Quotes about founding
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“Dinocrates, I appreciate your design as excellent in composition, and I am delighted with it, but I apprehend that anybody who should found a city in that spot would be censured for bad judgement. For as a newborn babe cannot be nourished without the nurse's milk, nor conducted to the approaches that lead to growth in life, so a city cannot thrive without fields and the fruits thereof pouring into its walls.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

Vitruvius, De Architectura Bk. 2, Introduction, Sec. 3

Life

“Why have stockholders?… What contribution do they make, entitling them to heirship of half the profits of the industrial system, receivable partly in the form of dividends, and partly in the form of increased market values resulting from undistributed corporate gains? Stockholders toil not, neither do they spin, to earn that reward. They are beneficiaries by position only. Justification for their inheritance must be sought outside classic economic reasoning…. [and] can be founded only upon social grounds… that justification turns on the distribution as well as the existence of wealth. Its force exists only in direct ratio to the number of individuals who hold such wealth. Justification for the stockholder's existence thus depends on increasing distribution within the American population. Ideally the stockholder's position will be impregnable only when every American family has its fragment of that position and of the wealth by which the opportunity to develop individuality becomes fully actualized.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

1967, p. xxiii
The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967

Family, Dependency, Wealth

“When this country here was first being founded there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation, so some of them stood up and said “Liberty or death.” Though I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington -- wasn’t nothing nonviolent about old Pat or George Washington. “Liberty or death” was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English. They didn’t care about the odds. Why they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire. And in those days they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful when the sun would never set on them. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little, scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire “Liberty or death.” And here you have 22 million Afro-American black people today catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw. And I’m here to tell you, in case you don’t know it, that you got a new generation of black people in this country who don’t care anything whatsoever about odds. They don’t want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds. No. This is a new generation. If they’re gonna draft these young black men and send them over to Korea or South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese — if you’re not afraid of those odds, you shouldn’t be afraid of these odds.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Detroit, Michigan (12 April 1964)

Death, Men, People, Books

“I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Apparitions, st. 2
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Solitude, Night

“The word garuda in this verse indicates that there are planets of great birds like Garuda. Similarly, the word uraga indicates that there are planets of enormous serpents. Such a description of the various planets of the universe may challenge modern scientists who think that all planets but this earth are vacant. These scientists claim to have launched excursions to the Moon, where they have found no living entities but only big craters full of dust and stone, although in fact the Moon is so brilliant that it acts like the sun in illuminating the entire universe. Of course, it is not possible to convince modern scientists of the Vedic information about the universe. Nonetheless, we are not very much impressed by the words of scientists who say that all other planets are vacant and that only the earth is full of living entities.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 7, Chapter 4, verse 5-7, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/7/4/5-7 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Bird, Thinking, Universe, Sun

“Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 4

Life, Way, Success

“Flattering as it may be to the human mind, & truly honorable as it is to receive from our fellow citizens testimonies of approbation for exertions to promote the public welfare; it is not less pleasing to know that the milder virtues of the heart are highly respected by a society whose liberal principles must be founded in the immediate laws of truth and justice. To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy the benevolent design of the Masonic Institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications which discover the principles which actuate them may tend to convince Mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to the Grand Lodge of Free Masons of Massachusetts (27 December 1792) https://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/86/Letter_from_George_Washington_to_the_Grand_Master_of_Free_Mas_1.html, published in The Writings Of George Washington (1835) by Jared Sparks, p. 201 1790s

Truth, Justice, Law, Heart

“International communism would entirely do away with all national and racial qualities which are founded in human nature itself; in property it sees the most primary cause of the break-down of world trade in the capitalist system. Accordingly it exploits this through an extensive and carefully organised and brutal system of action, setting aside personal values and sacrificing the individual to a hollow mass-idol that is only a travesty of actual life itself. At the same time it ignores and destroys all the idealistic and higher strivings of men and nations, through its own crass and empty materialist principles. On the other hand, National Socialism sees in all these things—in property, in personal values and in nation and race and the principles of idealism—these forces which carry on every human civilisation and fundamentally determine its worth.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Speech at the Nazi party Congress at Nuremberg (September 1935) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm 1930s

Life, Men, World, Communication

“I suspect that many of the world's financial lords are somewhat embarrassed to tell Japan repeatedly at G-7 meetings and elsewhere to adopt a Keynesian solution. Within Europe, central banks and governments think Keynesian theories and policies are absolutely wrong. Despite the remarkable success of pragmatic policies in the United States, true believers in the Invisible Hand reject Keynesian diagnoses and prescriptions. Many observers of Japan have found it intellectually comforting to blame the slump on the plight of the banks, flooded with bad loans dated from the land and equity bubbles and their collapse. They hope that a governmentmanaged and -subsidized rectification of bank balance sheets will trigger overall economic recovery. I think this is a false hope. The bank problem is only a small part of the macroeconomic disaster. It has to be resolved, of course, but resolution that is no substitute for the needed fiscal and monetary stimuli.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

