Quotes about good
page 92

“There is no such thing as morality—only varingly expedient conventions. What to one race is a crime, is virtue to another; crime in one era is virtue in another; even a crime in one class of society is at the same time and in the same society virtue in another class... It makes no difference whether people are called good or bad; we are all here; now; there is only one world in existence, and in it there prevail either expedient or inexpedient conditions for those who are alive.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

People, World, Time

“Andrzej Szczeklik was a fascinating personality in many respects. The scope of his general knowledge was absolutely rare. He saw what others did not notice. It's enough to say he was a better doctor than a good doctor. He could look and listen to what the patient says. Looking, he already knew what was wrong, after little things, after grimaces, after the way of breathing, after the way someone sits down or gets up…”

Marek Sanak (1958) Polish scientist

Kobos, Andrzej (2012). Po drogach uczonych. 5. Polska Akademia Umiejętności. pp. 317–335. ISBN 978-83-7676-127-5.

Way, Knowledge, Personality

“[Boulding's belief in] the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit, or Inward Light, available to every man to teach, guide, reprove, and draw him up toward goodness.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Organizational Revolution: A study in the ethics of economic organization, 1953, p. 253. cited in: D.A. Latzko (1995) " Kenneth E. Boulding (18 January 1910-19 March 1993) http://www.personal.psu.edu/~dxl31/research/otherstuff/boulding.html" in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.

Light, Drawing

“Forget that foreign word "ideals." We have that good old native word: "lies."”

Henrik Ibsen The Wild Duck

Relling, Act V
The Wild Duck (1884)

Forgetting

“True greatness does not consist so much in doing extraordinary things, as in conducting ordinary affairs with a noble demeanor and from a right motive. It is necessary and most profitable to remember the advice to Titus, "Showing all good fidelity in all things."”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 292.

Motivation

“Well, gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense. […] First, these men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners. These conditions do not make one's older years the happiest. Second, because sex is the center of their lives, they want it to be as pleasurable as possible, which means unprotected sex. Third, they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1994
January
AIDS Dementia
Ron Paul Survival Report
5
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/SR_Jan94_p5.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Survival Report

Men, Children, Pleasure, Sex

“…. There was a good deal of drunkenness - … There was lechery, nakedness. It was a warm afternoon,’ he added, as if to excuse the nakedness….
‘I saw the ceremony between the Empress and Gaius Silius and I assumed it was all a game. There was a great deal of laughter and little solemnity. Then the marriage or mock marriage was …. consummated at once and in public. And, in sympathy as it were, the other guests - A great mass of naked bodies. Men and women. Fornication for them. There were boys there too, Ganymedes. ….
‘And when does Gaius Silius think he can strike the blow that will secure him the imperial c -’
I do not think,’ Narcissus said, ‘that Gaius Silius has such an ambition. He is a weak man besotted by the erotic, no more.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Women, Men, Marriage, Game

“"Do the NBC bigheads really pay attention to these message boards?" Um, I don't know if they read the message boards. I hope so, because I write fifty to a thousand fake posts a week, mostly, uh, saying that I'm really good and that no else is as good as me. So, I hope they listen to that because I'm trying to get a raise.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

"Ask Tina" segment from NBC's 30 Rock website

Hope, Reading

“Vegan is a term that refers to people who have chosen a way of living guided by ahimsa (nonharming) and reverence for life. … Vegans recognize the value of life to all living creatures and extend to them the compassion, kindness, and justice in The Golden Rule. Vegans see animals as free entities in nature, not slaves or vassals, nor as chattel, pieces of goods to be bought and sold. An animal has feelings, an animal has sensitivity, an animal has a place in life, and the vegan respects this life that is manifest in the animal. Vegans do not wish to harm the animal any more than they would want the animal to harm them. This is an example of The Golden Rule precisely as it should be applied.”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics

"Go Vegan for the Animals" (adapted from "Let’s Talk about Veganism" in Powerful Vegan Messages, 2014), in the American Vegan Society website http://www.americanvegan.org/animals.html.

Life, People, Justice, Way

“But what good’s abundance if nobody can experience it?”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 23 (p. 256).

