like a man who, searching for a crock of gold, found ten and rejected them all because the pots were the wrong shape.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Lossow, King's German Legion, p. 22
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Search

“At first, I thought I had found in this second figure [a bronze Orpheus, Zadkine made shortly after his return from New York to Paris, in 1944] the perfect solution, but a surprise awaited me. One day my coal merchant delivered to me, here in my studio, some wood for heating; among these logs I found a rudimentary but completely mysterious wooden figure of a man. He seemed to be walking in great strides, his torso suggested by only two simple boards which, in their structure, were very much like an ancient lyre. I immediately began working on a new 'Orpheus', in which the [music-]instrument had truly become part of the man.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 154-155

Music , Parting , Perfection

“A physical theory, like an abstract science, consists of definitions and axioms as first principles, and of propositions, their consequences; but with these differences:—first, That in an abstract science, a definition assigns a name to a class of notions derived originally from observation, but not necessarily corresponding to any existing objects of real phenomena, and an axiom states a mutual relation amongst such notions, or the names denoting them; while in a physical science, a definition states properties common to a class of existing objects, or real phenomena, and a physical axiom states a general law as to the relations of phenomena; and, secondly,—That in an abstract science, the propositions first discovered are the most simple; whilst in a physical theory, the propositions first discovered are in general numerous and complex, being formal laws, the immediate results of observation and experiment, from which the definitions and axioms are subsequently arrived at by a process of reasoning differing from that whereby one proposition is deduced from another in an abstract science, partly in being more complex and difficult, and partly in being to a certain extent tentative, that is to say, involving the trial of conjectural principles, and their acceptance or rejection according as their consequences are found to agree or disagree with the formal laws deduced immediately from observation and experiment.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

Source: "Outlines of the Science of Energetics," (1855), p. 121; Second paragraph

Law , Science

“Mademoiselle,” I said, “it is sometimes difficult for a dog to find a scent, but once he has found it, nothing on earth will make him leave it! That is if he is a good dog! And I, mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, am a very good dog.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases (1974)

Dogs

“Ahmud Shah having a great curiosity to see the hill-fort of Girnal pursued the rebel in that direction… After a short time, the Raja, having consented to pay an annual tribute, made a large offering on the spot. Ahmud Shah left officers to collect the stipulated amount, and returned to Ahmadabad; on the road to which place he destroyed the temple of Somapoor, wherein were found many valuable jewels, and other property.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ahmad Shãh I of Gujrat (AD 1411-1443)Sompur (Gujrat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Time

“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. So far I've found there aren't any. I just wanted to be stopped, and no one will stop me.”

Damien Hirst (1965) artist

Kuhn, Nicola, "You can puff all you like Damien, but the wind's gone out of Britart" http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/1999/mar/16/features11.g21, The Guardian, 16 March 1999.

“Our well-founded claim, grounded on continuity, has greatly strengthened, during the same period, by the rapid advance of our population toward the territory — its great increase, especially in the valley of the Mississippi — as well as the greatly increased facility of passing to the territory by more accessible routes, and the far stronger and rapidly-swelling tide of population that has recently commenced flowing into it.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Letter to Richard Pakenham, British minister to the United States, concerning the boundary dispute between the two countries (3 September 1844)
1840s

“While slavery meant Egypt, and slavemasters meant Pharoah, America itself remained the promised land. The slaves knew that it was not in Africa, Europe, or anywhere else that a nation had been founded upon the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. It was their destiny to cross over jordan here, and to make their decisive contribution to the human story here, by partaking of that new birth of freedom that alone could vindicate the cause of all human beings everywhere.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

Source: 2000s, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), p. 164

Men , Truth , Birth , Decision

“Dawn, ever bearing some divine increase
Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world,
Dawn, like a wild-rose in the fields of heaven
Washed grey with dew, awoke, and found the barque
At anchor in a little land-locked bay.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Book VIII, p. 148
Drake, an English Epic (1908)

Love , Wisdom , World , Beauty

“The King's colours were white and black, which he always wore in honour of the Duchess of Valentinois, who was a widow. The Duke of Ferrara and his retinue had yellow and red. Monsieur de Guise's carnation and white. It was not known at first for what reason he wore those colours, but it was soon remembered that they were the colours of a beautiful young lady whom he had been in love with, while she was a maid, and whom he yet loved though he durst not show it. The Duke de Nemours had yellow and black; why he had them could not be found out: Madam de Cleves only knew the reason of it; she remembered to have said before him she loved yellow, and that she was sorry her complexion did not suit that colour. As for the Duke, he thought he might take that colour without any indiscretion, since not being worn by Madam de Cleves it could not be suspected to be hers.”

Madame de La Fayette book La Princesse de Clèves

La Princesse de Clèves (1678) (Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1419178717), p. 89

Love , Beauty

“I think that in the little argument going on now in New York and the differences that have arisen there are emerging three very fundamental principles. One is that it is improper to negotiate or attempt to negotiate or attempt to gain concessions by a great Power out of a little Power by means of occupying that country with your forces. It is the tradition — and I am not saying of one or other country only they have done it — but it is nineteenth-century imperialism that really must be left behind, and I believe that a solution will be found and the principle accepted that those of us who represent the great Powers will not do that.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

"Mr. Bevin on World Politics", The Times, 1 April 1946, p. 4.
Speech at Bristol, 30 March 1946, referring to the negotiations over the United Nations Charter.

Thinking , Country

“The present article is almost wholly devoted to a single problem—the definition of truth. Its task is to construct—with reference to a given language—a materially adequate and formally correct definition of the term 'true sentence. This problem, which belongs to the classical problems of philosophy, raises considerable difficulties. For although the meaning of the term 'true sentence' in colloquial language seems to be quite clear and intelligible, all attempts to define this meaning more precisely have hitherto been fruitless, and many investigations in which this term has been used and which started with apparently evident premisses have often led to paradoxes and antinomies (for which, however, a more or less satisfactory solution has been found). The concept of truth shares in this respect the fate of other analogous concepts in the domain of the semantics of language.”

Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) Polish-American logician

"The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages" (1931) in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938 (1956) Tr. J. H. Woodger.

Fate , Truth , Intelligence , Problem

“.. since then I have found consolation in Blake; 'Without Contraries is no progression', he says in his Proverbs of Hell. And Baudelaire's idea that 'Variety is an essential condition of life' seems to me to be in perfect accord with my aspirations and with my intention, as a Futurist painter, to put life in the place occupied by reasoning in the art of the Cubist period.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, Letters of the great artists', 1963, p. 247

Life , Art , Idea , Hell

“On symbolic use of equalities and proportions. Chapter II.
The analytical method accepts as proven the most famous [ as known from Euclid ] symbolic use of equalities and proportions that are found in items such as:
1. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
2. Quantities being equal to the same quantity have equality between themselves. [a = c & b = c => a = b]
3. If equal quantities are added to equal quantities the resulting sums are equal.
4. If equals are subtracted from equal quantities the remains are equal.
5. If equal equal amounts are multiplied by equal amounts the products are equal.
6. If equal amounts are divided by equal amounts, the quotients are equal.
7. If the quantities are in direct proportion so also are they are in inverse and alternate proportion. [a:b::c:d=>b:a::d:c & a:c::b:d]
8. If the quantities in the same proportion are added likewise to amounts in the same proportion, the sums are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a+c):(b+d)::c:d]
9. If the quantities in the same proportion are subtracted likewise from amounts in the same proportion, the differences are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a-c):(b-d)::c:d]
10. If proportional quantities are multiplied by proportional quantities the products are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => ae:bf::cg:dh]
11. If proportional quantities are divided by proportional quantities the quotients are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => a/e:b/f::c/g:d/h]
12. A common multiplier or divisor does not change an equality nor a proportion. [a:b::ka:kb & a:b::(a/k):(b/k)]
13. The product of different parts of the same number is equal to the product of the sum of these parts by the same number. [ka + kb = k(a+b)]
14. The result of successive multiplications or divisions of a magnitude by several others is the same regardless of the sequential order of quantities multiplied times or divided into that magnitude.
But the masterful symbolic use of equalities and proportions which the analyst may apply any time is the following:
15. If we have three or four magnitudes and the product of the extremes is equal to the product means, they are in proportion. [ad=bc => a:b::c:d OR ac=b2 => a:b::b:c]
And conversely
10. If we have three or four magnitudes and the first is to the second as the second or the third is to the last, the product of the extremes is equal to that of means. [a:b::c:d => ad=bc OR a:b::b:c => ac=b2]
We can call a proportion the establishment of an equality [equation] and an equality [equation] the resolution of a proportion.”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

From Frédéric Louis Ritter's French Tr. Introduction à l'art Analytique (1868) utilizing Google translate with reference to English translation in Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1968) Appendix
In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591)

Change , Time , Success , Parting

“Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is loud without being forceful. It isn't in harmony with the sound of any instrument. This political discussion will mortally offend half my readers and bore the others, who have found a much more precise and vigorous account of such matters in their morning newspapers.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

La politique au milieu des intérêts d'imagination, c'est un coup de pistolet au milieu d'un concert. Ce bruit est déchirant sans être énergique. Il ne s'accorde avec le son d'aucun instrument. Cette politique va offenser mortellement une moitié des lecteurs et ennuyer l'autre qui l'a trouvée bien autrement spéciale et énergique dans le journal du matin.
Vol. II, ch. XXII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Imagination

“Professor Halbfass follows a scholar's methodology in determining the extent of Indo-Greek contact. He is determined to find a document, some written mention, some journey relating to this contact before he would admit it, but by their very nature such evidences can only be very rare considering the time that has lapsed and the changes that have been wrought. But if Professor Halbfass had followed a more inward method or criterion of looking at Greek literature, he would have easily found plentiful evidence of a living Indo-Greek contact, particularly at the deeper level of the spirit. Both shared a common spiritual approach; both intuited man and his world in the same way; both expressed their spiritual intuition in the language of Gods; both taught âtma-vâda, and the theory of Two Selves and Two Ways; both taught the theory of karma, rebirth and moksha. In fact, the Greece of Pythagoras, Plato and Plotinus has more in common with Hindu India than with Christian Europe.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

God , World , Way , Literature

“After five days, the royal canopy moved from Birdhul on Thursday, the 17th of Zi-l Ka’da, and arrived at Kham, and five days afterwards they arrived at the city of Mathra (Madura), the dwelling place of the brother of the Rai Sundar Pandya. They found the city empty, for the Rai had fled with the Ranis, but had left two or three elephants in the temple of Jagnar (Jagganath). The elephants were captured and the temple burnt.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) and his generals conquests in Madura (Tamil Nadu) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 90-91
Khazainu’l-Futuh

“An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 258
As quoted in ...

Personality

“Man found that he was faced with the acceptance of "spiritual" forces, that is to say such forces as cannot be comprehended by the senses, particularly not by sight, and yet having undoubted, even extremely strong, effects. If we may trust to language, it was the movement of the air that provided the image of spirituality, since the spirit borrows its name from the breath of wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew: ruach = smoke). The idea of the soul was thus born as the spiritual principle in the individual. Observation found the breath of air again in the human breath, which ceases with death; even today we talk of a dying man breathing his last. Now the realm of spirits had opened for man, and he was ready to endow everything in nature with the soul he had discovered in himself.”