"Reflections on Japanese Political Economy" (1999)

World, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

God, Pleasure, Joy

“Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries—or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me—in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate. Yes, I seem to be a decided pessimist!—But pray do not think, gentlemen, that I am utterly forlorn and misanthropick creature. … Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me. Though not a participant in the Business of life; I am, like the character of Addison and Steele, an impartial (or more or less impartial) Spectator, who finds not a little recreation in watching the antics of those strange and puny puppets called men. A sense of humour has helped me to endure existence; in fact, when all else fails, I never fail to extract a sarcastic smile from the contemplation of my own empty and egotistical career!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to "The Keicomolo"—Kleiner, Cole, and Moe (October 1916), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 27
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, Men, Books

“I saw myself founding a religion, marching into Asia riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand the new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

As quoted in The British in Egypt‎ (1971) by Peter Mansfield, p. 1
Attributed

Religion

“We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address to the International Committee for the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. (17 September 1990)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)

People, Home, Decision, Country

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Stupidity, Law, Soul, Understanding

“I think very much of the people, as an old friend said he thought of woman. He said when he lost his first wife, who had been a great help to him in his business, he thought he was ruined — that he could never find another to fill her place. At length, however, he married another, who he found did quite as well as the first, and that his opinion now was that any woman would do well who was well done by. So I think of the whole people of this nation — they will ever do well if well done by. We will try to do well by them in all parts of the country, North and South, with entire confidence that all will be well with all of us.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Remarks at Bloomington, Illinois (21 November 1860); published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 143
1860s

People, Confidence, Business, Thinking

“I feel entitled to hope that I have found in this new analysis the only natural method according to which mathematics should be applied to nature, and according to which geometry may also be treated, whenever it leads to general and to fruitful results.”

Hermann Grassmann (1809–1877) German polymath, linguist and mathematician

Ausdehnungslehre (1844)

Hope, Feeling, Mathematics, Nature

“From of old, amid the rage of robbery and blood-lust, it came to wise men's consciousness that the human race was suffering from a malady which necessarily kept it in progressive deterioration. Many a hint from observation of the natural man, as also dim half-legendary memories, had made them guess the primal nature of this man, and that his present state is therefore a degeneration. A mystery enwrapped Pythagoras, the preacher of vegetarianism; no philosopher since him has pondered on the essence of the world, without recurring to his teaching. Silent fellowships were founded, remote from turmoil of the world, to carry out this doctrine as a sanctification from sin and misery. Among the poorest and most distant from the world appeared the Saviour, no more to teach redemption's path by precept, but example; his own flesh and blood he gave as last and highest expiation for all the sin of outpoured blood and slaughtered flesh, and offered his disciples wine and bread for each day's meal:—"Taste such alone, in memory of me." … Perhaps the one impossibility, of getting all professors to continually observe this ordinance of the Redeemer's, and abstain entirely from animal food, may be taken for the essential cause of the early decay of the Christian religion as Christian Church. But to admit that impossibility, is as much as to confess the uncontrollable downfall of the human race itself.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part II
Religion and Art (1880)

Men, World, Religion, Food

“Among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it — the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. VII : The War of American and the Unready.

Men, People, Peace, Fashion

“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Alledgedly from a speech to the Illinois House of Representatives (18 December 1840) its called "a remarkable piece of spurious Lincolniana" by Merrill D. Peterson: Lincoln in American Memory. Oxford UP 1995, books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=EADk9ZIMJXEC&q=prohibitory#v=page. Cf.Spurious archive.org https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnqulinc_41 and Harry Miller Lydenberg: Lincoln and Prohibition, Blazes on a Zigzag Trail. Proceedings Of The American Antiquarian Society, No. 1/1952 pdf http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44807229.pdf. Misattributed

Law

“Joy, in Nature's wide dominion,
Mightiest cause of all is found;
And 'tis joy that moves the pinion,
When the wheel of time goes round”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 4
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Nature, Time, Joy

“I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him.”

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

On his meeting with Winston Churchill, quoted in Harold Nicolson's diary (21 July 1943), Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1939-1945 (London: Collins, 1967), p. 286.
1940s

War, Feeling, Time, Joy

“I used to think that my career was to be a police officer, and that is what I was put here to do. But I always kept the faith and always worked hard on my goals and I finally found out on Sept. 25, 1998, why I was put here - (God) called me here to be Mr. Olympia.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

Brenda Young (May 17, 2003) "Living his dream", The News-Star, p. 1C.

