Quotes about going
page 78

“Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatic about [the go to statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a simple trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1973) in personal communication to Donald Knuth, quoted in Knuth's "Structured Programming with go to Statements".
1970s

Religion, Feeling, Problem

“I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,
I had been there, in the house of torture,
I have seen people being kicked, men’s bodies scorched,
nails pulled out with pliers.
Armed with flame and cudgels, grinning men in shirt sleeves.
Where I could hear my friends being thrown headlong
down the stairs.
Night was as day, and long shrieks wounded me.
In vain I tried to think of wooded lanes and flowers,
a serene life and human words.
The thought seized up, it was as if a wound were opened up
again and again and endlessly searched.
From the mouth struck, teeth and blood came out,
and lamenting moans from the deep throat.
Away, away from that house, from that street and town,
from anything similar to it.
I must save myself, keep up my mind,
that I should not be led to madness by these memories.
Oh, if we could go back to a void, from which a new order,
a maternal opening could come forth,
if I hear a certain tone of voice even in jest, I shudder.
My unhappiness is that I avoid the sight of suffering,
hospitals and prisons.
I have yearned for high solitudes, lands of still sunshine
and sweet shadows,
but I would always be pursued by the ghosts of human beings.
All of a sudden I feel the need of distraction and play,
to lose myself in the noise of the fairground.
I remain with you, but forgive me
if you see me sometimes act like a madman.
I try to heal myself by myself, as an animal,
trusting that the wounds will close.
I stop to listen to the simple conversations of the women
in the marketplace, with their dialectical lilt.
I rejoice at the footsteps of running children,
their overpowering calls.
Because you do not know the absurdity of my dreams,
the fixed expressions, the incomprehensible gestures.
There is turmoil inside me, which seems to ridicule me.
And I cannot cry out, not to be like them.
Tomorrow I will go towards some music, now I am getting ready.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Life, Women, Men, Children

“And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"And I always thought" [Und ich dachte immer] (c. 1956), trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 452
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Heart

“Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital… Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls' College alone. You hear nothing but rape.
get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p. m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!”

John Rabe (1882–1950) German businessman

17 December 1937

Life, Women, Way, Girl

“It is very easy to sail along with the majority -- easy to sail the way the boats are going -- easy to float with the stream; but when you come to swim against the tide, with the men on the shore throwing rocks at you, you will get a good deal of exercise in this world.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Men, World, Way, Exercises

“Michael Jordan did not get good at basketball by practicing 42 minutes a week, which is what most kids have in the computer lab. … Whether it's a scalpel, baseball bat or a computer, the skill in the use of a tool rests upon practice and familiarity, and that's what these kids are going to have to an unprecedented extent.”

Angus King (1944) United States Senator from Maine

On his program to purchase iBook computers for Maine public schools, as quoted in "Maine Students Hit the iBooks" by Katie Dean in WIRED (9 January 2002)

“Going to Ford's Theatre to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 21

Food

“If investors disagree about future prospects of companies, then inevitably the future is not going to turn out as most — or perhaps even any — investors expect.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 10, The Price Is Not Right, p. 235 (See also: Andy Kessler)

Future

“She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. "Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love, Hunger, God, Pain

“I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It's the most breathtaking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.”

Ayrton Senna (1960–1994) Brazilian racing driver

TV Interview Roda Viva, TV Cultura 1986 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGcO6lXb2Zo

Love, World, Sport

“We have to be tough. It's time we're going to be a little bit tough, folks. We're taken advantage by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen any more.”

