Quotes about front
page 8

David Miscavige photo
Arshile Gorky photo

“Art comes instinctively to us, but it is so uncertain. I have in front of me photographs of all Picasso’s best works. The mere I admire them the further I feel myself removed from all art, it seems so easy, so limited! We are part of the world creation, and we ourselves create nothing.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1930 - 1941, from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 168: in a letter to his future wife Agnes Magruder (Mougouch), 7 Mai 1941

Francis Escudero photo
Joseph Strutt photo

“A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 250
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

“The pattern of sex differences found in our species mirrors that found in most mammals and in many other animals. As such, considerations of parsimony suggest that the best explanation for the human differences will invoke evolutionary forces common to many species, rather than social forces unique to our own. When we find the standard pattern of differences in other, less culture-bound creatures, we inevitably explain this in evolutionary terms. It seems highly dubious, when we find exactly the same pattern in human beings, to say that, in the case of this one primate species, we must explain it in terms of an entirely different set of causes — learning or cumulative culture — which coincidentally replicates the pattern found throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. Anyone who wishes to adopt this position has a formidable task in front of them. They must explain why, in the hominin lineage uniquely, the standard evolved psychological differences suddenly became maladaptive, and thus why natural selection “wiped the slate clean” of any biological contribution to these differences. They must explain why natural selection eliminated the psychological differences but left the correlated physical differences intact. And they must explain why natural selection would eliminate the psychological differences and leave it all to learning, when learning simply replicated the same sex differences anyway. How could natural selection favor extreme flexibility with respect to sex differences if that flexibility was never exercised and was therefore invisible to selection?”

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), pp. 142-143

Georges Braque photo

“To avoid a projection towards infinity I am interposing overlaid planes a short way off. To make it understood that things are in front of each other instead of being scattered in space.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Quote from: 'Entretien avec Jauqes Lassaigne' - 1961; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 94
1946 - 1963

Ricky Williams photo

“I wouldn’t eat a chicken if it dropped dead in front of me holding up a sign that said, ‘Eat Me.”

Ricky Williams (1977) All-American college football players, professional football players, running back

About his vegetarianism. "Ricky Williams: Taking the Veggie Plunge" by Jennifer Santiago, PETAWorld.com (23 March 2006) https://archive.is/20060323231702/http://www.petaworld.com/RickyWilliams.asp#selection-803.0-803.117.

Jacob Bronowski photo
E.M. Forster photo
Walter Warlimont photo
Charlie Sheen photo
Alan Keyes photo
Bill Hicks photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
C. V. Raman photo

“The Muslim Majilis Mushawarat, which is the united front of Muslim organizations in India, includes… educated Muslims… and orthodox Muslims… The election manifesto of the Mushawarat … contained a 9-point charter of demands which can only be interpreted as asserting that Muslim Indians constituted a 'sovereign' society.”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

Muslim politics, p.80, quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 364-6

Frederick Lewis Allen photo
Shi Nai'an photo

“What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do not visit me because there is a biting wind, or the roads are muddy through the rain, or perhaps because they are sick. Then I feel isolated. Although I myself do not drink, yet I provide spirits for my friends, […]. In front of my house runs a great river, and there I can sit with my friends in the shadow of the lovely trees. […] When they come they drink and chat, just as they please, but our pleasure is in the conversation and not in the liquor. We do not discuss politics because we are so isolated here that our news is simply composed of rumors, and it would only be a waste of time to talk with untrustworthy information. We also never talk about other people's faults, because in this world nobody is wrong, and we should beware of backbiting. We do not wish to injure anyone, and therefore our conversation is of no consequence to anyone. We discuss human nature about which people know so little because they are too busy to study it.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "When all my friends come together to my house, there are sixteen persons in all, but it is seldom that they all come. But except for rainy or stormy days, it is also seldom that none of them comes. Most of the days, we have six or seven persons in the house, and when they come, they do not immediately begin to think; they would take a sip when they feel like it and stop when they feel like it, for they regard the pleasure as consisting in the conversation, and not in the wine. We do not talk about court politics, not only because it lies outside our proper occupation, but also because at such a distance most of the news is based upon hearsay; hearsay news is mere rumour, and to discuss rumours would be a waste of our saliva. We also do not talk about people's faults, for people have no faults, and we should not malign them. We do not say things to shock people and no one is shocked; on the other hand, we do wish people to understand what we say, but people still don't understand what we say. For such things as we talk about lie in the depths of the human heart, and the people of the world are too busy to hear them." (The Importance of Living, 1937; pp. 218–219)
Preface to Water Margin