God, Faith, Thinking

“… I found that I was unable to explain the foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

The Problems of Quantum Mechanics: Steven Weinberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBninatwq6k (July 17, 2018) YouTube video at 3:58 of 45:42

Way

“When I came to Mogadishu…[t]here was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

As quoted by Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi (2001), Culture and customs of Somalia, p. 41

“I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”

Mark Twain book The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

Children, People, Game, Nature

“Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ever-widening range of dynamical systems, including the electromagnetic field in interaction with matter. The underlying ideas and the laws governing their application form a simple and elegant scheme, which one would be inclined to think could not be seriously modified without having all its attractive features spout. Nevertheless it has been found possible to set up a new scheme, called quantum mechanics, which is more suitable for the description of phenomena on the atomic scale and which is in some respects more elegant and satisfying than the classical scheme. This possibility is due to the changes which the new scheme involves being of a very profound character and not clashing with the features of the classical theory that make it so attractive, as a result of which all these features can be incorporated in the new scheme.”

Paul Dirac book Principles of Quantum Mechanics

I. The Principle of Superposition - 1. The Need for a Quantum Theory
The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed. 1958)

Law, Idea, Thinking, Change

“I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 53

People, World, Faith, Way

“I found them all drunk, I found no one among them athirst in his heart. And my soul was grieved for the sons of men, for they are blind in their minds and do not see that empty they have come into the world and that empty they are destined to come forth from the world.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

28
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

Men, World, Soul, Heart

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love, Marriage, Age, World

“I have found out that reading is a slavish sort of dreaming. If I must dream, why not my own dreams?”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Descobri que a leitura é uma forma servil de sonhar. Se tenho de sonhar, porque não sonhar os meus próprios sonhos?
Apontamentos pessoais ["Autobiographical Notes"] (1910)

Dreams, Reading

““In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.” That’s what President Lincoln once wrote. “Honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” Mr. Speaker, leaders and members of both parties, distinguished guests: We gather here to commemorate a century and a half of freedom -- not simply for former slaves, but for all of us. Today, the issue of chattel slavery seems so simple, so obvious -- it is wrong in every sense. Stealing men, women, and children from their homelands. Tearing husband from wife, parent from child; stripped and sold to the highest bidder; shackled in chains and bloodied with the whip. It’s antithetical not only to our conception of human rights and dignity, but to our conception of ourselves -- a people founded on the premise that all are created equal.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Women, Men, Children, People

“I suppose when my unknown elements are found, more people will pay us attention.”

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) Russian chemist and inventor

An Outline of the System of the Elements

People

“The love of power is a part of human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world, both that of matter and of other human beings, is a datum, which may be humiliating to a certain kind of pride, but can only be denied by a madman. Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships in philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of the proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 16: Power philosophies

Love, Death, Men, God

“Flowers … that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

God, Children, Beauty, Flowers

“To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me... Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat... I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Claude Monet, in an interview, 1895; as quoted in: Paul Hayes Tucker et al. (eds). (1999) Monet in the Twentieth Century. London: Royal Academy of Arts/Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. As cited in: Steven Connor, " About There, or Thereabouts http://www.stevenconnor.com/aboutthere/aboutthere.pdf." talk given at the Catalysis conference on Space and Time, Downing College, Cambridge, 23rd March 2013. 1890 - 1900

Beauty, Painting, Housing

“In law school, I never understood [antitrust law]. I later found out, in reading the writings of those who now do understand it, that I should not have understood it because it did not make any sense then.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On Antitrust law: Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, 8/5/1986, transcript http://a255.g.akamaitech.net/7/255/2422/22sep20051120/www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh99-1064/31-110.pdf at p. 36). 1980s

School, Law, Understanding, Sense

“Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is more false than the one that I have, as the principal objective in my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for. In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by facts and not by reasons…”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

Love, Art, Painting, Falseness

“There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

"A Spur for a Free Horse" in The Sword and the Trowel (February, 1866) http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/spur.htm

God, Way, Fashion, Question

“A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles. When crowds assemble in Trafalgar Square to cheer to the echo an announcement that the government has decided to have them killed, they would not do so if they had all walked twenty-five miles that day. This cure for bellicosity is, however, impracticable, and if the human race is to survive – a thing which is, perhaps, undesirable – other means must be found for securing an innocent outlet for the unused physical energy that produces love of excitement. This is a matter which has been too little considered, both by moralists and by social reformers. The social reformers are of the opinion that they have more serious things to consider. The moralists, on the other hand, are immensely impressed with the seriousness of all the permitted outlets of the love of excitement; the seriousness, however, in their minds, is that of Sin. Dance halls, cinemas, this age of jazz, are all, if we may believe our ears, gateways to Hell, and we should be better employed sitting at home contemplating our sins. I find myself unable to be in entire agreement with the grave men who utter these warnings. The devil has many forms, some designed to deceive the young, some designed to deceive the old and serious. If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not, perhaps, the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age? And is it not, perhaps, a drug which – like opium – has to be taken in continually stronger doses to produce the desired effect? Is it not to be feared that, beginning with the wickedness of the cinema, we should be led step by step to condemn the opposite political party, dagoes, wops, Asiatics, and, in short, everybody except the fellow members of our club? And it is from just such condemnations, when widespread, that wars proceed. I have never heard of a war that proceeded from dance halls.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love, Men, War, Age