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

White House suggests US may still accept Australia refugees despite clash https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/donald-trump-australia-refugees-malcolm-turnbull-phone-call (2 February 2017) 2010s, 2017, February

World, Time

“I ordered up a cup of tea in the morning. We were staying at this magnificent hotel called the Gateway of India – a Taj complex looking over The Gateway of India, which is this beautiful old monument that sits right down on the peninsula of Mumbai. I opened up the screens and I looked down and there were 50 to 60 people all wearing perfect white standing underneath my window. And they were laughing. I thought ‘what are they doing’. One person started laughing and then another person would start, and the next one would start laughing and it was - now I realise – a laughing meditation. It’s very very hard to be unhappy when you are laughing. It’s the truth. That was the start of their day. It was 5.30 in the morning, the sun was just creeping through the Taj complex and over the Gateway of India, I was hearing this laughing meditation and all the whiles in the background I knew that this was actually my time that I was going to arrive as a cricketer. I knew it in my heart. I knew it from the moment I set sights on India.”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

When asked about his favourite memory of India, quoted on The Courier Mail, "The day 50 people laughed at Matthew Hayden" http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/hayden-joins-indian-team/news-story/a88c1a51e63ddd3d9731820f4dc74cf1, March 20, 2016.

People, Truth, Beauty, Time

“I have always felt that I was different from others. I felt it when I was small. I felt that there was a soul in me. I saw the world from a height of many thousand meters. Even when I was thrashed it was of no concern to me; I could tuck Reykjavik under my arm and go away with it.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Brilliantine
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Soul, World

“I hate when your friends quit drinking on you, don't you? It's sad. I've lost more friends to AA than Liberace did to the virus. It's sad to see 'em go. You see a thirty day chip on your buddy's key ring, it's like seeing a toe tag on his cold, stiff corpse.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

Something to Take the Edge Off (2000)

Hate, Sadness, Drink

“Spanish for, Ask me to talk about Mexican cinema? is like requesting my autobiography, what i have not lived, what i have not seen, and in how many different ways have you seen me? without going any further tender as in "La gallina clueca", tearful as in "Cuando los hijos se van", sweet as in "El baisano Jalil", and energetic and dominant and at the same time affectionate as in "Los tres García" you have seen me very alive and very dead”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Pedirme a mi que hable del cine Mexicano? es como solicitar mi autobiografía, que no habré vivido, que no habré visto, y de cuantas maneras distintas me han visto a mi? sin ir mas lejos tierna como en "La gallina clueca", llorosa como en "Cuando los hijos se van", dulce como en "El baisano Jalil", y enérgica y dominante y al mismo tiempo cariñosa como en "Los tres García" me han visto muy viva y muy muerta. Sara answering when she was told to talk about Mexican cinema. Doña Sara Garcia habla del Cine Mexicano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXlz7AznYxA

Way, Tear, Time, Dead

“Here we are, sixty something human minds. We’ve been migrated—while still awake—right out of our own heads using an amazing combination of nanotechnology and electron spin resonance mapping, and we’re now running as software in an operating system designed to virtualize multiple physics models and provide a simulation of reality that doesn’t let us go mad from sensory deprivation! And this whole package is about the size of a fingertip, crammed into a starship the size of your grandmother’s old Walkman, in orbit around a brown dwarf just over three light-years from home, on its way to plug into a network router created by incredibly ancient alien intelligences, and you can tell me that the idea of a fundamental change in the human condition is nonsense?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 5 (“Router”), p. 184

Way, Home, Intelligence, Idea

“I've been fortunate enough to tour all over the country. I'm always going to be over the top - I'm a showgirl at heart, so that's what you can expect.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Billboard https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/508270/spotlight-on-erika-jayne (2012)

Heart, Country

“Marx once said that workers (and this would perhaps go for consumers even more) are in their purely economic action in a capitalist society always the weaker side, and therefore they need to organize politically.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

“The point of following Jesus isn't simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. We're called, here and now, to be instruments of God's new creation, the world-put-to-rights which has already been launched by Jesus and of which Jesus's followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006), p. xi

Life, Death, God, World

“Many times I recall my father, with my mother and us children in tow, going up to the pastor after a service. With Bible in hand he would challenge the pastor about some of the things he said in his sermon, quoting Scriptures that resounded with the words "Thus said the Lord," or "It is written…"… (To this day, when I quote verses that contain these phrases, an image of my father confronting the liberal pastors pops into my mind!)”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Raising Godly Children in an Ungodly World: Leaving a Lasting Legacy (2008)