“In a real fight, there ain't no time and you've got to use your wits. If someone were threatening the life of my child, then I'd be a good fighter. If somebody just wanted to steal my wallet, well, maybe I wouldn't worry about it so much.”

Hugo Weaving (1960) Nigerian born British-Australian actor

Interview at about.com http://actionadventure.about.com/cs/weeklystories/a/aa051003.htm on The Matrix Reloaded.

Life, Time, Fight

“It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 42-43

Life, Intelligence, Sense, Personality

“Criticisms that I have mentioned come to the same thing: that liberal education is too good for the people.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, Education

“One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Sins of Prince Saradine
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Personality

“It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est à peu près impossible de constituer systématiquement une morale naturelle. La nature n'a pas de principes. Elle ne nous fournit aucune raison de croire que la vie humaine est respectable. La nature, indifférente, ne fait nulle distinction du bien et du mal.
La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels] (1914), ch. XXVII

Life, Law, Nature, Evil

“One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 2, sect. 6

World, Evil

“Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On the differences between the present and the time of the space race which existed during the Cold War years, in an interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)

Change

“Prophecy is a critical response to the "urban revolution," that irreversible commitment of the human race to the city and civilization which spread outward from the "Nile to Oxus" heartland beginning around 3000 B. C. Prophecy is the perception of the potentialities, both for "good" and for "evil," inherent in the new social structure. The urban complex makes a process of world unification in one sense—commercial, technological—inevitable, and makes world unification in another sense—the peaceable Kingdom—ever more problematical. The whole prophetic tradition is an attempt to give direction to the social structure precipitated by the urban revolution; to resolve its inherent contradictions; to put an end to the injustice, inequality, anomie, the state of war … that has been its history from start to finish.”

Norman O. Brown (1913–2002) classicist

Source: "The Prophetic Tradition" (1982), p. 367

War, World, History, Sense

“M. Révérony said immediately: "Most Holy Father, this is a child who wants to enter Carmel at fifteen, but the superiors are considering the matter at this moment." (The good pope is so old that one would say he is dead; I would never have pictured him like this.) The Holy Father said simply:"If God wills it, you will enter." [-]I was crying a lot when writing this letter; my heart is heavy. However, God cannot give me trials that are above my strength. He has given me the courage to bear this trial. I am the Child Jesus' little ball; if He wishes to break His toy, He is free. Yes, I will all that He wills.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Thérèse's account of the papal audience, November 20,1887
General Correspondence

God, Courage, Heart, Cry

“The Good Economist Hayek is the thinker who has mind-blowing insights into just why the competitive market system is such a marvelous societal device for coordinating our by now 7.2 billion-wide global division of labor. Few other economists imagined that Lenin’s centrally-planned economy behind the Iron Curtain was doomed to settle at a level of productivity 1/5 that of the capitalist industrial market economies outside. Hayek did so imagine. And Hayek had dazzling insights as to why. Explaining the thought of this Hayek requires not sociology or history of thought but rather appreciation, admiration, and respect for pure genius.The Bad Economist Hayek is the thinker who was certain that Keynes had to be wrong, and that the mass unemployment of the Great Depression had to have in some mysterious way been the fault of some excessively-profligate government entity (or perhaps of those people excessively clever with money–fractional-reserve bankers, and those who claim not the natural increase of flocks but rather the interest on barren gold). Why Hayek could not see with everybody else–including Milton Friedman–that the Great Depression proved that Say’s Law was false in theory, and that aggregate demand needed to be properly and delicately managed in order to make Say’s Law true in practice is largely a mystery. Nearly everyone else did: the Lionel Robbinses and the Arthur Burnses quickly marked their beliefs to market after the Great Depression and figured out how to translate what they thought into acceptable post-World War II Keynesian language. Hayek never did.
My hypothesis is that the explanation is theology: For Hayek, the market could never fail. For Hayek, the market could only be failed. And the only way it could be failed was if its apostles were not pure enough.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

