Quotes about general
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“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Feeling, Silence

“I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural of any other woman.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

World, Nature

“But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.”

Dean Koontz book Intensity

Source: Intensity

Fear, Failure

“Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Time, Dead

“I went to a general store, but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 3 (p. 27)

Motivational, Back To Work, Failure, Heart

“Mahon's wife stared down at us. Her hands went to her hips. "Which one of you idiots wants to explain to me what the hell is going on?"
With great effort I raised my arm and pointed in Mahon's general direction. "Him.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds - Awake

Hell, Effort

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Life, Pleasure, Fear

“People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Love, People, Quotes

“Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/
as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.”

Kay Ryan (1945) American poet

Water

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Fear

“Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests.
Why?
You tell me.
I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Way, Intelligence

“A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

“We should be inspired by people… who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances.”

Rachel Corrie (1979–2003) American anti-war and human rights activist

People, Beauty, Strong

“What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory… We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Men, Memory

“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Faith, Passion

“Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Learning

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 9
Context: There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Context: My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to — ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

Effort

“Be just before you are generous.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Way, Lovers

“People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Something Blue

People, Cheating

“For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Men

“He will not succeed in this," Taran said. "Somehow, we must find a way to escape. We dare not lose hope."
"I agree absolutely," Fflewddur answered. "Your general idea is excellent; it's only the details that are lacking…”

Lloyd Alexander book The Black Cauldron

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 20
Source: The Black Cauldron
Context: Orgoch gave a most ungentle snort. Orddu, meanwhile, had unfolded a length of brightly woven tapestry and held it out to Taran.
“We came to bring you this, my duckling,” she said. “Take it and pay no heed to Orgoch’s grumbling. She’ll have to swallow her disappointment—for lack of anything better.”
“I have seen this on your loom,” Taran said, more than a little distrustful. “Why do you offer it to me? I do not ask for it, nor can I pay for it.”
“It is yours by right, my robin,” answered Orddu. “It does come from our loom, if you insist on strictest detail, but it was really you who wove it.”
Puzzled, Taran looked more closely at the fabric and saw it crowded with images of men and women, of warriors and battles, of birds and animals. “These,” he murmured in wonder, “these are of my own life.”
“Of course,” Orddu replied. “The pattern is of your choosing and always was.”
“My choosing?” Taran questioned. “Not yours? Yet I believed...” He stopped and raised his eyes to Orddu. “Yes,” he said slowly, “once I did believe the world went at your bidding. I see now it is not so. The strands of life are not woven by three hags or even by three beautiful damsels. The pattern indeed was mine. But here,” he added, frowning as he scanned the final portion of the fabric where the weaving broke off and the threads fell unraveled, “here it is unfinished.”
“Naturally,” said Orddu. “You must still choose the pattern, and so must each of you poor, perplexed fledglings, as long as thread remains to be woven.”

Hope, Way, Idea

“Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

People

“True success comes only when every generation continues to develop the next generation.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Success

“Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken....”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Love, God, War, Fear

“Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

Love, Way

“They came out in a dim, damp basement - a generic sort of place, full of moulding boxes. 'You take me to the nicest places,' Claire said, and sneezed.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Carpe Corpus

Box

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Life

“No, I don't think you understand just how stupid goblins are. Let me give you an example. One of the B'wa Kell generals, and this is their top fairy, was caught caught trying to pass off forged credit slips by signing his own name.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Arctic Incident

Stupidity, Understanding, Thinking

“It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Children

“The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

Source: The Code of the Woosters

Light, Tea, Housing, Country

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Hell

“You are all a lost generation.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

Fear, Disappointment, Heart

“It's strange the times people choose to be generous.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Time

“History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

History, Idea, Nature, Time

“People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It'shard.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

People, Forgiveness

“It was a damned good thing men couldn’t have children. Gregory took no shame in admitting that the
human race would have died out generations earlier.”

Julia Quinn book On the Way to the Wedding

Source: On the Way to the Wedding

Men, Children

“Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 46

Business, Thinking

“A classic,' suggested Anthony, 'is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Books, Fashion, Success

“I don’t want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network Instead)…”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

World, Home, Change, Chance

“Never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day. They are generally crazy swindlers”

Carlo Collodi book The Adventures of Pinocchio

Source: Pinocchio

People

“At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Source: Discourse on Method

Sincerity

“We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

People, Silence, Time

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

People, History, Parting

“Some kids get called 'bundles of joy' or 'slices of heaven' or 'dreams come true.' We got 'the fifty-fourth generation of DNA experiments.' Doesn't have the same warm and fuzzy feel. But maybe I'm oversensitive.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Dreams, Feeling, Joy

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It's one of the never-ending cycles in life.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Life

“You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Death

“Once you best a man, never gloat. Be generous and find something in his actions to praise. He won't enjoy being bested but he'll make a good face about it. Show him you appreciate it. Praise can win you a friend. Gloating will only ever make enemies.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

“Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.”

John Barth (1930) American writer

“All generalizations are questionable.”

Sandor Schuman

Question

“Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

People, Nature, Effort

“A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge--an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.”

Fumiko Enchi book Masks

Source: Masks

Love, Revenge, Passion

“But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature and there was no thermostat.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

Failure, Thinking

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Attitude, Peaceful, Life, Future

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Quoted in A Lifetime of Peace : Essential Writings by and About Thich Nhat Hanh (2003) edited by Jennifer Schwamm Willis, p. 141

For Parents, People, Parent

“Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 101.