Sigmund Freud book Moses and Monotheism

Moses and Monotheism (1938)
1930s

Death , Soul , Idea , Nature

“My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats... One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that she was sorry I'd ever been born -- that I'd ruined her life... [She] would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. Sometimes she'd tell me she really could walk and during the night she was going to get up, turn on the gas jets, and kill us both. I would be absolutely terrified... And yet... she encouraged my writing and would tell me that I was a good kid and she didn't know why she acted that way... but then she'd do it again.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Elmira Star Gazette (1973), Interview with Jane Roberts, quoted on p. 14 of Susan M. Watkins' Speaking of Jane Roberts (2001)

Love , Life , Death , Way

“You say, "That man ought to die for transgressing the law of God." Let me suppose a case. Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case; and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands. But you who trifle with your covenants, be careful lest in judging you will be judged. Every man and women has got to have clean hands and a pure heart, to execute judgment, else they had better let the matter alone. Again, suppose the parties are not caught in their iniquity, and it passes along unnoticed, shall I have compassion on them? Yes, I will have compassion on them, for transgressions of the nature already named, or for those of any other description. If the Lord so order it that they are not caught in the act of their iniquity, it is pretty good proof that He is willing for them to live; and I say let them live and suffer in the flesh for their sins, for they will have it to do.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 3:247 (March 16, 1856)
1850s

Love , Women , God , Law

“I found an old baby picture of me… and it was somebody else - not me. It was somebody pink and fat. Who never heard of sick or lonely. Somebody who cried and got fed. And reached up and got held. Slept whenever she wanted to just by closing her eyes. Somebody who mainly just laid there and laughed at the colors waving over, round her head. And chewed on a polka-dot whale. And woke up knowing some new trick nearly every day. Rolled over and drooled on a sheet. Felt your hand pull the quilt back up over me. That's who I started out. And this is who's left.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Jessie
night Mother (1983)

Color , Baby

“The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan. You look at the most racist — you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Quoted from Fox News interview (8 February 2017} in Ted Cruz: ‘The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/08/ted-cruz-the-democrats-are-the-party-of-the-ku-klux-klan/?utm_term=.1afc8c04a4ec
2010s

Law

“We are referred to the period the Revolution [of 1688]. We are told to be contented with those securities for our liberties which our ancestors provided…It is pleaded as an invincible bar to any improvement proposed in favour of the people, though it is not allowed the smallest authority when it is opposed to an enlargement of power: when the crown is to be invested with any new prerogatives, the ancient landmarks may be removed without a scruple, but they are sacred against the best founded claims of the people…The point now is, to inquire, whether, in the course of human affairs, and the changes which time and events have produced, the principle of freedom has preserved those bulwarks and securities with which it was the object of the Revolution to invest it? Whether the crown has not gained a degree of influence beyond the regulated portion assigned by the establishments of our ancestors, and which either has been, or threatens to become, injurious to cause of liberty and to the of the empire?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1800), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXV (London: 1819), pp. 91-93.
1800s

People , Freedom , Change , Time

“I immediately recognized the nearly finished score as incidental music destined by an unlikely congress of muses, including the pre-ghost of Jack Kevorkian, to accompany the death of Tim McVeigh, as his inexplicable circumstances resoundingly invoke the symbols, shapes and numbers found on these pages.”

David Woodard (1964) American writer, conductor and businessman

The Pitch (Apr. 12, 2001)

Death , Music

“A trial in Westminster Hall, in July last, at a large expence, was the consequence; when, solely by not describing so fully and accurately the nature of his last complex machines as was strictly by law required, a verdict was found against him. Had he been at all aware of the consequences of such omission, he certainly would have been more careful and circumspect in his description. It cannot be supposed that he meant a fraud on his country: it is on the contrary, most evident that he was anxiously desirous of preserving to his native country the full benefit of his inventions. Yet he cannot but lament, that the advantages resulting from his own exertion and abilities alone, should be wrested from him by those who have no pretension to merit; that they should be permitted to rob him of his inventions before the expiration of the reasonable period of fourteen years, merely because he has unfortunately omitted to point out all the minutiae of his complicated machines. In short, Mr. Arkwright has chosen a subject in manufactures (that of spinning) of all others the most general, the most interesting, and the most difficult. He has, after near twenty years unparalleled diligence and application, by the force of natural genius, and an unbounded invention, (excellencies seldom united) brought to perfection machines on principles as new in theory, as they are regular and perfect in practice. He has induced men of property to engage with him to a large amount; from his important inventions united, he has produced better goods, of their different kinds, than were ever before produced in this country; and finally, he has established a business that already employs upwards of five thousand persons, and a capital, on the whole, of not less than £200,000, a business of the utmost importance and benefit to this kingdom.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 24

Men , Law , Business , Fraud

“The history of our great state is rich and deep, and our commitment to freedom and justice has always been our strength. … In our hearts, Marylanders are hard-wired for inclusiveness. It's who we are, it's our founding principle, it's part of our identity, and it is our greatest strength.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Inaugural Address http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/01/21/inaugural-address-governor-larry-hogan/" (21 January 2015)

Justice , History , Freedom , Heart

“There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principal.”

Joseph Conrad book Nostromo

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 11
Nostromo (1904)

Peace , Justice , Law

“Fermat died with the belief that he had found a long-sought-for law of prime numbers in the formula 2^{2^n} + 1 = a prime, but he admitted that he was unable to prove it rigorously. The law is not true, as was pointed out by Euler in the example 2^{2^5} + 1 = 4,294,967,297 = 6,700,417 times 641. The American lightning calculator Zerah Colburn, when a boy, readily found the factors but was unable to explain the method by which he made his marvellous mental computation.”

Florian Cajori book A History of Mathematics

Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), p. 180; also cited in Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath's Quotation-book (1914) pp. 156-157. https://books.google.com/books?id=G0wtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156

Law , Boy , Time

““I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”
“Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.””