Money, War, People, World

“I don't believe in remakes. I think original films are classics and one can't make it or match up to it (original film) the same way. And even if they do there will be comparisons…it's not a good idea”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Waheeda Rehman not in favour of biopics and remakes

Way, Idea, Thinking

“There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Source: The Arrogance of Power (1966), p. 245

Passion

“The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King's courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter V, The Law Of Chattels, p. 55

Law, Perfection

“I believe that all religions are true and different religions are only the different ways to the same God.
For me God is the power of life and justice and when I am talking about God I am just talking about happiness to live and to enjoy life on earth. I feel that humanity should be one, that mankind should not be divided. The people should together work for much good. Well, this is my belief in God. Maybe I am not clear.”

Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926–2011) daughter of Joseph Stalin

"Svetlana Alliluyeva describes how she changed from Atheism", Daytona Beach Morning Journal, (May 20, 1967)

Life, God, People, Religion

“The free enterprise policies that produce solely for waste and for profit and that promote a consumerist mentality rather than one of need are damaging to the environment. I am in no sense defending the centralised economies of eastern Europe. They have polluted the north sea and rivers just as industries in Britain and North America have destroyed rivers, wasted natural resources and ruined people's lives by their form of pollution. It is not good enough to promote an economic system that produces for waste and to promote environmental controls in western Europe and North America to look after our environment if at the same time we transfer that destruction of the environment to poorer Third-world countries, either by exporting toxic waste and letting those countries get rid of it by whatever means they can, because they are desperate for foreign currency, or by promoting the destruction of the rain forests, through raping those countries to collect debt payments, when they can make them only by destroying all their natural resources. We live in an age when we have an opportunity to improve our environment and save ourselves from mass destruction through climatic change and environmental disasters.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/15/environmental-protection-bill in the House of Commons (15 January 1990). 1990s

People, Age, World, Nature

“Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner…
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

Life, Death, Way, Travel

“In retrospect these years form not only the least agreeable, but the only barren and unhappy period of my life. I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. This train of thought must not lead me to exaggerate the character of my school days … Harrow was a very good school … Most of the boys were very happy … I can only record the fact that, no doubt through my own shortcomings, I was an exception. … I was on the whole considerably discouraged … All my contemporaries and even younger boys seemed in every way better adapted to the conditions of our little world. They were far better both at the games and at the lessons. It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations).

Life, World, School, Way

“Whatever God desires to do is necessarily done; there is nothing that could prevent the realisation of His will. The object of His will is only that which is possible, and of the things possible only such as His wisdom decrees upon. When God desires to produce the best work, no obstacle or hindrance intervenes between Him and that work. This is the opinion held by all religious people, also by the philosophers; it is also our opinion. For although we believe that God created the Universe from nothing, most of our wise and learned men believe that the Creation was not the exclusive result of His will; but His wisdom, which we are unable to comprehend, made the actual existence of the Universe necessary. The same unchangeable wisdom found it as necessary that non-existence should precede the existence of the Universe. Our Sages frequently express this idea in the explanation of the words, "He hath made everything beautiful in his time" (Eccl. iii. 11)… This is the belief of most of our Theologians; and in a similar manner have the Prophets expressed the idea that all parts of natural products are well arranged, in good order, connected with each other, and stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect; nothing of them is purposeless, trivial, or vain; they are all the result of great wisdom. …This idea occurs frequently; there is no necessity to believe otherwise; philosophic speculation leads to the same result; viz., that in the whole of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary, especially in the nature of the spheres, which are in the best condition and order, in accordance with their superior substance.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

Wisdom, Men, God, People

“The worst speak something good; if all want sense,
God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence.”

