Quotes about general
page 28

William Burges photo

“Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Quote was introduced with the phrase:
In the lecture on the weaver's art, we are reminded of the superiority of Indian muslins and Chinese and Persian carpets, and the gorgeous costumes of the middle ages are contrasted with our own dark ungraceful garments. The Cufic inscriptions that have so perplexed antiquaries, were introduced with the rich Eastern stuffs so much sought after by the wealthy class, and though, as Mr. Burges observes
Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 85; Cited in: " Belles Lettres http://books.google.com/books?id=0EegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143" in: The Westminster Review, Vol. 84-85. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1865. p. 143

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot photo
Stephen Vizinczey photo

“Knowledge management often generates theories that are too general or abstract to be easily testable. In some cases, simulation modeling can help. [WE have developed] an agent-based simulation model derived from a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space and use it to explore the differences between a neoclassical and a Schumpeterian information environment.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Boisot, M. H., Canals, A., & MacMillan, I. (2004). " Simulating I-Space (SIS): An agent-based approach to modeling knowledge flows http://entrepreneurship.wharton.upenn.edu/research/simispace3_200405.pdf." Working papers of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Karl G. Maeser photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
John Marshall Harlan II photo
Kurt Lewin photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo
Daniel Webster photo

“Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825), p. 64

Susan Sontag photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Warren Farrell photo
Maxime Bernier photo
Don Marquis photo

“each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

Gertrude Stein photo
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Neil Patrick Harris photo
Albert Speer photo
Brian Clevinger photo
Daniel Drake photo
Johann Hari photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
Roy Harper (singer) photo
Godfrey Higgins photo
John Tyndall photo
Narendra Modi photo
Anthony Trollope photo
John McCain photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… [Continued in another tweet 9 minutes later] …. Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U. S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming….. [after another 4 minutes] …. victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Series https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864 of https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472 tweets https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890197095151546369 by @realDonaldTrump. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, subsequently wrote to senior commanders https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/transgender-military-trump-ban.html that "We will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect" until the White House sends the Defense Department new rules and the secretary of defense issues new guidelines. (26 July 2017)
2010s, 2017, July

“Though all were devout, and blasphemy was regarded with horror, the general attitude to the deity was one of blasphemous commercialism.”

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 3. The Prospects of the Race (p. 39)

Jefferson Davis photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Madame Nhu photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Aurangzeb photo
Charles James Napier photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Gordon Tullock photo

“A government does not, in general, just go about the world doing good. It has to be pushed into it.”

Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) American economist

"Rent Seeking: The Problem of Definition"

Bernie Sanders photo
Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
Werner Heisenberg photo

“In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)

“A few human generations ago, grasslands were abundant across much of the South; today there are rare. Driving through the region today, one mostly sees agricultural fields, pine plantations, dense and mostly young hardwood forests and swamps, and, increasingly, urban sprawl.”

Reed Noss (1952)

p. 6 https://books.google.com/books/about/Forgotten_Grasslands_of_the_South.html?id=9ZOaZZbukBwC&pg=PA6
Forgotten Grasslands of the South: Natural History and Conservation (2012)

Herbert Marcuse photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Hans Reichenbach photo

“The surfaces of three-dimensional space are distinguished from each other not only by their curvature but also by certain more general properties. A spherical surface, for instance, differs from a plane not only by its roundness but also by its finiteness. Finiteness is a holistic property. The sphere as a whole has a character different from that of a plane. A spherical surface made from rubber, such as a balloon, can be twisted so that its geometry changes…. but it cannot be distorted in such a way as that it will cover a plane. All surfaces obtained by distortion of the rubber sphere possess the same holistic properties; they are closed and finite. The plane as a whole has the property of being open; its straight lines are not closed. This feature is mathematically expressed as follows. Every surface can be mapped upon another one by the coordination of each point of one surface to a point of the other surface, as illustrated by the projection of a shadow picture by light rays. For surfaces with the same holistic properties it is possible to carry through this transformation uniquely and continuously in all points. Uniquely means: one and only one point of one surface corresponds to a given point of the other surface, and vice versa. Continuously means: neighborhood relations in infinitesimal domains are preserved; no tearing of the surface or shifting of relative positions of points occur at any place. For surfaces with different holistic properties, such a transformation can be carried through locally, but there is no single transformation for the whole surface.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Bruce Schneier photo
Terry Brooks photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit
Born of an ever-generating root…”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All

Dexter S. Kimball photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“On general grounds I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Sir Henry Peek http://wist.info/salisbury-lord/5899/ (1888)
1880s

William James photo
Charles, Prince of Wales photo
James Braid photo
Daniel Webster photo
Otto Neurath photo
Edmund Burke photo

“We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

No. 1
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Ai Weiwei photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Steve Sailer photo
Harold Wilson photo
Isaac Barrow photo
A. James Gregor photo
Denis Diderot photo
Buckminster Fuller photo

“The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1005.56 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/p0520.html#1005.50
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Clayton M. Christensen photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Elia M. Ramollah photo

“Like a dance, conflict escalation generally requires the participation of both parties.”

Brian Mistler American Gestalt therapist

George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden Are Dancing Together (2003)

Northrop Frye photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“Money and generous benefits can easily alter a person’s political outlook. Ideology follows the money.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 301

Harry Emerson Fosdick photo

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

Elbert Hubbard, as quoted in The Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951) by Evan Esar, p. 103
Misattributed

Donald Barthelme photo
William Gibson photo
Vitruvius photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Wars are generally a rich man's affair and a poor man's fight.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Sanctuary City Mayor Trashes An AMERICAN Hero, Robert E. Lee, https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/sanctuary-city-mayor-trashes-an-american-hero-robert-e-lee/" The Abbeville Institute, May 25, 2017
2010s, 2017

Roger Penrose photo

“General relativity is certainly a very beautiful theory, but how does one judge the elegance of physical theories generally?”

Ch. 1, Mathematical Elegance as a Driving Force, p. 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=T09kCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA7.
Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (2016)

“Social costs… are all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities.”

Karl William Kapp (1910–1976) American economist

Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

Edward Witten photo

“Generally speaking, all the really great ideas of physics are really spin-offs of string theory… Some of them were discovered first, but I consider that a mere accident of the development on planet earth.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (1996)
Context: Generally speaking, all the really great ideas of physics are really spin-offs of string theory... Some of them were discovered first, but I consider that a mere accident of the development on planet earth. On planet earth, they were discovered in this order [general relativity, quantum field theory, superstrings, and supersymmetry]... But I don't believe, if there are many civilizations in the universe, that those four ideas were discovered in that order in each civilization.