Quotes about full
page 22

Vladimir Lenin photo

“A full definition of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 32, p.  94.
Collected Works

Stanisław Lem photo
Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo

“They left no stone unturned in de-Hinduizing or denationalizing the Hindus, in effect de-Indianizing the Indians, in various ways. It is preposterous to question their credentials as true Muslims. Their 'Ulama' exhorted them off and on to make the best of their sword to root out the Hindus and convert India into a full-fledged Dar al-lslam. Sayyid Nur ad-Din Mubarak Ghaznawi Suhrawardi, at once a leading Sufi, a leading Muslim divine, and the Shaykh al-lslam of Sultan Iltutmish. led a deputation of Ulama to the Sultan and advised him to give an ultimatum to the Hindus to embrace Islam or face death. The Sultan’s prime minister pleaded powerlessness on his behalf to do so." Then the Shaykh offered an alternative suggestion: ’… the king should at least strive to disgrace, dishonour, and defame the Mushrik and idol- worshipping Hindus…. The sign of the kings being protectors of the faith is this: When they see a Hindu, their faces turn red and they wish to swallow him alive….' A similar suggestion was made to Jalal ad-Din Khalji, who returned ruefully: 'Don’t you see that Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and of Islam, pass daily below my royal palace to the Jamuna beating drums and playing flutes, and practise before our eyes the worship of the idols with all the rituals? Fie on us unworthy leaders who declare ourselves Muslim kings!… Had I been a Muslim ruler, a real king, or a prince and felt myself strong and powerful enough to protect Islam, any enemy of God and the faith of the Prophet of Islam would not have been allowed to chew betels in a care-free manner and put on a clean garment or live in peace. Qadi Mughis ad- Din’s advice to Sultan Ala' d-Din Khaiji was on similer lines, and the Sultan confessed that he had humiliated and pauperized the Hindus to his utmost even though without caring to know the provisions of the Shari'ah on the subject.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990)

Sri Aurobindo photo
Michel De Montaigne photo
Friedrich Engels photo

“God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 715
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Theodor Mommsen photo

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

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

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Omarosa photo
Sten Nadolny photo

“The world is full of important ideas, but I'll follow my own mind.”

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

“I found that business life is full of creative original minds -along with the usual number of second-guessers, of course.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Mao Zedong photo
Han-shan photo
Walter Scott photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”

La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

Łukasz Pawlikowski photo

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Thomas Chatterton photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“Man has been likened to an earthen pot…. You have but to tap the pot with your finger. If it rings back full and true, all is well; there is your perfect pot. And if not—man, alas, has been likened to a broken potsherd.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Mesiras Nefesh, c. 1910. Alle Verk, vii. 142. M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 22.

Felix Adler photo
Harpo Marx photo
Tony Benn photo
Madison Grant photo
Don Soderquist photo

“I’ve come to realize that beliefs and values together determine how a company operates and whether it reaches its full potential.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 120.
On Putting Your Values First

James Holman photo

“Some difficulties meet, full many.
I find them not, nor seek for any.”

James Holman (1787–1857) Royal Navy officer

J. Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006)

Cameron Diaz photo

“I'm like every other woman: a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear: So I wear jeans.”

Cameron Diaz (1972) American actress

Cameron Diaz on fashionhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/12/04/cameron_diaz_the_holiday_2006_interview.shtml

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,
I call them troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,
I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.
If we are weak, our land will become Muslim.”

Ashin Wirathu (1968) Burmese Buddhist monk

21 June 2013 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/asia/extremism-rises-among-myanmar-buddhists-wary-of-muslim-minority.html