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

Personality , Training

“[This view is contrasted with all forms of Empiricism, by which it is] assumed that development is uniform across (cognitive) domains, and that the intrinsic properties of the initial state (of the mind) are homogeneous and undifferentiated - an assumption found across a spectrum reaching from Skinner to Piaget”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

who differ on much else
Source: Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Rules and Representations (1980), p. 3 as cited in: Jerry Fodor (1983).

“In Hollywood I would have found the last teapot and it would be falling off the shelf in slow motion and I would have dove and caught it and we would have walked away in slow motion with you know, hands in the air, high fiving each other.”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

“Everything in our modern substitutes for religion—whether Baconian or Rousseauistic—will be found to converge upon the idea of service. The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of national groups or of individuals.
One's answer to this question will depend on one's view of the Rousseauistic theory of brotherhood. … To assert that man in a state of nature, or some similar state thus projected, is good, is to discredit the traditional controls in the actual world. Humility, conversion, decorum—all go by the board in favor of free temperamental overflow. Does man thus emancipated exude spontaneously an affection for his fellows that will be an effective counterpoise to the sheer expansion of his egoistic impulses? …
Unfortunately, the facts have persistently refused to conform to humanitarian theory. There has been an ever-growing body of evidence from the eighteenth century to the Great War that in the natural man, as he exists in the real world and not in some romantic dreamland, the will to power is, on the whole, more than a match for the will to service. To be sure, many remain unconvinced by this evidence. Stubborn facts, it has been rightly remarked, are as nothing compared with a stubborn theory. Altruistic theory is likely to prove peculiarly stubborn, because, probably more than any other theory ever conceived, it is flattering: it holds out the hope of the highest spiritual benefits—for example, peace and fraternal union—without any corresponding spiritual effort.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 7-8

War , World , Peace , Religion

“In the history of physics, every time we've looked beyond the scales and energies we were familiar with, we've found things that we wouldn't have thought were there. You look inside the atom and eventually you discover quarks. Who would have thought that? It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

Way , History , Thinking , Time

“There’s a word the locals use for a backpacker: pachiça. It refers to those who carry their baggage or bundles on their heads. In the old days it applied to slaves – the dispossessed who were forced to make the long trek to the coast. Just then it seemed as though the old word had found a perfect match in these coast-bound, tourist slaves.
I realised too that I had been slave to the nostalgic dream of a pre-war Mozambique passed down as family lore. I had been a pachiça, carrying a pack of saudades handed down through grandparents, parents and siblings. Along the way I’d shed much of the baggage and forged my own relationship with the place, bred a new set of experiences to feed my progeny, or those who cared to listen.”

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

With Both Hands Waving: A Journey Through Mozambique (2001)

War , Family , Dreams , Way

“This current of thought, which has developed mainly in the United States in the Protestant context, claims witchcraft as its own, which makes me boil. They start off with the principle that in the European countryside a tradition of black magic has survived as an aspect of Paganism. They claim to be bringing forth an organized, conscious religion which has survived through the centuries as an underground movement. This is a historical hallucination and, alas, they are founding a Pagan renaissance upon this decadence.”

Christopher Gérard (1962)

Pagan Power in Modern Europe (1999)

Religion

“History is not the arena in which natural scientists look for the truth; quite the contrary, they believe it cannot be found there but rather in the laboratory. From their point of view history will at best yield up stale truths that have been superseded.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 469

Truth , History , Nature

“I have found philanthropy deeply satisfying work. I encourage all people to engage in giving to others, be it through time or money. The point is to be involved. Helping is a joyful experience and enriches the giver as much as those who receive. By enabling people to do good work, I participate in a brighter future for the Jewish people and, I hope, all of humanity.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

Giving Pledge.

Money , People , Hope , Time

“I’m the son of God. I mislead you slightly. I’m the son of the man who creates gods. Again, I mislead you slightly. I’m a son of the man who created and founded Dianetics and Scientology, which creates gods. I’m a son of L. Ron Hubbard. This book is my dying declaration. My last will and testament. My father will order my death. My father does not use the word ‘murder.’ He prefers to use the word ‘suicide.”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

The Telling of Me, by Me (1981)

Death , God , Books , Suicide

“It is my considered opinion that the sweetest relief from suffering and the best comfort in affliction that this world affords are to be found almost entirely in the study of literature, and so I believe that the splendour of historical writing is to be cherished with the greatest delight and given the pre-eminent and most glorious position.”
Cum in omni fere litterarum studio dulce laboris lenimen et summum doloris solamen dum uiuitur insitum considerem, tum delectabilius et maioris praerogatiua claritatis historiarum splendorem amplectendum crediderim.

Henry of Huntingdon book Historia Anglorum

Prologue, pp. 2-3.
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

World , Literature , Study , Affliction

“Without this combination of research methods, it is hard to imagine how this theoretical advance could have been achieved. If I had only relied on the anthropological studies, I would not have believed a student's report when professional anthropologists provided conflicting interpretations of the same community. Relying on the survey data alone, it would not have occurred to me to check the correlations between perceptions of conflict and perceptions of cooperation. If I had found a zero correlation, I could not have known how to interpret it.”