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

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

God, Sense

“Speaking of that last contract signing reminds me of a good laugh I had at the expense of the newspaper boys. There were a couple of dozen of them sticking around when I signed, some of them fellows who had been traveling with the Yankees for several seasons; fellows whom I know intimately and well. Yet in their stories, every one of them wrote about me signing that contract with my left hand and some of the newspapers even ran pictures showing me signing left-handed! How they managed it I don't know—for as a matter of fact I write with my right hand now, and I always have. I'm left-handed in everything else I do, but when it comes to writing I'm as right-handed as any right-hander you ever saw. It just goes to show that people take a lot of things for granted. They don't observe things closely, particularly things about which they feel confident.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter I," https://books.google.com/books?id=g0wbKn2OSNQC&pg=PA12 Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928) by Ruth, as told to Ford Frick (uncredited), p. 12

People, Travel, Feeling, Confidence

“Oh rainy day woman,
I've never seem to see you for the good times or the sunshine.
You have been a friend of mine, rainy day woman.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

Rainy Day Woman, from The Ramblin' Man (1974).
Song lyrics

Time

“A good camera does not make a good photographer, A good pen does not make a good poet.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

“Four years ago almost all of the applauded and selling art was New York School painting. It was preponderant in most galleries, which were uninclined to show anything new. The publications which praised it praised it indiscriminately and were uninterested in new developments. Much of the painting was by the "second generation" many of them epigones. Pollock was dead. Kline and Brooks had painted their last good paintings in 1956 and 1957. Guston's paintings had become soft and gray — his best ones are those around 1954 and 1955. Motherwell's and De Kooning's paintings were somewhat vague. None of these artists were criticized. In 1959 Newman's work was all right, and Rothko's was even better than before. Presumably, though none were shown in New York, Clyfford Still's paintings were all right. This lackadaisical situation was thought perfect. The lesser lights and some of their admirers were incongruously dogmatic : this painting was not only doing well but was the only art for the time. They thought it was a style. By now, it is.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, in: Arts Yearbook. (1964) p. 23
1960s

School, Art, Light, Time

“I am what I am; you can like it or love it. It feels good to blow fifty grand and think nothing of it.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

If I Can't
Song lyrics, Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003)

Love, Feeling, Thinking

“Addictive drugs misuse the brain’s existing pre-programming, activating reward mechanisms and extreme feelings of pleasure. When stimulated, the brain’s pleasure centres emit signals to repeat the behaviour. In this sense, the brain is pre-programmed to feel good.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.97

Pleasure, Feeling, Sense

“God calls you — alike by Scripture, by your reason, by your conscience, by the events of His providence, by heavenly influences — to consecrate all you have to His service and the good of man; Heaven appeals to you, and the world appeals to you, not to live in vain.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 342.

God, World

“For—good or bad—though from one mouth it flows,
Fame to a boundless torrent quickly grows.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Che tosto o buona o ria che la fama esce
Fuor d'una bocca, in infinito cresce.
Canto XXXII, stanza 32 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“[Being vegan] improved my performance off and on the field. Plant-based foods have no cholesterol, so I don’t have a cholesterol issue. My blood pressure is good, and the toxicity level in my body is good. You’re able to take more energy from plant-based sources than animal-based sources. The list goes on, and it translates to the field and how I recover.”

Montell Owens (1984) American football player, running back

"Hey, Arian Foster—Where's the Beef? Going Vegan in the NFL" https://www.si.com/edge/2014/04/24/going-vegan-nfl-0, interview with Sports Illustrated (April 24, 2014).

Food, Animals

“The greatest problem before engineers and managers today is the economical utilization of labor. The limiting of output by the workman, and the limiting by the employer of the amount a workman is allowed to earn, are both factors which militate against that harmonious co-operation of employer and employee which is essential to their highest common good.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

H.L. Gantt (1904) paper presented before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, St. Louis, 1904. Published in: H.L. Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910.

Problem

“This is a highly motivated, good country. It is driven by good motives. But it is also a country with an extremely simplistic understanding of world affairs, and with still a high confidence in America’s capacity to prevail, by force if necessary. (…) This is a country of good emotions, but poor knowledge and little sophistication about the world.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Interview in The National Interest - Brzezinski on the Syria Crisis, Interview in The National Interest http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/brzezinski-the-syria-crisis-8636 (June 24, 2013).