Calvin Coolidge photo

“We have acted in the name of world peace and of humanity. Always the obstacles to be encountered have been distrust, suspicion and hatred. The great effort has been to allay and remove these sentiments. I believe that America can assist the world in this direction by her example. We have never forgotten the service done us by Lafayette, but we have long ago ceased to bear an enmity toward Great Britain by reason of two wars that were fought out between us. We want Europe to compose its difficulties and liquidate its hatreds. Would it not be well if we set the example and liquidated some of our own? The war is over. The militarism of Central Europe which menaced the security of the world has been overthrown. In its place have sprung up peaceful republics. Already we have assisted in refinancing Austria. We are about to assist refinancing Germany. We believe that such action will be helpful to France, but we can give further and perhaps even more valuable assistance both to ourselves and to Europe by bringing to an end our own hatreds. The best way for us who wish all our inhabitants to be single-minded in their Americanism is for us to bestow upon each group of our inhabitants that confidence and fellowship which is due to all Americans. If we want to get the hyphen out of our country, we can best begin by taking it out of our own minds. If we want France paid, we can best work towards that end by assisting in the restoration of the German people, now shorn of militarism, to their full place in the family of peaceful mankind.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Anna Akhmatova photo
George Herbert photo

“170. Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied upon in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do not misunderstand my railing—do not class me with those who despise religion—do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity—which cometh from above—which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves.
By all the love I bear such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and the Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem to worship and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion which can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from the heathen on this side—which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here…. I love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them. I hope to see a revival of it—thank God it is revived. I see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the old sort of way, in the last five years.”

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

As quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (2009), by Maurice S. Lee, Cambridge University Press, pp. 68-69

Barry Boehm photo

“If a project has not achieved a system architecture, including its rationale, the project should not proceed to full-scale system development. Specifying the architecture as a deliverable enables its use throughout the development and maintenance process.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry Boehm (1995); quoted in: L. Bass, P. Clements, and R. Kazman (1998) Software Architecture in Practice, Addison Wesley Longman. Chapter 2

John Ruskin photo

“A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture III: War, section 114 (1866).

Aristophanés photo

“Chorus [of Birds]: Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways, are the children of Men.”

tr. in Bartlett 1968, p. 91 http://books.google.com/books?q=inauthor%3A%22John+Bartlett%22+date%3A1968-1968+%22Full+of+wiles%2C+full+of+guile%2C+at+all+times%2C+in+all+ways%2C+are+the+children+of+Men%22 or Archive.org http://www.archive.org/stream/familiarquotatio017007mbp/familiarquotatio017007mbp_djvu.txt
Birds, line 451-452
Compare the earlier-written but later-known: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked", Jeremiah, 17:9 KJV Bible http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+17:9&version=9.
Birds (414 BC)

Franz Marc photo

“I am sure of one thing: many silent readers and young people full of energy will secretly be grateful to us, will be fired by enthusiasm for this book [the Blaue Reiter Almanac ] and will judge the world in accordance with it.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in a letter to Kandinsky, (c. Dec. 1911), quoted in 'Vezin 150'; as quoted in Movement, Manifesto, Melee: The Modernist Group, 1910-1914, Milton A. Cohen, Lexington Books, Sep 14, 2004, p. 67
1911 - 1914

“She said
"I'm young enough
I'm old enough
In the city machine
Where industries
Fill the fish full of mercury"”

Laura Nyro (1947–1997) American musician and songwriter

"Money"
Lyrics

Tom Robbins photo
Mike Oldfield photo

“Some find it strange to be here
On this small planet and who knows where…
But when it's strange and full of fear
It's nice to be on horseback.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Ommadawn (1975)

Julian of Norwich photo
Philo photo
David Graeber photo

“Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely he can only have been a thief.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 386