William Foote Whyte (1914–2000) American sociologist

Source: Participant observer, 1994, p. 242; As cited in: Ickis (2014)

Imagination , Communication , Study

“It didn't matter what we did or where we did it as long as we were together. We knew we'd found what most people either pursue in years of futile search or dismiss as a fantasy at the outset: the missing half of ourselves. The real thing.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

The Death of Cynthia Horner (1994)

People , Search

“Moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive… at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

“The balance had been upset and the reactions from the American press and intelligence services were enraged. In a secret American report recently found in the archives, we read that Mattei's power must be contained at all costs and his possibilities for influencing the government must be reduced. Mattei is not only a force in industry, oil, and politics by now, but he also has a hold on information, because in 1957, through ENI, he took control of II Giorno, a Milanese daily, which at that time was much more important than it is today. It provided very lively coverage, had the best and brightest writers, it was present in every country in the world, and most of all, it had a policy of true support for the countries which were trying to free themselves from the colonial yoke, a policy of open support toward Algeria, for example, which was at the time a French colony. France was losing this colony, but there was a war, a savage repression from the French to hold onto their colony. Mattei sent Italo Pietra to Algeria, who later became the editor-in-chief of Il Giorno. He was the first, unofficial representative of Mattei who negotiated not with the French, but with the Algerians, the National Liberation Front”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 25

War , Secret , World , Intelligence

“The origins of the Internet are to be found in ARPANET, a computer network set up by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in September 1969. ARPA was formed i 1958 by the Defense Department of the United States with the task of mobilizing research resources, particularly from the university world, toward building technological military superiority over the Soviet Union in the wake of the launching of the first Sputnik in 1957.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 1, Lessons from the History of the Internet, p. 10

World , Universe

“Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed; now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ;
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy,
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.”
Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim. Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis. Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum; Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis, Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Brute sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna
Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim.
Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis.
Illa tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum;
Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis,
Hic de prole tua reges nascentur et ipsis
Totius terrae subditus orbis erit.
Bk. 1, ch. 11; p. 101.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Fate , Time , Sea , Happiness

“We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism. And of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles. It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they're pious — to use both vanity and pride to go after the Church.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

2008 campaign speech at Ave Maria University, quoted in * 2012-02-21
Media Shifts Attention To Rick Santorum’s 2008 Speech About Satan’s Influence On U.S.
Alex
Alvarez
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/media-shifts-attention-to-rick-santorums-2008-speech-about-satans-influence-on-u-s/
2012-02-21

People , World , Way , Country

“I have consistently opposed a flag-burning amendment, and voted against its passage. Flag desecration is hateful and worthy of condemnation, and I would support any statory means possible to curtail desecration of the flag. But I believe that the importance of the Bill of Rights -- our nations founding document -- requires us to establish a very high threshold for agreeing to change it. does the amendment address some extreme threat to our country, or redress some outrageous wrong? In this case, abhorrent though flag desecration may be, it simply does not meet that test.”

Joe Lieberman (1942) politician from the United States

Associated Press policy Q&A, "Flag Amendment," Jan 25, 2004.

Hate , Support , Change , Country

“Copious springs are found where there are mines of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and the like, but they are very harmful.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter III, Sec. 5

Spring

“The Revolution was in full swing. The struggle was becoming increasingly irreconcilable and bloodier, much of what was happening did not fit in with my outlook. But after all there was still the unfinished task, women's liberation. Women, of course, had received all rights but in practice, of course, they still lived under the old yoke: without authority in family life, enslaved by a thousand menial household chores, bearing the whole burden of maternity, even the material cares, because many women now found life alone as a result of the war and other circumstances.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life , Women , War , Family

“No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not be this — or that — or the other; always precisely the things he wanted to be. He had not wit or scope or force. Judges always ranked him beneath a rival, if he had any; and he believed the judges were right. His work seemed to him thin, commonplace, feeble. At times he felt his own weakness so fatally that he could not go on; when he had nothing to say, he could not say it, and he found that he had very little to say at best.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Suffering , Time

“[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine…Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

As quoted by Menabrea, Luigi (1842). Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq.. Scientific Memoirs (Richard Taylor): 694.

Music , Science

“I know that back in the twenties everyone who saw it judged John Barrymore's Hamlet to be unforgettable. Great though it was, I found his Richard III even more impressive. Barrymore's sinister, half-mad hunchback became incandescent as he gleefully anticipated his conquest of the Lady Anne. The genius of the actor contrived a slight but inspired alteration of Shakespeare's: 'Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?' The change to 'Never was woman in this manner wooed; never was woman in this manner won' heightened the deviltry in Richard's gloating.”

Marc Connelly (1890–1980) American playwright

Source: Voices offstage: a book of memoirs, (1968), p. 237; Cited in: Michael A. Morrison (1999) John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor. p. 345

Change , Madness

“The express pulled into the Stazione Termini in Rome five minutes ahead of schedule with a feminine shriek. Ruiz found a porter with no difficulty, tipped him the standard 100 lire for his two pieces of luggage, and gave directions. The priest’s Italian was adequate, but hardly standard; it made the facchino grin with delight every time Ruiz opened his mouth. He had learned it by reading, partly in Dante, mostly in opera libretti, and consequently what he lacked in accent he made up for in flowery phrases; he was unable to ask the way to the nearest fruit stall without sounding as though he would throw himself into the Tiber unless he got an answer.”

James Blish book A Case of Conscience

Source: A Case of Conscience (1958), Chapter 14 (p. 171)

Way , Learning , Time , Reading

“Homer excels in Genius, Virgil in Judgment. Homer as conscious of his great Riches and Fullness entertains the Reader with great Splendor and Magnificent Profusion. Virgil's Dishes are well chosen, and tho not Rich and Numerous, yet serv'd up in great Order and Decency. Homer's Imagination is Strong, Vast and Boundless, an unexhausted Treasure of all kinds of Images; which made his Admirers and Commentators in all Ages affirm, that all sorts of Learning were to be found in his Poems. Virgil's Imagination is not so Capacious, tho' his Ideas are Clear, Noble, and of great Conformity to their Objects. Homer has more of the Poetical Inspiration. His Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence, and often breaks out in Flashes, which Surprise, Dazle and Astonish the Reader: Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame, which pleases and delights, but never blazes in that extraordinary and surprising manner. Methinks there is the same Difference between these two great Poets, as there is between their Heros. Homer's Hero, Achilles, is Vehement, Raging and Impetuous. He is always on Fire, and transported with an immoderate and resistless Fury, performs every where Miraculous Atchievements, and like a rapid Torrent overturns all things in his way. Æneas, the Hero of the Latine Poet, is a calm, Sedate Warriour. He do's not want Courage, neither has he any to spare: and the Poet might have allowed him a little more Fire, without overheating him. As for Invention, 'tis evident the Greek Poet has mightily the advantage. Nothing is more Rich and Fertile than Homer's Fancy. He is Full, Abundant, and Diffusive above all others. Virgil on the other hand is rather dry, than fruitful. 'Tis plain the Latin Poet in all his famous Æneis, has very little, if any Design of his own …”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

Preface to King Arthur http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/blackmore-king-arthur-I (1697)

Age , Way , Imagination , Idea

“While I don't like to encourage nationalism, I must admit that I feel… patriotic with regard to the ideals that the Founding Fathers had and on which this country was founded. I just wish that my fellow Americans knew more of our own history and of earlier European history to know what those ideals actually were.”