Children, Quotes, Time

“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."
"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"
"Old."
"I'm not old."
"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.
"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

"I do," Dunbar told him.
"Why?" Clevinger asked.
"What else is there?"
Catch-22 (1961)

Life, Death, Age, School

“Playing that music delivered me from the pressures of my life. I played with my eyes closed and found that my backaches ceased and my headaches would go. The response to that rhythm was "My God, this makes me feel good." I never really remembered having that much fun with it before or thought about jazz making me feel good. But, at 46, it suddenly dawned on me that my body had priorities that my mind didn't allow, and I decided to (play Latin/jazz)✱ for myself and started having a helluva fine time.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "He Arranges, Composes, Performs: Fischer: A Renaissance Man Of Music" http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-14/entertainment/ca-8949_1_clare-fischer. <center>✱ The parenthetical addition is Zan Stewart's; exactly what it's replacing – whether simply filling a space, or replacing an unintelligible word or two – is not revealed.</center>

Life, God, Music, Feeling

“You were there all day long, 12 hours a day. So there was none of this, "I'm going back to my trailer, my trailer's bigger than your trailer," that kind of Hollywood nonsense.”

John C. Reilly (1965) American actor

“Civility carries with it the essence of courtesy, politeness, and consideration of others. All of the education and accomplishments in the world will not count for much unless they are accompanied by marks of gentility, of respect for others, of going the extra mile.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

World, Education

“Even as a baby I quickly learned to crawl out of my crib. … They'd put up barriers but I learned how to go over them.”

Mary Martin (1913–1990) American actress

As quoted in Mary Martin : Broadway Legend (2008) by Ronald L. Davis. p. 6

Learning, Baby

“"All this beauty makes a person realize how insignificant they are," Paul says.
"How insignificant I am. You're the insignificant one"
He grins real big as he realizes how his words sounded. "I didn't mean it like that," he chuckles.
"No, I know what you meant, bud. I was just thinking kind of the same thing. I was looking at all this depth and it came to me how very shallow you are."
"Ha, ha," Paul chortles. He takes a few steps down the trail and turns. "You know, Don, I was just looking at this little flowery cactus here and thinking how nice it looks and it made me realize how ugly you are."
"Is that right," I say. "Well, I was just considering how smart these rocks look and it made me realize how dumb you are." With that I give him a little kick in the backside.
"How smart these rocks are?" he heckles. "Well, I was just looking at that cloud up there, reflecting on its beauty and stuff, and it hit me how much you smell."
"Is that right," I say. "The cloud made you realize that, huh?"
Paul distances himself a little and keeps turning to see if I am going to kick him again. He's got this grin going like he got the last laugh.
"You know, Paul, I was just looking at this pebble and it made me realize that I'm going to tackle you and throw you off the ledge."
"I see. That's real deep, Don. The pebble; you got that from a pebble?"”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Beauty, Thinking, Personality

“What Elizabethan playwrights learned from the Greek classics was not theories of insanity, but dramatic practice — that is, madness is a dandy theatrical element. It focuses the audience's attention and increases suspense, since you never know what a mad person may get up to next; and Shakespeare himself makes use of it in many forms. In King Lear, there's a scene in which one man pretending to be mad, another who has really gone mad, and a third who has probably always been a little addled, are brought together for purposes of comparison, irony, pathos, and tour de force acting. In Hamlet, there are two variations — Hamlet himself, who assumes madness, and Ophelia, who really does go winsomely bonkers. In MacBeth, it's Lady MacBeth who snaps.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Learning, Personality, Madness

“I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move... Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

a daily life quote, in Duchamp's letter to the Stettheimers family in New York, from Buenos Aires 3 Mai 1919; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 159
1915 - 1925

People, World, Time, Painting

“It is especially shocking that such a tragedy can go on, year after year, with the rest of the world paying so little attention to it. My Christmas message to Colombian refugees and to the millions of displaced people in Colombia is that the world has not totally forgotten them.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

"UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie and actor Brad Pitt make holiday visit to Colombian refugees in Costa Rica" (25 December 2006) http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4590e1674.html

People, World, Christmas

“…the differences between U. S. and Japanese companies go beyond the cultural.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 179.