Wanda Orlikowski photo
Caitlín R. Kiernan photo
Christopher Titus photo
Alice Evans photo
Rachel Maddow photo
Václav Havel photo
Väinö Linna photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Marc Chagall photo
Thomas Kuhn photo

“I rapidly discovered that Aristotle had known almost no mechanics at all. … How could his characteristic talents have deserted him so systematically when he turned to the study of motion and mechanics? Equally, if his talents had so deserted him, why had his writings in physics been taken so seriously for so many centuries after his death? … I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's Physics open in front of me… Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I'd never dreamed possible. Now I could understand why he had said what he'd said, and what his authority had been. Statements that had previously seemed egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and generally successful tradition. That sort of experience -- the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way -- is the first general characteristic of revolutionary change that I shall be singling out after further consideration of examples. Though scientific revolutions leave much piecemeal mopping up to do, the central change cannot be experienced piecemenal, one step at a time. Instead, it involves some relatively sudden and unstructured transformation in which some part of the flux of experience sorts itself out differently and displays patterns that were not visible before.”

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) American historian, physicist and philosopher

Source: The Road Since Structure (2002), p. 16-17; from "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" (1982)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Michael Bloomberg photo

“Leading from the front: It’s what built America. But these days, the federal government isn’t at the front – it’s cowering in the back corner of the room, ducking responsibility and hoping no one notices.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/public_health/mayor_bloomberg_delivers_opening_address_at_ceasefire_bridging_the_political_divide_conference
State of America

Theo van Doesburg photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Elia M. Ramollah photo
Gerd von Rundstedt photo

“… [Y]our observer's camera is clicking steadily. It's beautiful up above the sunlit clouds. The smooth drone of your twin motors makes you happy. You feel like singing and then you do. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see four black dots, growing larger momentarily. It's an enemy patrol of German Messerschmitts. Your gunner has seen them too. You hear the rattle of the machine gun as you put your bomber in a fast climbing turn, but the Messerschmitt fighters climb faster. They form under your tail, two on each side. One by one, they attack. A yellow light flashes in front of you. The first fighter slips away while the next comes on at you. Again that smashing yellow flame. Your observer falls over unconscious. Before you can think, the next Messerschmitt is upon you. A terrific jolt. Your port engine belches smoke. It's been hit…. You force-land on the first Allied airfield. That night, seated next to a hospital bed where your observer nurses a scalp wound, you hear an enemy communique. A British bomber was shot down over the lines today. Well, you puff a cigarette and grin.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Woo, Elaine. " Larry LeSueur/'Murrow Boy' former war correspondant http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/local/me-lesueur7", (obituary), Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2003, accessed June 21, 2011. As quoted by Stanley W. Cloud and Lynne Olson in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, ISBN 0395877539. LeSueur just "after interviewing a young British pilot who had just flown a reconnaissance mission over Germany.

Roberto Clemente photo

“The first hero that I have … I would say was Monte Irvin, when I was a kid. And I used to watch Monte Irvin play when I was a kid – I idolized him. I used to wait in front of the ballpark just for him to pass by so I could see him.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

From A Conversation with Clemente (aired October 8, 1972); this and other excerpts were reproduced in Roberto Clemente: The Great One https://books.google.com/books?id=03XsO25A3I8C&pg=PA5 (1998) by Bruce Markusen, p. 5
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

Rick Santorum photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Victor Hugo photo
Cato the Elder photo

“Hairy in front, opportunity is bald behind.”
Fronte capillata, post est occasio calva.

Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)

Disticha, Bk. ii, No. 26. The Distichs of Cato were long attributed to Cato the Elder but probably are the work of a much later author called Dionysius Cato from the 3rd or 4th century A.D.
Misattributed

Linus Torvalds photo
George Dantzig photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo

“I had seen him [Mahatama Gandhi] from a distance This was going to be the first personal contact. As I ascended the stairs of Manibahavan…I was feeling the thrill of anticipation of a great event. I entered the room and the awe which the scene inside inspired in my heart has not been erased from my memory. I sat in front of the Mahatma…After a while Gandhiji turned to me and asked me about the work that I was doing…He then inquired about my situation. Would I have to face any difficulties if I came away to join the movement? I reflected for a few fleeting moments. I asked myself…How can an army like this function if every soldier who is recruited has to place his personal difficulties before the General. I replied to him that I had no problems for his consideration. Then an interesting conversation followed. Lala Lajpat Rai took up the thread and asked Gandhiji to permit me to proceed to the Punjab, the place of my origin and join him, in the work of the movement there. Thereafter Shankarlal Banker put forward the argument that since my political birth was in Bombay I should stick to this place. The Mahatma gave his verdict in favour of Bombay and thus the interview ended. I found that Bunker was the key figure in the organization in Bombay then and a number of activities were being carried out under his personal direction.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, p. 5-6
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Russell Crowe photo
Mike Watt photo
Sarah Chang photo

“The ultimate high for me is being onstage in front of an audience. Nothing else can compare.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

NEWSWEEK 1999 http://www.jeremycaplan.com/SarahChangInterview.htm

Tracey Ullman photo
John Steinbeck photo

“He brought his malformed wisdom, his pool-hall, locker-room, joke-book wisdom to the front.”

Act One: The Circus. "He" is Victor.
Burning Bright (1950)

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“When I finished the series, I wasn't going to do television again. I never wanted to do television to begin with, and I was so exhausted by the process that I was wary of being in front of the camera again.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On finishing her work in the series The X-Files — reported in Steve Hedgpeth (January 22, 2006) "Gillian Anderson : TV or not TV", The Star-Ledger, p. 3.
2000s

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone photo

“If you can tell me there are no adulterers on the front bench of the Labour Party you can talk to me about Profumo.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, "Smear" (Fourth Estate, 1991) p. 48
Reply to heckler's cry of "Profumo!" at a public meeting on 13 October 1964. Hogg probably had in mind the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson specifically.

Mitt Romney photo
Phillip Guston photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe. Smoking quietly at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature. The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses. But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West Kensington. Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-gates. Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron roofs. This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.”

Hope Point to Tilbury / Gravesend
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Mel Gibson photo

“Place something good in front of me, and I'll smash it to pieces.”

Jim Goad (1961) Author, publisher

Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt (Feral House, 2002)

Heinrich Himmler photo

“You should also say that to the 30 other pilots who were 200m in front of her and Zhongpin, 1 of them was sucked up as well (Belgium pilot).”

Godfrey explains that the 2 pilots in the media focus were not the only ones to take a high risk and fly near the obvious storm cloud.

Matthieu Ricard photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Clement Attlee photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Leigh Snowden photo

“What do you think makes a good rock front man? Shamelessness, I’d imagine.”

http://www.dailynexus.com/artsweek/2006/11307.html
Interviews

Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Arun Shourie photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“Want to get on the front page of the paper? I have to make some vicious attack. I won't do that. I’m running an issue-oriented campaign.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Democratic debate (17 January 2016)
2010s

Jim Garrison photo
Johan Cruyff photo
Adrian Slywotzky photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Syed Ahmed Khan photo