“Is it just I who cannot found a school, or can a philosopher never do so?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 69e

School

“What is love? For the rabble love is a kind of variety, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as "shoving the donkey's foreleg in mud," or "putting dust on the head." My love for her, however, was of a totally different kind. I knew her from ancient times— strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. She was the embodiment of all my distant, painful memories among which I sought what I was deprived of, what belonged to me but somehow I was denied. Was I deprived forever?”

Sadegh Hedayat book The Blind Owl

The Blind Owl

Love, Pain, Distant, Memory

“One cannot love anybody without turning away from oneself. However, the crucial question is whether this movement is prompted by the desire to turn toward a positive value, or whether the intention is a radical escape from oneself. “Love” of the second variety is inspired by self-hatred, by hatred of one’s own weakness and misery. The mind is always on the point of departing for distant places. Afraid of seeing itself and its inferiority, it is driven to give itself to the other—not because of his worth, but merely for the sake of his “otherness.” Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”— the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems. Looking away from oneself is here mistaken for love! Isn’t it abundantly clear that “altruism,” the interest in “others” and their lives, has nothing at all to do with love? The malicious or envious person also forgets his own interest, even his “preservation.” He only thinks about the other man’s feelings, about the harm and the suffering he inflicts on him. Conversely, there is a form of genuine “self-love” which has nothing at all to do with “egoism.” It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Selfdirectedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Love, People, Feeling, Question

“The greatness of a culture can be found in its festivals”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 75
Dark Rooms (2002)

“Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining a world.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 7

World, Soul, Sense, Universe

“At dinner, he told us that he was much better, and we pointed out to him, about this, that, for some time however, he had not been out, and had been working eight, ten, or twelve hours a day. "That is just it," said he: "work is my element; I was born and made for it. I have found the limits of my legs; I have found the limits of my eyes; but I have never been able to find the limits of my labour."”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

A dîner, il nous disait qu'il se trouvait beaucoup mieux, et nous lui avons fait observer, à ce sujet, que, depuis quelque temps néanmoins, il ne sortait plus, et travaillat huit, dix, douze heures par jour. «C'est cela même,» disait-il: «le travail est mon élément; je suis né et construit pour le travail. J'ai connu les limites de mes jambes, j'ai connu les limites de mes yeux; je n'ai jamais pu connaître celles de mon travail.» Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, Volume 6, p. 272 https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=qSliAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA272 About

Time

“I have a message for my fans. Whatever you want to do in this world, it is achievable. The most important thing that I've found, that perhaps you could use, is be passionate and enthusiastic in the direction that you choose in life, and you'll be a winner.”

Steve Irwin (1962–2006) Australian environmentalist and television personality

from Crikey! What an Adventure on Animal Planet, 2007nb

Life, World, Passion

“The truth is, being an American is hard. Being part of a democratic government is hard. Being a citizen is hard. It is a challenge. It’s supposed to be. There’s no respite from our ideals. All of us are called to live up to our expectations for ourselves -- not just when it’s convenient, but when it’s inconvenient. When it’s tough. When we’re afraid. The tension throughout our history between welcoming or rejecting the stranger, it’s about more than just immigration. It’s about the meaning of America, what kind of country do we want to be. It’s about the capacity of each generation to honor the creed as old as our founding: “E Pluribus Unum” -- that out of many, we are one.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

Truth, History, Parting, Country

“[W]e ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from chance.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

p, 125
Ancient Medicine

Art, Chance

“The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.
Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

Death, Men, War, Fear

“I can say everything to you. It's a wonderful feeling. I never could tell Francoise that I don't really love her, that our marriage isn't based on any hones ideal. It's founded on my weariness and boredom. Although those are solid enough bases. Plenty of lasting marriages are build on them, God knows. At least, they're always present.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

Love, God, Marriage, Feeling

“For all of our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives. A sense of patriotism and a sense of pride -- a lot of pride. A profound love of family. A passion for our children, a commitment to their education. And that's why I believe our grandchildren will look back on this period of isolation as an aberration, as just one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship. But we cannot, and should not, ignore the very real differences that we have -- about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

Love, Friendship, Children, People

“King of the animals — as thou hast described him — I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest — because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth. But we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Children, Truth, Sense, Animals

“You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Cited in Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury: 1868-1880, Vol. 2. (1921), p. 205.
Sourced but undated