Marcus Aurelius photo
Harry Chapin photo
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Mark Steyn photo
Julian (emperor) photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“I think there are things of which I and the people who have worked with me can feel deservedly proud. They include restoring Russia's territorial integrity, strengthening the state, progress towards establishing a multiparty system, strengthening the parliamentary system, restoring the Armed Forces' potential and, of course, developing the economy. As you know, our economy has been growing by 6.9 percent a year on average over this time, and our GDP has increased by 7.7 percent over the first four months of this year alone.
When I began my work in the year 2000, 30 percent of our population was living below the poverty line. There has been a two-fold drop in the number of people living below the poverty line since then and the figure today is around 15 percent. By 2009-2010, we will bring this figure down to 10 percent, and this will bring us in line with the European average.
We had enormous debts, simply catastrophic for our economy, but we have paid them off in full now. Not only have we paid our debts, but we now have the best foreign debt to GDP ratio in Europe. Our gold and currency reserve figures are well known: in 2000, they stood at just $12 billion and we had a debt of more than 100 percent of GDP, but now we have the third-biggest gold and currency reserves in the world and they have increased by $90 billion over the first four months of this year alone.
During the 1990s and even in 2000-2001, we had massive capital flight from Russia with $15 billion, $20 billion or $25 billion leaving the country every year. Last year we reversed this situation for the first time and had capital inflow of $41 billion. We have already had capital inflow of $40 billion over the first four months of this year. Russia's stock market capitalisation showed immense growth last year and increased by more than 50 percent. This is one of the best results in the world, perhaps even the best. Our economy was near the bottom of the list of world economies in terms of size but today it has climbed to ninth place and in some areas has even overtaken some of the other G8 countries' economies. This means that today we are able to tackle social problems. Real incomes are growing by around 12 percent a year. Real income growth over the first four months of this year came to just over 18 percent, while wages rose by 11-12 percent.
Looking at the problems we have yet to resolve, one of the biggest is the huge income gap between the people at the top and the bottom of the scale. Combating poverty is obviously one of our top priorities in the immediate term and we still have to do a lot to improve our pension system too because the correlation between pensions and the average wage is still lower here than in Europe. The gap between incomes at the top and bottom end of the scale is still high here – a 15.6-15.7-fold difference. This is less than in the United States today (they have a figure of 15.9) but more than in the UK or Italy (where they have 13.6-13.7). But this remains a big gap for us and fighting poverty is one of our biggest priorities.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

When asked in June 2007 at the interview with G8 journalists about main achievements of his presidency http://web.archive.org/web/20070607221025/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/06/04/2149_type82916_132772.shtml.

Joseph Campbell photo
Tiffany Trump photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Michael Palin photo

“It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!”

Michael Palin (1943) British comedian, actor, writer and television presenter

"Tomkinson's Schooldays"
Ripping Yarns (1976 - 1979)

“The world is full, at every scale, and every scale ignores the higher and lower ones.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 2, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 34.

El Greco photo

“If Vasari really knew the nature of the Greek style of which he speaks, he would deal with it differently in what he says. He compares it with Giotto, but what Giotto did is simple in comparison, because the Greek style is full of ingenious difficulties.”

El Greco (1541–1614) Greek painter, sculptor and architect

full of ingenious difficulties [= translation of Greek art historian Nicos Hadjinicolau] /
full of deceptive difficulties [= translation of Spanish art historians Xavier de Salas and Fernando María]

Quote of El Greco, as cited in 'Hand-written Note Shows El Greco Defending Byzantine Style In Face Of Western Art', Dec. 2008 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081218132252.htm
the different translation by Nicos Hadjinicolau leads him to the conclusion that El Greco was defending Byzantine art; which is rejected by Fernando María

Richard Salter Storrs photo
Washington Irving photo

“My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.”

"The Author's Account of Himself".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Willem de Kooning photo
Larry the Cable Guy photo
Franz Stangl photo

“Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity-it couldn't have; it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we do with this garbage?”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.
About the victims. Quoted in "Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today" - Page 96 - by Jack Bemporad, John Pawlikowski, Joseph Sievers - History - 2000.

Daniel J. Boorstin photo

“Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio —- empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how —- has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. … Here at home —- within the family, so to speak —- our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Foreword to America and the image of Europe: Reflections on American Thought, Meridian Books, 1960, as cited in: Robert Andrews (1993) The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&lpg=PA207&dq=Our%20attitude%20toward%20our%20own%20culture%20has%20recently%20been%20characterized%20by%20two%20qualities%2C%20braggadocio%20and%20petulance.&pg=PA207#v=onepage&q&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 207.