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

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Feeling , History , Country

“Rules emerge as a spontaneous order–they are found–not deliberately designed by one calculating mind. Initially constructivist institutions undergo evolutionary change adapting beyond the circumstances that gave them birth. What emerges is a form of “social mind” that solves complex organization problems without conscious cognition.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics," 2002, p. 552.

Birth , Problem , Change

“Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

What Is Reality?

Nature

“While I had enjoyed other jobs, I loved command. I had been in a command position for ten of the previous twenty-six years. But each new position was initially daunting. As I suspect many leaders feel, I was never sure if I could command at the next level until I actually assumed the job. I remembered how Douglas Southall Freeman, in Lee's Lieutenants, had described Lee's challenges in determining which brigade commanders could actually handle the responsibilities of a division or corps. The most aggressive brigade commanders often lacked the intangible qualities required for more senior leadership. Of course I often wondered about myself. As the demands of the positions differed, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that? Experience taught me that many factors would shape my "command style," and it would be some time before I had settled into it.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 95-96

Love , Feeling , Question , Learning

“Americans officials have found it hard to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe really have worried more about how the United States might handle or mishandle the problem on Iraq — by undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action — than they have ever worried about Iraq itself and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 61

Problem

“I screwed up the first competition and she stayed with me. That's when I knew I'd found the one.”

Scott Moir (1987) Canadian figure skater

Scott Moir, quoted by Olympic Channel (2018)
Partnership with Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir about Virtue

“What cannot be healed has been healed. What was lost forever has been found. Therefore let that which cannot be forgiven be forgiven.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

“There is nothing like [Indian cruelty] in history in any part of the world and the result was that the aboriginal Indians were regarded as ravening wolves or worse and deprived of all sympathy, while the Whites stole their lands and killed their game. No one who knew the true nature of the Indian felt any regret that they were driven off their hunting grounds. This attitude was found wherever the Whites came in conflict with them and explains why they were scarcely regarded as human beings.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

World , History , Game , Nature

“Every orthodox church is founded on mistake and falsehood. Every good orthodox minister asserts what he does not know, and denies what he does know.”

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

The Truth (1896)

“She found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones.”

Octavia E. Butler book Dawn

Part IV “The Training Floor” chapter 9 (p. 242)
Dawn (1987)

“Our difficulty in pursuing a rational foreign policy in the Middle East—or anywhere else—is compounded by the fact that we ourselves, as a nation, seem to be as confused as the Iraqis concerning the possibility of non-tyrannical majority rule. We continue to enjoy the practical benefits of political institutions founded upon the convictions of our Founding Fathers and Lincoln, but there is little belief in God-given natural rights, which are antecedent to government, and which define and limit the purpose of government. Virtually no one prominent today, in the academy, in law, or on government, subscribes to such beliefs. Indeed, the climate of opinion of our intellectual elites is one of violent hostility to any notion of a rational foundation for political morality. We, in short, engaged in telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions, without any reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

God , Hostility , Law , Nature

“And what do ye say then? — That Spring long departed
Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;
— That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;
We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted
Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song III: It Grew Up Without Heeding

Dreams , Spring , Flowers , Winter

“If thou hast sought happiness and missed it, but hast found wisdom instead, thou art fortunate.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 85

Wisdom , Art , Happiness

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Glide Path

Glide Path (1963) Chapter 27
1960s

Life , Men , World , Question

“The debate as to where "magic" ends and "religion" begins is an old one, and it appeared to have been settled some decades ago when scholars concluded that no discernible boundary was to be found.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: The debate as to where "magic" ends and "religion" begins is an old one, and it appeared to have been settled some decades ago when scholars concluded that no discernible boundary was to be found. As a result, the two were often lumped together in the adjective "magico-religious"...

Religion , Appearance

“No! 'tis the present world that prompts the song,
The world we see, the world that feels the wrong,
The world of men, whose arguments ye know,
Of men, long curb'd to servitude and wo,
Men, rous'd from sloth, by indignation stung,
Their strong hands loos'd, and found their fearless tongue;
Whose voice of fire, whose deep-descending steel
Shall speak to souls, and teach dull nerves to feel.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Think not, ye knaves, whom meanness styles the Great,
Drones of the Church and harpies of the State, —
Ye, whose curst sires, for blood and plunder fam'd,
Sultans or kings or czars or emp'rors nam'd,
Taught the deluded world their claims to own,
And raise the crested reptiles to a throne, —
Ye, who pretend to your dark host was given
The lamp of life, the mystic keys of heaven;
Whose impious arts with magic spells began
When shades of ign'rance veil'd the race of man;
Who change, from age to age, the sly deceit
As Science beams, and Virtue learns the cheat;
Tyrants of double powers, the soul that blind,
To rob, to scourge, and brutalize mankind,
Think not I come to croak with omen'd yell
The dire damnations of your future hell,
To bend a bigot or reform a knave,
By op'ning all the scenes beyond the grave.
I know your crusted souls: while one defies
In sceptic scorn the vengeance of the skies,
The other boasts, — “I ken thee, Power divine,
“But fear thee not; th' avenging bolt is mine." No! 'tis the present world that prompts the song,
The world we see, the world that feels the wrong,
The world of men, whose arguments ye know,
Of men, long curb'd to servitude and wo,
Men, rous'd from sloth, by indignation stung,
Their strong hands loos'd, and found their fearless tongue;
Whose voice of fire, whose deep-descending steel
Shall speak to souls, and teach dull nerves to feel.