World, Confidence, Motivation, Understanding

“I've always had a reputation as the pretty girl. Pretty girls rarely get the good parts. We all have to do a film like The Burning Bed where we can really be degraded so that people think we can act.”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

The Chicago Tribune http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/8602170918_1_michelle-phillips-mamas-papa-john (July 5, 1986)

People, Girl, Thinking, Parting

“Do not be cross with the child; you cannot afford it. If you are cultivating a plant, developing it into something finer and nobler, you must love it, not hate it; be gentle with it, not abusive; be firm, never harsh. I give the plants upon which I am at work in a test, whether a single one or a hundred thousand, the best possible environment. So should it be with a child, if you want to develop it in right ways. Let the children have music, let them have pictures, let them have laughter, let them have a good time; not an idle time but one full of cheerful occupation. Surround them with all the beautiful things you can. Plants should be given sun and air and the blue sky; give them to your boys and girls. …for all the years. We cannot treat a plant tenderly one day and harshly the next; they cannot stand it. Remember that you are training not only for to-day, but for all the future, for all posterity.”

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

The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love, Hate, Children, Beauty

“But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Men, Secret, World

“After sketching his program for the scientific revolution that he foresaw, Bacon ends his account with a prayer: "Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies". That is still a good prayer for all of us as we begin the twenty-first century.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

Family

“Chess is a game by its form, an art by its content and a science by the difficulty of gaining mastery in it. Chess can convey as much happiness as a good book or work of music can.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Books, Art, Music, Game

“As far as Indian music is concerned I wouldn't call myself a torchbearer. It's the media that focuses on it, like at one time Pandit Ravi Shankar was the poster boy of Indian music. It did not matter that there were equally good sitar players in India that time. Everybody talked about him and not others like Pandit Nikhil Banerjee or Ustad Ali Anwar Khan”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I am not torchbearer of Indian classical music: Zakir Hussain

Music, Boy, Time

“Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the two reasons I became a vegetarian fully in the first place. They where the first ones I saw and I was 27 at the time and there was an article about Robert Parish and one of his martial art forms and I remember playing against this guy and asking him how he was running up and down the court with me and I was in my twenties. He said, "you have to learn to pace yourself young fella". … Then I would go, "well then your car has no gas" and I thought about that. So at 27 I made the change. … I had a good career but Robert Parish had a view to look at stats and a better career. If I would have known how to take care of my body … then I would have played until I was 40 as well.”

John Salley (1964) American basketball player

“Along Came a Spider-An Interview With John Salley,” in Basketball 24/48/82 (12 August 2014) http://basketball244882.blogspot.com/2014/08/along-came-spider-interview-with-john_12.html.

Art, Cars, Guy, Learning

“This has been a big incident, hasn't in. In reality, James Anderson was a B-grade bowler who got his arse-whipped by Australia that many times it's not even funny. Frankly I don't care what he has to say but at least he has improved his bowling, thank goodness”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

Quoted on Telegraph.co.uk (October 18, 2012), "Matthew Hayden labels England's James Anderson a 'B-Grade bowler' after dressing-room Ashes fracas" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9617137/Matthew-Hayden-labels-Englands-James-Anderson-a-B-Grade-bowler-after-dressing-room-Ashes-fracas.html

Reality, Time

“Nietzsche … explicates his preferred distinction between good and bad individuals as non-condemnatory of the latter. A ‘bad person’ is merely devoid of what Nietzsche personally considers to be noble or virtuous qualities; he is not morally evil. Nietzsche’s aim is … to defuse morality of reactive emotion. … It would be futile, tactless, and cruel, he suggests, to try to change a bad person, one with whom one does not empathize; his formula advises: ‘Where you cannot love, pass by’. No on should be blamed for what he is; there is no point in lamenting fate.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 91

Love, Fate, Evil, Change

“Even Avataras, saints, and sages have to undergo the ordeal of suffering, for they take upon themselves the burden of sins of omission and commission of ordinary human beings and thereby sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Thus Spake the Holy Mother, 72-73]

Suffering

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Women, Men, War, People

“After all, the leaders of our country were not elected to be tittered at. Censors have to draw the line somewhere. For instance, we are allowed to say Ronald Reagan is a lousy actor, but we're not allowed to say he's a lousy governor – which is ridiculous. We know he's a good actor. And you can't say anything bad about President Johnston [sic], because you shouldn't insult the President. But if you compliment him, who will believe it?”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