Men, Courage

“One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government's primary concerns.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address to the Republican State Central Committee Convention (7 September 1973)
1970s

Law, Falseness

“"'No glamour?' Magnus inquired.
'You said that you wanted me to join you on travels that would be a ceaseless round of debauchery,' Ragnor told him. Magnus beamed. 'I did!' He paused. 'Forgive me. I do not see the connection.'
'I have found I have better luck with the ladies in my natural state,' Ragnor told him. 'Ladies enjoy a bit of variety. There was a woman in the court of Louis the Sun King who said none could compare to her "dear little cabbage." I hear it's become quite a popular term of endearment in France. All thanks to me.'"”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Magnus Bane and Ragnor Fell in 1791, p. 6-7.
The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)

Travel, Forgiveness, Nature, Sun

“Then a overflowing desire comes to me, absurd, of a sort of satanism before Satan, in that one day […] an escape out of God can be found and the deepest of us stops, I don't know how, to be a part of being or not being.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Os Grandes Trechos, s/n. Translated from the Portuguese Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006
The Book of Disquiet
Original: E então vem-me o desejo transbordante, absurdo, de uma espécie de satanismo que precedeu Satã, de que um dia [...] se encontre uma fuga para fora de Deus e o mais profundo de nós deixe, não sei como, de fazer parte do ser ou do não ser.

God, Parting

“Doctor Paul Proteus, son of a successful man, himself rich with prospects of being richer, counted his material blessings. He found that he was in excellent shape to afford integrity.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 13 (p. 132)

Success

“You listeners, the ones who found me first are, I believe, the future of great art thinkers. Because anyone that's found me now I really think is grabbing on to the ideas that I have, more than anything. It's about the music but it's also about the story. So thank you guys for loving and reading the story and being as into it and as passionate as I am.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Interview with DJ Ron Slomowicz at About.com http://dancemusic.about.com/od/artistshomepages/a/LadyGagaInt_2.htm

Love, Art, Music, Guy

“The next thing I know, I'm on the set of the movie Magic Mike. The movie is directed by a director named Steven Soderbergh, who's an amazing, amazing director, he's done a lot of great films. And, of course, Channing Tatum's in the movie. In addition, there's an actor by the name of Matthew McConaughey, who's attached to the movie. [Several audience members cheer] I'm a huge fan of Matthew McConaughey, okay? When I found out that I was gonna work with him, I was so excited, you know? People ask me, "Really, you get star-struck?" Hell yeah! I'm a comedian, not an actor. So, I show up, and, immediately, they send me to the makeup trailer that's outside. So, I go into the makeup trailer, I sit down, they start working on my hair, they start putting makeup on me, and in comes Matthew McConaughey, and he sits down on the chair right next to me. And I start freaking out, "Oh, my God, that's Matthew McConaughey!" [Stutters excitedly] And, now, I decide to introduce myself before I did or said something stupid, right? So, I look over to him, and I say, "Excuse me, Mr. McConaughey? How are you doing? My name's Gabriel Iglesias, I'm going to be playing the role of Tobias, the club DJ, and I just wanted to say Hello, and that it's an honor to work with you." And, in my head, I'm thinking, "I hope he's the same guy. I hope he's the same person in the movies, I hope his voice is the same, I hope his accent's the same." And he turns to me, and he says, [Imitating Matthew McConaughey] "All riiight." [Audience cheers] "How you doin' there, big man? You doin' good?" "I'm doing good." "All riiight."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

And, I'm spazzing out. [Gives excited gibberish]
Aloha, Fluffy (2013)

God, People, Stupidity, Hope

“In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating Series and the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the direct method of Fluxions, and the next year in January had the Theory of Colours, and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of Fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon, and having found out how to estimate the force with which [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere, from Kepler's Rule of the periodical times of the Planets being in a sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the centers of their orbs I deduced that the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since. What Mr Hugens has published since about centrifugal forces I suppose he had before me. At length in the winter between the years 1676 and 1677 I found the Proposition that by a centrifugal force reciprocally as the square of the distance a Planet must revolve in an Ellipsis about the center of the force placed in the lower umbilicus of the Ellipsis and with a radius drawn to that center describe areas proportional to the times. And in the winter between the years 1683 and 1684 this Proposition with the Demonstration was entered in the Register book of the R. Society. And this is the first instance upon record of any Proposition in the higher Geometry found out by the method in dispute. In the year 1689 Mr Leibnitz, endeavouring to rival me, published a Demonstration of the same Proposition upon another supposition, but his Demonstration proved erroneous for want of skill in the method.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

(ca. 1716) A Catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection of Books and Papers Written by Or Belonging to Sir Isaac Newton https://books.google.com/books?id=3wcjAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR18 (1888) Preface Also partially quoted in Sir Sidney Lee (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography Vol.40 http://books.google.com/books?id=NycJAAAAIAAJ (1894)

Books, Age, Thinking, Winter

“[T]he philosophy of Plotinus has the defect of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without: when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth; it is to be found in the doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as in the Stoics and Epicureans. But at first it was only doctrinal, not temperamental; for a long time it failed to kill scientific curiosity. […] Plotinus is both an end and a beginning—an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom.”