“I would say that the polar ice has disappeared in the past. Certainly there seems to be evidence of past climate situations where we may have had virtually no or none during the summertime. In the immediate future, however, I don't think we are going to see that. In fact, we're going through a rebound right now.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts http://townhall.com/columnists/billsteigerwald/2009/04/20/talking_climate_change_with_anthony_watts/page/full/ townhall.com, Apr 20, 2009. 2009

Thinking, Past, Future

“Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

A Second Outline in Portraiture (1936), as quoted in Marsden Hartley, Gail R. Scott - Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York, p. 167
1930s

“I wonder how many men and women, kids and dogs, go through life in a state of modest misery; how much communal coldness there is, how much extinguished hope.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 226

Life, Women, Men, Dogs

“Where such a separation is complete one group of individuals, the security holders and in particular the stockholders, performs the function of risk-takers and suppliers of capital, while a separate group exercises control and ultimate management. In such a case, if profits are to be received only by the security holders, as the traditional logic of property would require, how can they perform both of their traditional economic roles? Are no profits to go to those who exercise control and in whose hands the efficient operation of enterprise ultimately rests? …Furthermore, if all profits are earmarked for the security holder, where is the inducement for those in control to manage the enterprise efficiently? When none of the profits are to be received by them, why should they exert themselves beyond the amount necessary to maintain a reasonably satisfied group of stockholders.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

1967, p. 303
The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967

Exercises

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. Upon crossing the shadow line, it is more the desire to act than the power to do so that is lost. Is it possible, after fifty years of experiences and disappointments, to retain the ardent curiosity of youth, the desire to know and understand, the power to love wholeheartedly, the certainty that beauty, intelligence, and kindness unite naturally, and to preserve faith in the efficacy of reason? Beyond the shadow line lies the realm of even, tempered light where the eyes, not being dazzled any more by the blinding sun of desire, can see things and people as they are. How is it possible to believe in the moral perfection of pretty women if you have loved one of them? How is it possible to believe in progress when you have discovered throughout a long and difficult life that no violent change can triumph over human nature and that it is only the most ancient customs and ceremonies that can provide people with the flimsy shelter of civilization? "What's the use?" says the old man to himself. This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase he can utter, for after having said: "What's the use of struggling?" he will say one day: "What's the use of going out?" then: "What's the use of leaving my room?" then: "What's the use of leaving my bed?" and at last comes "What's the use of living?"”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

which opens the portals of death.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Life, Death, Women

“If you’re going to be businessmen, don’t confuse the vocation with larceny.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 4, “Aspects of Domestic Engineering” (p. 61)

“Only when we let go of attachment can we let go of the self. Free ourselves from worries. If we are constantly troubled by worries, it must be that we think too highly of ourselves.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Quotes from Word of Wisdoms Vol.3

Thinking

“But with those who are mentally defective—ah, here is the hardest question of all!—what shall be done with them? …In the case of human beings in whom the light of reason does not burn… shall they be eliminated from the race? Go to the mother of an imbecile child and get your answer. …For these helpless unfortunates, as with those who are merely unfortunate from environment, I should enlist the best and broadest state aid.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Question, Light

“The goal that the Obama team has is to fundamentally replace the historic America of self-reliance, independence, the work ethic, the people who go out and achieve because they spend their lifetime doing the right things. And they want to replace it with a politician-dominated redistributionist bureaucracy. Which in the essence would mean the end of America as it has been for the last 400 years.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-05-17
2010-05-17
On Beck's radio show, Gingrich says Obama admin. is trying to "end … America as it has been for the last 400 years"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005170030
2011-03-30
2010s

People

“I also respond very strongly to characters I have not done before… something I can really sink my teeth into, and what's scary, and what terrifies me, because that's where I need to go.”