“Iron Pillar: “…In our opinion this pillar was made in the ninth century before (the birth of) Lord Jesus… When Rai Pithora built a fort and an idol-house near this pillar, it stood in the courtyard of the idol-house. And when Qutbu’d-Din Aibak constructed a mosque after demolishing the idol-house, this pillar stood in the courtyard of the mosque…
”Idol-house of Rai Pithora: “There was an idol-house near the fort of Rai Pithora. It was very famous… It was built along with the fort in 1200 Bikarmi [Vikrama SaMvat] corresponding to AD 1143 and AH 538. The building of this temple was very unusual, and the work done on it by stone-cutters is such that nothing better can be conceived. The beautiful carvings on every stone in it defy description… The eastern and northern portions of this idol-house have survived intact. The fact that the Iron Pillar, which belongs to the Vaishnava faith, was kept inside it, as also the fact that sculptures of Kirshan avatar and Mahadev and Ganesh and Hanuman were carved on its walls, leads us to believe that this temple belonged to the Vaishnava faith. Although all sculptures were mutilated in the times of Muslims, even so a close scrutiny can identify as to which sculpture was what. In our opinion there was a red-stone building in this idol-house, and it was demolished. For, this sort of old stones with sculptures carved on them are still found.
”Quwwat al-Islam Masjid: “When Qutbu’d-Din, the commander-in-chief of Muizzu’d-Din Sam alias Shihabu’d-Din Ghuri, conquered Delhi in AH 587 corresponding to AD 1191 corresponding to 1248 Bikarmi, this idol-house (of Rai Pithora) was converted into a mosque. The idol was taken out of the temple. Some of the images sculptured on walls or doors or pillars were effaced completely, some were defaced. But the structure of the idol-house kept standing as before. Materials from twenty-seven temples, which were worth five crores and forty lakhs of Dilwals, were used in the mosque, and an inscription giving the date of conquest and his own name was installed on the eastern gate…“When Malwah and Ujjain were conquered by Sultan Shamsu’d-Din in AH 631 corresponding to AD 1233, then the idol-house of Mahakal was demolished and its idols as well as the statue of Raja Bikramajit were brought to Delhi, they were strewn in front of the door of the mosque…”“In books of history, this mosque has been described as Masjid-i-Adinah and Jama‘ Masjid Delhi, but Masjid Quwwat al-Islam is mentioned nowhere. It is not known as to when this name was adopted. Obviously, it seems that when this idol-house was captured, and the mosque constructed, it was named Quwwat al-Islam…””

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

About antiquities of Delhi. Translated from the Urdu of Asaru’s-Sanadid, edited by Khaleeq Anjum, New Delhi, 1990. Vol. I, p. 305-16
Asaru’s-Sanadid

Caroline Glick photo
Chuck Berry photo
Aaliyah photo
Wang Wei photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“While Hindu activists are always treated like animals in a zoo, never allowed to speak for themselves, always condemned to be judged by what someone else has written on the signboard in front of their cage, Muslim fanatics are invited to serve as zoo guides, competent to inform the ignorant outsider about the meanness of these beasts safely locked up in their cages.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

K. Elst : The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation, in India., & Dasgupta, S. (1995). The Ayodhya reference: The Supreme Court judgement and commentaries.
1990s, The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation (1995)

Harper Lee photo
Diane Ackerman photo
Francisco Franco photo

“We strive to form a single national front against the Judeo-Masonic lodges, against Moscow and the Marxist societies.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Statement in El defensor de Córdoba (24 July 1936), as cited by Javier Navarrete in Más Allá http://mcedhou1.housings.nexica.net/MAS_ALLA/html/version_texto.asp?IDArt=29

Jack McDevitt photo

“One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 14 (p. 191)

Camille Pissarro photo
John Ashbery photo

“These two guys in the front yard--
Are they here to help?”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

"Gorboduc"
April Galleons (1987)

Josh Homme photo

“And the fact of the matter is that everyone should play music because it's such a beautiful gift. It's my religion. But maybe not everyone should play it in front of me. It's okay to play music in your rocking chair or whatever.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " JOSHUA HOMME: People say &#91;record&#93; labels are evil. No, they’re just lame. http://www.arthurmag.com/2007/12/04/josh-homme-people-say-labels-are-evil-no-theyre-just-lame/", Arthur Magazine (December 4, 2007).

Arnaut Daniel photo

“"O brother," said he, "He who is singled by
My finger (he pointed to a spirit in front)
Wrought better in the mother-tongue than I.
Whether in verses of love or prose romaunt
He surpassed all; and let the fools contend
Who make him of Limoges of more account.”

Arnaut Daniel (1150–1210) Occitan troubadour

"O frate," disse, "chesti qu'io ti cerno
col ditto," e additò un spirto innanzi,
"fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno.
Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi
soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti
che quel di Lemosì credon ch'avanzi.
Dante Purgatorio, canto 26, line 115; translation by Laurence Binyon, in Dante's Purgatorio (1938) p. 309.
Criticism

Horace photo

“So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.”
Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus

Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)