Bertrand Russell book A History of Western Philosophy

[Russell, Bertrand, w:Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, https://books.google.com/books?id=iQZ6Xk9VdtAC&pg=PA296, 2008, Simon and Schuster, 978-1-4165-9915-9, 296–297, 1945]
1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

Men, World, Time

“Now I know that if you listen to Washington or pay attention to the pundits, you hear a lot about how divided we are as a people. But that's not what I've found as I've traveled across this great country.
Everywhere I go, I've been impressed by the values and hopes that we share. In big cities and small towns; among men and women; young and old; black, white, and brown — Americans share a faith in simple dreams.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign address in Beaverton, Oregon (9 May 2008) http://www.barackobama.com/2008/05/09/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_63.php 2008

Women, Men, People, Faith

“Much has been said about Yugoslavia and its people, but many Americans may be under a wrong impression for political enemies and agitators have spread the idea that its inhabitants belong to different nations animated by mutual hate and held together against their will, by a tyrannical power. The fact is that all Yugoslavs — Serbians, Slavonians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Dalmations, Montenagrins, Croatians and Slovenes — are of the same race, speak the same language and have common national ideals and traditions.
At the termination of the World War, Alexander brought about a political union creating a powerful and resourceful State. This was hailed with joy by all the Slavs of the Balkans, but it took time before the people found themselves in the new conditions.
I was born in Croatia. The Croatians and Slovenes were never in a position to fight for their independence. It was the Serbians who fought the battles for freedom and the price of liberty was paid in Serbian blood. All true Croatians and Slovenes remember that gratefully. They also know that the Serbians have an unequaled aptitude and experience in warfare and are best qualified to direct the forces of the country in a crisis.
Ever since united Yugoslavia came into being through Alexander's efforts, political enemies have done all they could to disrupt it by sowing seeds of discord and disseminating malicious reports. … The death of the King has shaken the country to its very foundations, but the enemies who say that it means the disruption of Yugoslavia will hope in vain, for the noble blood of the great man has only served to cement its parts more firmly and strengthen the national structure. Alexander will live long in the memory of his people, a heroic figure of imposing stature, both the Washington and Lincoln of the Yugoslavs; like Washington an able and intrepid general who freed his country from oppression; like Lincoln a wise and patriotic leader who suffered martyrdom.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Tribute to King Alexander, to the editor of The New York Times (19 October 1934), also at Heroes of Serbia http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2012/10/tribute-to-king-alexander-by-nikola.html

Death, Hate, War, People

“In the great struggle between popular principles and liberal opinions, which is the characteristic of our age, I hope ever to be found on the side of the people, and of the Institutions, of England. It is our Institutions that have made us free, and can alone keep us so; by the bulwark which they offer to the insidious encroachments of a convenient, yet enervating, system of centralisation, which, if left unchecked, will prove fatal to the national character.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Address to the electors of Buckinghamshire (25 May 1847), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 837.
1840s

People, Age, Hope

“We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.)”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Symbolic Life — in The Collected Works: The Symbolic Life. Miscellaneous Writings (1977), p. 281

God, Way

“There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. … Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 95-96

Love, People, Way, Home

“If I should do so now it occurs that he places himself somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the one that was lost and threw it upon his shoulders, and came home rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and nine in the fold. The application is made by the Saviour in this parable thus: Verily I say unto you, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Repentance before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness. Regarding his debate with Judge S. A. Douglas, in his Springfield address (17 July 1858), published in The Life, Speeches, and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln: Together with a Sketch of the Life of Hannibal Hamlin: Republican candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States (1860), p. 50 Lincoln was alluding to the words of Jesus in Luke 15:7 http://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Luke%2015%3A7 1850s

Home, Mountain, Forgiveness, Personality

“The wiser head gives in! An immortal phrase. It founds the world dominion of stupidity.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der Gescheitere gibt nach! Ein unsterbliches Wort. Es begründet die Weltherrschaft der Dummheit.
Aphorisms (1893), p. 6

Stupidity, World

“It was this feeling of being at home everywhere in the country which took the Adi Shankaracharya from the southernmost tip to the farthest corners of Bharatavarsha in North and East and West and helped him found (or revive) the four foremost dhãmas at Badrinath, Dvaraka, Rameshvaram and Puri. There is no count of sadhus and sannyasins and house-holders who have travelled ever since on the trail blazed by that great acharya. Six and a half centuries later, Guru Nanak Dev followed in the footsteps of the Pandavas and the Shankaracharya in search of spiritual company.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Travel, Feeling, Home, Search

“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”

Henri Bergson book Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original.