Men , World , Feeling , Soul

“We know well the means by which this association of the lord, priest, merchant, judge, soldier, and king founded its domination. It was by the annihilation of all free unions: of village communities, guilds, trades unions, fraternities, and mediæval cities.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: We know well the means by which this association of the lord, priest, merchant, judge, soldier, and king founded its domination. It was by the annihilation of all free unions: of village communities, guilds, trades unions, fraternities, and mediæval cities. It was by confiscating the land of the communes and the riches of the guilds; it was by the absolute and ferocious prohibition of all kinds of free agreement between men; it was by massacre, the wheel, the gibbet, the sword, and the fire that Church and State established their domination, and that they succeeded henceforth to reign over an incoherent agglomeration of subjects, who had no direct union more among themselves.
It is now hardly thirty or forty years ago that we began to reconquer, by struggle, by revolt, the first steps of the right of association, that was freely practised by the artisans and the tillers of the soil through the whole of the middle ages.
And, already now, Europe is covered by thousands of voluntary associations for study and teaching, for industry, commerce, science, art, literature, exploitation, resistance to exploitation, amusement, serious work, gratification and self-denial, for all that makes up the life of an active and thinking being. We see these societies rising in all nooks and corners of all domains: political, economic, artistic, intellectual. Some are as shortlived as roses, some hold their own since several decades, and all strive — while maintaining the independence of each group, circle, branch, or section — to federate, to unite, across frontiers as well as among each nation; to cover all the life of civilized men with a net, meshes of which are intersected and interwoven.

Communication

“Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realising sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly. He can do this only by putting his own purpose as a yeast into their hearts. The influence of the right sort of preachers cannot be spared. The human race is not yet so far advanced that it can dispense with the impulses that come from men of more than average intensity of moral energy.
Let us produce, through the efficacy of a better moral life and of a deeper moral experience, a surer faith in the ultimate victory of the good.
Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?

Truth , Religion , Perfection

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

From Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon (1964). Baldwin's text for the volume can be found " here https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cibs".
Context: One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found - and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

Life

“I was found innocent, and I was still banned for life.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)
Context: If I had been the kind of fellow who brooded when things went wrong, I probably would have gone out of my mind when Judge Landis ruled me out of baseball. I would have lived in regret. I would have been bitter and resentful because I felt I had been wronged. But I haven't been resentful at all. I thought when my trial was over that Judge Landis might have restored me to good standing. But he never did. And until he died I had never gone before him, sent a representative before him, or placed before him any written matter pleading my case. I gave baseball my best and if the game didn't care enough to see me get a square deal, then I wouldn't go out of my way to get back in it. Baseball failed to keep faith with me. When I got notice of my suspension three days before the 1920 season ended — it came on a rained-out day — it read that if found innocent of any wrongdoing, I would be reinstated. If found guilty, I would be banned for life. I was found innocent, and I was still banned for life.

Life

“We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

"Information Management: A Proposal" https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html (March 1989), the original proprosal for the software project at CERN that became the World Wide Web.
Context: We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use. The passing of this threshold accelerated by allowing large existing databases to be linked together and with new ones.

Way , Universe

“He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: The most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno... The treatise bears the quaint title of 'De Solido intra Solidum contento naturaliter (1669,)' by which the author intended to express 'On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions enclosed within solid Rocks.'... Steno had compared the fossil shells with their recent analogues, and traced the various gradations from the state of mere calcification, when their natural gluten only was lost, to the perfect substitution of stony matter. He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.

Mountain , Fish , Animals

“Have I not found a happy earth?
I least should breathe a thought of pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
I'd almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk,
And once again to woo thee mine —
It seems in after-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

"The Miller's Daughter" (1832)

Life , God , Pain , Birth

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

Life , Truth , Communication , Forgetting

“No one was required to believe in the gods as Christians believe in their creeds. Socrates had always been scrupulous in observance of every accepted principle and practice of community life. However, from his questioning he had developed a civic and personal morality founded on reason rather than custom.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates (pp. 50-51)
Classics Revisited (1968)
Context: No one was required to believe in the gods as Christians believe in their creeds. Socrates had always been scrupulous in observance of every accepted principle and practice of community life. However, from his questioning he had developed a civic and personal morality founded on reason rather than custom. He envisioned it as subject to continuous criticism and revaluation in terms of the ever-expanding freedom of morally autonomous but cooperating persons, who together made up a community whose characteristic aim was an organically growing depth, breadth, intensity of experience — experience finally of that ultimate reality characterized by Socrates as good, true and beautiful.
The accusers were right. This is a new religion which bears scant resemblance to the old. Civic piety is founded on the recognition of ignorance and the nurture of the soil until it becomes capable of true knowledge — which is a state of being, a moral condition called freedom. The Greek city-state, not to speak of the tribal community, knew nothing of freedom in this sense, but only the liberty that distinguished the free man from the slave.

Life , God , Communication , Question

“We define (and so come to feel) the individual in the light of our narrowed "spotlight" consciousness which largely ignores the field or environment in which he is found. "Individual" is the Latin form of the Greek "atom"—that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person's head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment. This implies that the only true atom is the universe—that total system of interdependent "thing-events" which can be separated from each other only in name. For the human individual is not built as a car is built. He does not come into being by assembling parts, by screwing a head on to a neck, by wiring a brain to a set of lungs, or by welding veins to a heart. Head, neck, heart, lungs, brain, veins, muscles, and glands are separate names but not separate events, and these events grow into being simultaneously and interdependently. In precisely the same way, the individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is—rather literally—to be spellbound.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 53

Fools , Cars , Way , Feeling

“Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel?”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

" Love and Duty http://www.readbookonline.net/read/4310/14259/", l. 1- 21 (1842)
Context: Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
Or all the same as if he had not been?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law
System and empire? Sin itself be found
The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.