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

Toady "Nothing 'Bleak' about PBS for Gillian Anderson" http://www.today.com/id/10912748/ns/today-today_entertainment/t/nothing-bleak-about-pbs-gillian-anderson/#.VpKEALZ96Uk (January 18, 2006) 2000s

“Tis thus that men to heaven aspire:
Go on and raise your glories higher.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IX, p. 333

Men

“Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. … When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007), Chapter 4.
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007)

Thinking, Sense, Wealth

“It is from this viewpoint that he writes in this unconventional book. He makes a strong case for his contention that loyalty to Christ and to his spirit can go hand in hand with the rejection of unlikely theological dogma and creed.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Books, Strong, Christ, Loyalty

“[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it... If you don't want to be serious about playing [at art], do something of no account. Go into banking. Buy collar buttons at five cents a dozen and sell them for five cents a piece.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

Ibid. p. 8.
The Gist of Art (1939)

Art, Teachers, Painting

“The market theory is, there should be international mobility of capital. I said, why not international movement of labour? Marketing theory only envisages mobility of all factors of production. That means their medicines can come, but our doctors cannot go. Their engineering goods can come, our engineers cannot go. Secondly, they want the developing countries to open up but deny them access to technology. Certainly, our economies have been too protected. But that has to go gradually.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

We are ruled by an upper caste Hindu raj

Country

“Asimov: I don't know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home—in story after story—the notion that life is going to be different.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, Home, Science

“I would never save her. I looked at the woman mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or any of them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hundred years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department sent me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I’ve learned it. Can I go home now?”

Connie Willis (1945) American science fiction writer

Source: Fire Watch (1982), pp. 129-130 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg

Way, Home, History, Cats

“The summer of 2000 was a real turning point for me, and I kind of got my act together and laid the bottle down and got to work, and really last five years have been the greatest five years of my life, personally and then -- as a result of that, I guess -- professionally. Six months after that, I met Amy [Poehler]. We had sort of met before, but we started dating. From the moment we met, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was great. We didn't know what we were doing, and all of a sudden she got SNL, so we kind of decided that I guess I had to move to New York; otherwise it wasn't going to work out. So I moved back to New York and it was the greatest. It was great. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me is Amy.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-4.html 2005

Life, Summer, Personality

“Omnisexuality is the term that I use in Hysteria. There seems to be a strain of pure sexuality that can embody itself in any possible way, female, male, something else. This is the first time I’ve ever articulated this, but I think I’m most interested in that essence of sexuality that seems to be able to take many forms but has still a specific feel and tone to it that we all recognize. You can’t really define it as male or female. I’m very fascinated with the way in which maleness and femaleness is specifically physical. but not necessarily purely sexual. There is a difference amongst all those things. This takes you right back to the mind/body schism that I go crazy with all the time.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“Increasing-returns economics has roots that go back 70 years or more, but its application to the economy as a whole is largely new.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Source: Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, (1994), p. 1: Chapter 1. Positive feedback in economics

“It had to go all the way out to the west coast and come all the way back to the east coast every time it needed to be fixed.”

Suzanne Ciani (1946) Italian American composer and musician

"INTERVIEW: Suzanne Ciani...," (2014)

Way, Time

“I am sure that hon. members will realize that I am not drawing on my imagination when I state that last fall there were children going to school in Saskatchewan with only sacking wrapped around their feet. We have gone into homes and found mothers and children lying on piles of bedding in the corner; they did not have the proper bedding equipment or the proper clothing to meet the rigours of a very cold winter.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Maiden speech, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, February 11, 1936.