Past

“That is the marvel of true art, that no one has yet found a way to commercialize it.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Art, Way

“That is the fourth course, which in future I trust the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) will not forget. The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small precedent. He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle. His precedents are generally tea-kettle precedents.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/11/maynooth-college in the House of Commons (11 April 1845). 1840s

Future, Tea, Forgetting

“When a constant electric current flows along a cylindrical wire, its strength is the same at every part of the section of the wire. But if the current is variable, self-induction produces a deviation from this… induction opposes variations of the current in the centre of the wire more strongly than at the circumference, and consequently the current by preference flows along the outer portion of the wire. When the current changes its direction… this deviation increases rapidly with the rate of alternation; and when the current alternates many million times per second, almost the whole of the interior of the wire must, according to theory, appear free from current, and the flow must confine itself to the very skin of the wire. Now in such extreme cases… preference must be given to another conception of the matter which was first presented by Messrs. 0. Heaviside and J. H. Poynting, as the correct interpretation of Maxwell's equations as applied to this case. According to this view, the electric force which determines the current is not propagated in the wire itself, but under all circumstances penetrates from without into the wire, and spreads into the metal with comparative slowness and laws similar to those which govern changes of temperature in a conducting body.
…Inasmuch as I made use of electric waves in wires of exceedingly short period in my experiments on the propagation of electric force, it was natural to test by means of these the correctness of the conclusions deduced. As a matter of fact the theory was found to be confirmed by the experiments…”

Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist

"On the Propagation of Electric Waves by Means of Wires" (1889) Wiedemann's Annalen. 37 p. 395, & pp.160-161 of Electric Waves
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)

Law, Nature, Appearance, Change

“Port-wine, he says, when rich and sound,
Warms his old bones like nectar:
And as the inns, where it is found,
Are his especial hunting-ground,
We call him the INN-SPECTRE.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Of "Inspector Kobold", a spectre
Canto 3, "Scarmoges"
Phantasmagoria (1869)

Wine

“It was my first time away from home, my first experience in an all-black situation, and I found myself being punished for everything I'd ever been taught was right. I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk. I had to learn a new language simply to deal with the threats. I had good manners, and was a good little boy and paid for it with my hide.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947) American basketball player

Giant Steps, 1983.

Hate, Home, Boy, Learning

“Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro whatever when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to express by that phrase, white men, men of European birth and European descent, and had no reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, the Fejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great evidence that such was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that at that time every one of the thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration represented a slave-holding constituency, and we know that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them when they signed the Declaration, and yet, if they had intended to declare that the negro was the equal of the white man, and entitled by divine right to an equality with him, they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to have put their negroes on an equality with themselves.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed at a few sites to a debate in Peoria, Illinois with Stephen Douglas on 16 October 1858. No historical record of such a debate actually exists, though there was a famous set of speeches by both in Peoria on 16 October 1854, but transcripts of Lincoln's speech http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=cleaver;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln2;node=lincoln2%3A282 on that date do not indicate that he made such a statement. It in fact comes from a speech made by Douglas in the third debate http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;type=simple;rgn=div1;q1=fejee;view=text;subview=detail;sort=occur;idno=lincoln3;node=lincoln3%3A17 against Lincoln at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858. Misattributed

Men, Birth, Understanding, Time

“Both Hitler and Mussolini have plagiarized and imitated practically everything from everyone. Mussolini stole from the Bolsheviks and from Gabriele D'Annunzio, and found inspiration in the camp of big business. Hitler imitated the Bolsheviks and Mussolini.”

Leon Trotsky book Stalin

Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence (1941), translated by Charles Malamuth, p. 412

Business

“The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called confederate government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are, or shall have been, military or naval officers of said so-called confederate government above the rank of colonel in the army, or of lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the army or navy of the United States, and afterwards aided the rebellion; and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons or white persons, in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States service, as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)

War, Color, Way, Personality

“True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, and in its existentiality, in its praxis.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressors

Love

“Keynes did not challenge the efficacy of price adjustment mechanisms in clearing particular markets in the Marshallian partial equilibrium theory on which he had been reared. He did challenge the mindless application of those mechanisms to economy-wide markets. Founding what came to be known as macroeconomics, he was modeling a whole economy as a closed system. He knew he could not use the Marshallian assumption that the clearing of one market could be safely described on the assumption that the rest of the economy was unaffected.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

"Price Flexibility and Output Stability: An Old Keynesian View" (1993)

“What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet … these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", in Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, part II (11 November 1954)
1950s