Love

“Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)
Context: We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.
What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

Life , God , Faith

“Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.1, p. 36
Context: Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of America and of Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections: but, to the ordinary explorer or collector, the dense forests of equatorial Asia and Africa, which constitute the favourite habitation of the Orang, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla, present difficulties of no ordinary magnitude: and the man who risks his life by even a short visit to the malarious shores of those regions may well be excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him. In such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the man-like Apes originated...

Thinking

“This mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, Substance, Energy, Space, Ether, Mind, Being, the Void, the Infinite—names and ideas which shift in popularity and respectabilitywith the winds of intellectual fashion, of considering the universe intelligent or stupid, superhuman or subhuman, specific or vague. All of them might be dismissed as nonsense-noises if the notion of an underlying Ground of Being were no more than a product of intellectual speculation. But these names are often used to designate the content of a vivid and almost sensorily concrete experience—the "unitive" experience of the mystic, which, with secondary variations, is found in almost all cultures at all times. This experience is the transformed sense of self which I was discussing in the previous chapter, though in "naturalistic" terms, purified of all hocus-pocus about mind, soul, spirit, and other intellectually gaseous words.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 104-105

God , Stupidity , Soul , Intelligence

“It is probably a good idea to search, at some level, for asteroids that come to the Earth's general vicinity. But merely counting the asteroids found is not sufficient. It is desirable to follow up each discovery to examine whether it can or can not be a threat during the next century or so.”

Brian G. Marsden (1937–2010) British astronomer

"1997 XF11 – the true story" in The Journal of the British Astronomical Association Vol. 109, No.1 (February 1999) https://archive.is/20121220165604/www.britastro.org/jbaa/archive/marsden.htm.
Context: It is probably a good idea to search, at some level, for asteroids that come to the Earth's general vicinity. But merely counting the asteroids found is not sufficient. It is desirable to follow up each discovery to examine whether it can or can not be a threat during the next century or so. Objects for which the threat cannot be eliminated should be singled out for special study, notably to the extent of searching for old images in photographic archives. 1997 XF11 was noteworthy for the apathy shown to it prior to the very widespead announcement in March. If proper attention had been given to it earlier, the circumstances that led to the announcement would never have occurred. Sometimes statistics will conspire to draw attention to a problem. Maybe they are trying to tell us something.

Search , Idea

“Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”

John Hancock (1737–1793) American Patriot and statesman during the American Revolution (1737–1793)

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men; and have ever considered it as the indispensable able duty of every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs; and also, as a faithful subject of the State, to use his utmost endeavors to detect, and having detected, strenuously to oppose every traitorous plot which its enemies may devise for its destruction. Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the sun in enlightening the world; and it cannot be either virtuous or honorable to attempt to support a government of which this is not the great and principal basis; and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government which manifestly tends to render the persons and properties of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

Justice

“There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 117.
1870s
Context: [My sixth principle is that] the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.

Idea , Freedom , Loyalty , Happiness

“The Golden Rule of conduct was phrased in terms of mutuality: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The true criterion of every thought and deed must, therefore, be found in its effects upon human personality, human relations, and communion between man and God.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Was Tolstoy justified in interpreting the Sermon on the Mount in anarchistic terms? The answer cannot be found in isolated texts or combinations thereof, but rather in consideration of the basic elements which together constitute the religion of Jesus.... The Golden Rule of conduct was phrased in terms of mutuality: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The true criterion of every thought and deed must, therefore, be found in its effects upon human personality, human relations, and communion between man and God.

God , Personality

“I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in Lynch on Lynch (1997; 2005 revised edition) by Chris Rodley, based on personal interviews made from 1993 to 1996.
Context: I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child. Of course, I had the usual fears, like going to school ... For me, back then, school was a crime against young people. It destroyed the seeds of liberty. The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude.

World

“Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving,
Go no further; come hither; there have been who have found it”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving
Context: Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving,
Go no further; come hither; there have been who have found it,
And these know the House of Fulfilment of Craving;
These know the Cup with the roses around it;
These know the World's Wound and the balm that hath bound it:
Cry out, the World heedeth not, "Love, lead us home!"

Love

“Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"For America's Sake" speech (12 December 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 17
Context: Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control — a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.

Age , Freedom

“We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)
Context: We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.<!--p.201

“Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Acceptance Speech http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm as the Republican Presidential candidate, San Francisco (July 1964)
Unsourced variant: Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
Context: Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Time

“In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression”

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

1940s, State of the Union Address — The Four Freedoms (1941)
Context: In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

World , Freedom , Future

“Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch. 3: "Where Is Good English to Be Found?"
Context: Where is good English to be found? Not among those who might be expected to write well professionally. Schoolmasters seldom write well: it is difficult for any teacher to avoid either pomposity or, in the effort not to be pompous, a jocular conversational looseness. The clergy suffer from much the same occupational disability: they can seldom decide whether to use "the language of the market-place" or Biblical rhetoric. Men of letters usually feel impelled to cultivate an individual style — less because they feel sure of themselves as individuals than because they wish to carve a niche for themselves in literature; and nowadays an individual style usually means merely a peculiar range of inaccuracies, ambiguities, logical weaknesses and stylistic extravagancies. Trained journalists use a flat, over-simplified style, based on a study of what sells a paper and what does not, which is inadequate for most literary purposes.

Quotes about founding page 43

Quotes about founding
page 43