Children, School, Home, Imagination

“If you want a thing done, go yourself; if not, send.”

Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary

La Dote, Act 7., Scene II. — (Ippolito).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 275.

“I sometimes wish to be a kid again and go through life a little differently.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Nightmares of a Journalist (1991)

Life

“I was just a youngster and believed everything everybody told me. The Dodgers told me a big bonus was no good and they said other players would resent it. Better for me to take small amount and work my way use [sic]. So my father signed for me. Next day, the Braves offer me $27, 500 and I say, "Where were you yesterday?" In the workout with the Dodgers, I hit 10 balls over the fence and I go back to 400-foot mark and throw to the plate. The Dodgers hid me as Montreal in 1954 and I seldom played. Maybe the late innings. Once I started and before I could bat in first inning they take me out for pinch-hitter.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard: Hitting in Daylight" (.411 Vs. .302) Best For Clemente; Roberto 'Feels Good' In Sunshine; Chicago's Wrigley Field His Favorite; Clemente Can Hit to All Field; Pirates Paid Only $4,000 For Him" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YGscAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t04EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4128%2C3280138 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Sunday, March 11, 1962), Sec. 4. p. 3 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1962</big>

Way

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Death, People, Truth, Peace

“Relative knowledge pertains to the mind and not to the Self. It is therefore illusory and not permanent. Take a scientist, for instance. He formulates a theory that the Earth is round and goes on to prove it on an incontrovertible basis. When he falls asleep the whole idea vanishes; his mind is left a blank. What does it matter whether the world remains round or flat when he is asleep? So you see the futility of all such relative knowledge. One should go beyond relative knowledge and abide in the Self. Real knowledge is such experience, and not apprehension by the mind.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

World, Idea, Knowledge

“Yeah, we, we uh, we had a march North, movement at that time, in July '64. I prepare at that time the psychology of the South Vietnamese people that maybe we need to go north to answer to the aggression from North Vietnam. You, you cannot defend yourself always to have a defensive plan, you know. Uh…what the…the…one of the uh military principle is you better defend yourself by having an offensive plan.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Assumption of power and the prospect of a march north
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

People, Time

“We not only worked hard—but we had a lot of fun doing it. We never saw the dynamics of work and fun as incompatible. If you’re going to spend a large percentage of your waking hours at work, why not enjoy it?”

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. xix. On working hard

“One room after another in the British museum took my enthusiasm. The Royal College of Art meant nothing in comparison. Every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday I would go to the British Museum. But not till after three months did things begin to settle into any pattern of reality for me. Till then everything was wonderful – a new world at every turn. That is the value of the British Museum: you have everything behind you; you are free to try to find out your own way and, after a while, to find what appeals to you most. And after the first excitement it was the art of ancient Mexico that spoke to me most – except perhaps Romanesque, or early Norman. And I admit clearly and frankly that early Mexican art formed my views of carving as much as everything I could do.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

in 'Partisan Review', New York, March-April 1947
1940 - 1955

World, Art, Way, Reality

“If that was Tim Howard's last World Cup game, what a way to go out! He was phenomenal. Most saves by a W. C. keeper in 50 years.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Twitter https://twitter.com/IanDarke/status/484268327221874688 (2 July 2014). 2010s, 2014, 2014 FIFA World Cup

World, Way, Game

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the eye to come back to the United States.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Santorum defends Iraq war
Bucks County Courier Times
2006-10-17
Alison
Hawkes
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-10172006-728120.html

“Trump (Donald) denied knowing that Serge (Kovaleski) was disabled, and demanded an apology, saying that anyone could see his imitation was of a flustered, frightened reporter, not a disabled person. It’s true that Trump was not mimicking any mannerisms that Serge has. He doesn’t jerk around or flail his arms. He’s not retarded. He sits calmly, but if you look at his wrists, you’ll see they are curved in. That’s not the imitation Trump was doing—he was doing a standard retard, waving his arms and sounding stupid: “’Ahhh, I don’t know what I said—ahhh, I don’t remember!’ He’s going, ‘Ahhh, I don’t remember, maybe that’s what I said!’””