People, Thinking, Hurt

“Any idea is a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize something means to think it.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Jede Vorstellung ist eine Verallgemeinerung, und diese gehört dem Denken an. Etwas allgemein machen, heißt, es denken.
"Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse", Berlin, 1833, p. 35
"Every representation is a generalization, and this is inherent in thought. To generalize something means to think it."
"Any idea is a universalization, and universalizing is a property of thinking. To universalize something means to think."
"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think."
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)

Idea, Thinking

“Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

Life, Pain, Disappointment, Reality

“I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Life, Women

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."”

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

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", sermon at the National Cathedral, 31 March 1968, published in A Testament of Hope (1986)
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

People, Silence, Time, Waiting

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Funny, Falseness

“What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Truth, Housing

“It's always been the children who have saved the universe from the previous generation and remade the world in their own image. ---Carl”

Diane Duane book High Wizardry

Source: High Wizardry

Children, World, Universe

“It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769)
1760s

Error

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

As quoted in USA Today (5 March 1988)
Variant:
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
As quoted in Diversity : Leaders Not Labels (2006) by Stedman Graham, p. 224

Courageous, Courage

“There’s no democratic state that’s not compromised to the very core by its part in generating human misery.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Parting

“She held up her calloused, grimy fingers. Leo couldn't help thinking there was nothing hotter than a girl who didn't mind getting her hands dirty. But of course, that was just a general comment. Didn't apply to Calypso. Obviously.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Girl, Thinking, Help

“A general never shows despair. He instills confidence in his troops. He leads them forward, even into the mouth of death.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Death, Confidence, Despair

“Born in a generation that thinks cynical and disenchanted is cool,
sometimes I'm a little off the beaten track.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Thinking

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either, which is infamous, or, which is imbecile.”

Patrick O'Brian book Master and Commander

Source: Master and Commander (1970)
Context: “But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

“Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.”

Richard Ford book The Lay of the Land

Source: The Lay of the Land

People

“As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Love, Hate

“Clearly the secret of happiness… is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.”

Stef Penney book The Tenderness of Wolves

Source: The Tenderness of Wolves

Secret, Happiness

“You are all a lost generation.

[with credit to Gertrude Stein]”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

“Rich People plan for three generations
Poor people plan for Saturday night”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

People, Night

“Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

Women, Way

“Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men;”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XVI : The Warning of Experience; Mrs. Maxwell to Helen
Context: Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Men, Money, Beauty

“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Youth

“Freiherr Hugo Reiss made a notation on his pad. Broach subject with SS General Otto Skorzeny, or better yet Otto Ohlendorf at Amt III of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Didn’t Ohlendorf head Einsatzgruppe D?”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle

“We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: Herstory : Women Who Changed The World

Learning

“Every high school has its Romeo and Juliet, one tragic couple. So does every generation.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

School

“To generalize is to be an idiot.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

“Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

World, Future

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Flying, Forgetting

“Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?"
"Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: CryoBurn

Revenge

“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"How Writing is Written," Choate Literary Magazine (February 1935)
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)

People, Art, Literature

“He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Men, War, Intelligence, Happiness

“The French regarded this as a betrayal. It was. They spoke of being cheated by their wartime allies. They were. Clemenceau whose outspoken sympathies for Britain and America (he had been a newspaper correspondent in the United States shortly after the Civil War, had learned American English and married an American) had earned charges from the Right before the war that he was an Anglo-Saxon "tool", was embittered and disillusioned. As the Premier who had pulled France together in the closing period of the war, he realized what so many Frenchmen tended to forget, that without British and American help the war could not in the end have been won. He saw too that without Anglo-American promises of military aid in the future it would be beyond France's power to repel the next German invasion. He had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. Now France had neither.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War, Learning, Betrayal, Future

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life, People, Age, Art

“I have come here to thank personally each Member of the Congress who labored so long and so valiantly to make this occasion come true today, and to make this bill a reality. I cannot mention all their names, for it would take much too long, but my gratitude; and that of this Nation; belongs to the 89th Congress. We are indebted, too, to the vision of the late beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the support given to this measure by the then Attorney General and now Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. In the final days of consideration, this bill had no more able champion than the present Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, who, with New York's own "Manny" Celler, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Congressman Feighan of Ohio, and Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen constituting the leadership of the Senate, and Senator Javits, helped to guide this bill to passage, along with the help of the Members sitting in front of me today.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Support, Reality, Help, Personality

“This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.
Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.
According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

Hope, Intelligence, Problem, Decision

“It is generally felt that the educated man or woman should be able to read Dante, Goethe, Baudelaire, Lorca in the original - with, anyway, the crutch of a translation.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Education, Reading

“Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

(Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, Nov 2005).
Attributed

“When most Italian artists of my own generation were afraid to be too 'modern,' too 'international' in their style, not 'national' or 'imperial' enough, I was still left in peace, perhaps because I demanded so little recognition. My privacy was thus my protection and, in the eyes of the Grand Inquisitors of Italian art, I remained a provincial professor of etching, at the Fine Art Academy in Bologna.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

In a 1960 interview; as quoted in Giorgio Morandi, 1890–1964, eds. Renato Miracco and Maria Christina Bandera, Exh. cat. Milan: Skira, 2008
Morandi claimed in the interview this position
1945 - 1964

Peace, Art

“It's a fairly unique position; to have been in charge of prison funding and then to have been an inmate. I wish I'd been more generous.”

Jonathan Aitken (1942) Conservative Member of Parliament, former British government Cabinet minister

As quoted in The Times (3 June 2000).

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, World, Peace, Law

Quotes about general page 12

Quotes about general
page 12