Hell, Suffering, Time, Christ

“In mathematics there is a certain way of seeking the truth, a way which Plato is said first to have discovered and which was called "analysis" by Theon and was defined by him as "taking the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth which is uncontested"; so, on the other hand, "synthesis" is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conclusion and comprehension of the thing sought." And although the ancients set forth a twofold analysis, the zetetic and the poristic, to which Theon's definition particularly refers, it is nevertheless fitting that there be established also a third kind, which may be called rhetic or exegetic, so that there is a zetetic art by which is found the equation or proportion between the magnitude that is being sought and those that are given, a poristic art by which from the equation or proportion the truth of the theorem set up is investigated, and an exegetic art by which from the equation set up or the proportion, there is produced the magnitude itself which is being sought. And thus, the whole threefold analytic art, claiming for itself this office, may be defined as the science of right finding in mathematics…. the zetetic art does not employ its logic on numbers—which was the tediousness of the ancient analysts—but uses its logic through a logistic which in a new way has to do with species [of number]…”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

Source: In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591), Ch. 1 as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934-1936) Appendix.

Truth, Art, Way, Mathematics

“Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

"Buddhism and the Coming Revolution" (1961, 1969)

Death

“I am obliged to interpolate some remarks on a very difficult subject: proof and its importance in mathematics. All physicists, and a good many quite respectable mathematicians, are contemptuous about proof. I have heard Professor Eddington, for example, maintain that proof, as pure mathematicians understand it, is really quite uninteresting and unimportant, and that no one who is really certain that he has found something good should waste his time looking for proof.”

G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) British mathematician

Source: Ramanujan (1940), Ch. I : The Indian mathematician Ramanujan.

Mathematics, Understanding, Time

“It is often in the audacity, in the steadfastness, of the general that the safety and the conservation of his men is found.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Men

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of mastic gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloes wood, and as many slaves for the navy, as their Majesties will wish to demand.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

"Concerning the Islands Recently Discovered in the Indian Sea" (14 March 1493)

Support, Help

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

People, World, Peace, Law

“But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiousity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 1, Chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Love, Search, Heart

“I think that the loss of the house call has been the biggest blow to the art of medicine in this century. Not only has the patient lost this precious attention, but the physician has not found a replacement for the lost intimacy.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

Source: House Calls: How we can all heal the world one visit at a time (1998), p. xi

Art, Thinking, Loss, Housing

“There has been no greater artist in French verse, as there has been no greater poet; and the main part of the history of poetry in France is the record of a long forgetting of all that Villon found out for himself.”

Francois Villon (1431–1463) Mediæval French poet

Arthur Symons Figures of Several Centuries (London: Constable, 1916) p. 40.
Criticism

History, Parting, Forgetting

“The Constitution contains no right to abortion. It is not to be found in the longstanding traditions of our society, nor can it be logically deduced from the text of the Constitution - not, that is, without volunteering a judicial answer to the nonjusticiable question of when human life begins. Leaving this matter to the political process is not only legally correct, it is pragmatically so. That alone - and not lawyerly dissection of federal judicial precedents - can produce compromises satisfying a sufficient mass of the electorate that this deeply felt issue will cease distorting the remainder of our democratic process. The Court should end its disruptive intrusion into this field as soon as possible.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, (1990, concurring), 497 U.S. 502 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=oyez&navby=case&court=us&vol=497&invol=502#520 ; decided June 25,1990). 1990s

Life, Question

“Political economy … founds its theory of society upon the self-seeking of the isolated individual. Political economy, in this way, “incorporates private property into the very essence of man.””

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 14 (Quote is from Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 148).

Way

“I myself brought Deism no more to Bavaria than to Rome or Italy. I found it there already; and I shall give the reasons below, just why in the most fanatical countries, and more under Catholicism than Protestantism, this sort of person is found in such a measure and multitude.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Einleitung zu meiner Apologie (1787) p. 39.

Personality, Country

“What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America(31 January 1984), cited by Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

People, Problem, Sleep, Time

“It's not an understatement to say that I owe everything as an actor to Merlin. It was pretty much my first job and I didn't know what I was doing for many years on it. It wasn't until the third and fourth series - the fourth series especially - that I really found my feet with the character, and as an actress. I'm glad that I had those few years to be able to do her justice when she became this powerful, confident sorceress woman. Because when she was an unsure, a little bit all-over-the-place princess, I was still quite unsure as an actress.”

Katie McGrath (1983) Irish actress

'Merlin' Katie McGrath Q&A: 'I've been privileged to be part of this' http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/merlin/interviews/a442593/merlin-katie-mcgrath-qa-ive-been-privileged-to-be-part-of-this/ (December 4, 2012)

Justice, Confidence, Princess

“I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Memorandum reference to the instantaneous success of Childe Harold and quoted in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (1830), chapter 14.