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2016, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)

Stupidity, Jerk, Personality

“You know, look, if I could strangle these people and not go to hell and get executed, I would, but I can't.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-09-27
The Radio Factor
Fox News Talk
Radio
of people who criticize him

People, Hell

“There are two types of education: education for livelihood and education for life. When we study in college, it helps us to get a job so that we can earn a living. We can become a doctor, a scientist, an engineer or whatever we want. We may go on to attain wealth, possession and fame. All of this comes from education for livelihood. But this alone will never make our life full and complete. Education is not only to help us live a comfortable life of plenty. When our plans fall apart, when we face failure and loss, when we are knocked down, education should help us get back on our feet. Education should help us regain our mental equipoise, self-confidence and positive attitude, so that we can continue forward. This is why education for life is as important as education for livelihood. Education for life is spirituality.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Amritanandamayi's Address Upon Receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York (2010)

Life, Education, Confidence, Failure

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase". … I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

"Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate.

School, Food, Feeling, Home

“Your teachers are always telling you [high school students] to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults…. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

School, Imagination, Teachers, Time

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Universe

“"Soviet Union is under dictatorship of the proletariat, the intelligentsia class is going to be starved to death."…a well known reporter had so warned me. Yes, I am afraid I might lost some sleep. But then, dictatorship of the proletariat(at present), isn't it for the forth coming of the classless society? As long as you do not murder it, naturally it's success will arrive soon, the elimination of classes will arrive soon, then no one will be "starved to death"…But now, the imperialists and their running dogs, still trying to tell us the Soviet Union's shortcomings, as if they really wish that Soviet Union would become heaven overnight, and all of it's people would enjoy life. Now, it turns out to be like that, it (imperialist) is disappointed, and feel uneasy…This is really the tears of the devil.”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

Source: 1932年《我們不再受騙了》

Life, Death, People, Dogs

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm The Double Helix (1968)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“There is nothing more I should do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this moment.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Note about his Memoirs about a week before he died, as quoted in Famous Last Words (2001) by Alan Bisbort, p. 30.
1880s

“It has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Good taste doesn't go out of style”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

About the C programming language, vs. C++ Re: RFC Convert builin-mailinfo.c to use The Better String Library., 7 Sep 2007, gmane.comp.version-control.git, 12 Sep 2012 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57957, 2000s, 2007

“The days and weeks before a true commitment to Jesus can be terrible and lonely. I think I was feeling bitter about the human experience. I never asked to be human. Nobody can to the womb and explained the situation to me, asking for my permission to go into the world and live and breathe and eat and feel joy and pain. I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food, and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity. I spent an entire week feeling bitter because I couldn't breathe underwater. I told God I wanted to be a fish. I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like and experience of freedom.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, God, Pain, World

“People are going to dislike you if you make a decision, even if it turns out to be the right one.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

People, Decision

“I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras… I have no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics. I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself. I have made a special investigation of divergent series in general and the results I get are termed by the local mathematicians as "startling"…. Very recently I came across a tract published by you styled Orders of Infinity in page 36 of which I find a statement that no definite expression has been as yet found for the number of prime numbers less than any given number. I have found an expression which very nearly approximates to the real result, the error being negligible. I would request that you go through the enclosed papers. Being poor, if you are convinced that there is anything of value I would like to have my theorems published. I have not given the actual investigations nor the expressons that I get but I have indicated the lines on which I proceed. Being inexperienced I would very highly value any advice you give me. Requesting to be excused for the trouble I give you. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours truly…”

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) Indian mathematician

Letter to G. H. Hardy, (16 January 1913), published in Ramanujan: Letters and Commentary American Mathematical Society (1995) History of Mathematics, Vol. 9

Education, School, Error, Mathematics