Eric Hobsbawm photo
Albert Lutuli photo
Warren Buffett photo

“An irresistible footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities — at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1978 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1978.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

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

Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From [Garson O’Toole, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/12/persist/, Purpose and Persistence Are Required for Success: Unrewarded Genius Is Almost a Proverb, Quote Investigator, January 12, 2016]
1930s

“I would be pleased indeed, if the universe were full of blazing ovens, and concentration camps, and people deported.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Source: Journal of 1969, p. 118

Eugene V. Debs photo
Matthijs Maris photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Elaine Goodale Eastman photo
W. H. Auden photo
André Maurois photo
James Anthony Froude photo
Derren Brown photo

“I like my parrot, Figaro. Not in a wrong way – I mean, yes, he’ll do anything for a mouth full of seed but nothing tacky.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Sarah Palin photo
G. I. Gurdjieff photo
Giosuè Carducci photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“And now that I have allowed myself the jest to which in this two-sided life hardly any page can be too serious to grant a place, I part with the book with deep seriousness, in the sure hope that sooner or later it will reach those to whom alone it can be addressed; and for the rest, patiently resigned that the same fate should, in full measure, befall it, that in all ages has, to some extent, befallen all knowledge, and especially the weightiest knowledge of the truth, to which only a brief triumph is allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial. The former fate is also wont to befall its author. But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition, last paragraph.
Mostly quoted rather incorrectly as: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Und so, nachdem ich mir den Scherz erlaubt, dem eine Stelle zu gönnen, in diesem durchweg zweideutigen Leben kaum irgend ein Blatt zu ernsthaft seyn kann, gebe ich mit innigem Ernst das Buch hin, in der Zuversicht, daß es früh oder spät diejenigen erreichen wird, an welche es allein gerichtet seyn kann, und übrigens gelassen darin ergeben, daß auch ihm in vollem Maaße das Schicksal werde, welches in jeder Erkenntniß, also um so mehr in der wichtigsten, allezeit der Wahrheit zu Theil ward, der nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden ist, zwischen den beiden langen Zeiträumen, wo sie als paradox verdammt und als trivial geringgeschätzt wird. Auch pflegt das erstere Schicksal ihren Urheber mitzutreffen.— Aber das Leben ist kurz und die Wahrheit wirkt ferne und lebt lange: sagen wir die Wahrheit.
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. p.XVI books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR16
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Steven Curtis Chapman photo
Bernard Lewis photo

“The origins of secularism in the west may be found in two circumstances—in early Christian teachings and, still more, experience, which created two institutions, Church and State; and in later Christian conflicts, which drove the two apart. Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state. Only by depriving religious institutions of coercive power, it seemed, could Christendom restrain the murderous intolerance and persecution that Christians had visited on followers of other religions and, most of all, on those who professed other forms of their own.Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine. There was no need for secularism in Islam, and even its pluralism was very different from that of the pagan Roman Empire, so vividly described by Edward Gibbon when he remarked that "the various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship. It did, however, accord to the holders of partial truth a degree of practical as well as theoretical tolerance rarely paralleled in the Christian world until the West adopted a measure of secularism in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Alfred North Whitehead photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Undoubtedly one of the most important provisions in the preparation for national defense is a proper and sound selective service act. Such a law ought to give authority for a very broad mobilization of all the resources of the country, both persons and materials. I can see some difficulties in the application of the principle, for it is the payment of a higher price that stimulates an increased production, but whenever it can be done without economic dislocation such limits ought to be established in time of war as would prevent so far as possible all kinds of profiteering. There is little defense which can be made of a system which puts some men in the ranks on very small pay and leaves others undisturbed to reap very large profits. Even the income tax, which recaptured for the benefit of the National Treasury alone about 75 per cent of such profits, while local governments took part of the remainder, is not a complete answer. The laying of taxes is, of course, in itself a conscription of whatever is necessary of the wealth of the country for national defense, but taxation does not meet the full requirements of the situation. In the advent of war, power should be lodged somewhere for the stabilization of prices as far as that might be possible in justice to the country and its defenders.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Richard Dawkins photo

“The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

Thomas Jefferson photo

“All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.”

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

Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp
1770s

Cenk Uygur photo

“Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.”

Cenk Uygur (1970) Turkish-American online news show host

"If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong", The Huffington Post (23 October 2005) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/if-youre-a-christian-musl_b_9349.html

Georges Bernanos photo