"An Editorial: Should TV Be Censored?", The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, unidentified episode Featured in Pat Paulsen for President (1968), part 2 of 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbP0ufyax5A&feature=relmfu, 05:01 ff (14:01 ff in full program) Alternative version archived at "Should Television Shows Be Censored?" http://www.paulsen.com/censor.html, Paulsen.com, January 7, 1968

Drawing, Country

“The word is, according to what I've have read, is that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental. He then gets to Columbia and then gets to Harvard. I heard at Columbia he was not a very good student, and then he then he gets into Harvard. How do you get into Harvard if you are not a good student? Maybe that's right, maybe that's wrong, but I don't know why he doesn't he release his records. Why doesn't he release his Occidental records?”

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

press conference, New Hampshire, 2011-04-27
Schieffer: Racism underlying Trump's assertions
2011-04-27
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20058072-503544.html
2011-05-01
https://archive.is/ryIny
2013-06-28
About Barack Obama, who transferred to Columbia from Occidental College in 1981, graduated from Columbia in 1983, and graduated magna cum laude with a Juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1991
2010s, 2011

Reading

“The Baron of Bradwardine being asked what he thought of these recruits, […] answered drily, 'that he could not but have an excellent opinion of them, since they resembled precisely the followers who attached themselves to the good King David at the cave of Adullam, vidilicet, every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, which the Vulgate renders bitter of soul;”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LVII

Soul

“But if I could make just one small positive suggestion. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia is very rich in certain mineral deposits — notably of course, sand. Oh my goodness, it's got so much sand, it could export the stuff. Or, even better, it could import a load of water and cement, mix itself into a giant block of concrete, and do us all a huge favour.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Why are we friends with Saudi Arabia?" (14 May 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=fm8IuR2VF3M 2007

Water

“Our spirits, like our bodies, have requirements for health and growth. Some people don't want to pay the price of developing good spiritual habits.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

People, Health

“Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel guilty about that. I tried hard to be a good foster daughter to them, and they were happy with me. What happened was that life dropped a big custard pie on us, and that's not my fault; you can never see the custard pies coming. It's not good slapstick if you see the pie coming."
"Custard pie?" he asked, perplexed. "You see life as a slapstick comedy? Like the Three Stooges?"
"Partly."
"Life is just a joke then?"
"No. Life is serious and a joke at the same time."
"But how can that be?”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

"If you don't know," she said, "maybe I should be the one asking the questions here."
Part I, Chapter 2.10, dialog between 12-year-old Laura Shane and a psychotherapist after the death of her foster mother
Lightning (1988)

Life, Feeling, Question, Time

“The Nicomachean Ethics is only intended as a guide for politicians, and they are only concerned to know what is good, not what goodness means…and in any case one can know what things are good without knowing the analysis of 'good”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 22.

“It's all been a bad joke that just ran out of control. I got into food for fun but the business got a mind of its own. Now — my good Lord — look where it has gotten me. My products are on supermarket shelves, in cinemas, in the theater. And they say show business is odd.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Saint Paul," interview with John Aldridge, The Guardian (2005-04-10)

Food, Business

“For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Richard III and His Miserable End (1543)

Men, Evil

“The story of the Northern Counties Building Society is instructive. Established in 1850 in the North East by dispossessed workers who pooled their funds to retrieve a home in the world it grew steadily over the years. It was part of the local economy and society, that most precious civic inheritance, a trusted financial institution. In 1965 it merged with another local institution, the Rock Building Society to become Northern Rock Building Society. It demutualised in 1997 and became Northern Rock, which sponsored Newcastle United and became the fifth biggest lender in the UK market. An institution that was founded by local people for local people and had partnered its region in good times and bad for a hundred and forty seven years, that had weathered four serious depressions and emerged stronger from each could not last through New Labour’s period in Government.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, Tackling Poverty Together http://www.bluelabour.org/2013/11/24/tackling-poverty-together/

People, World, Home, Time

“Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

9 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Sense, Housing

“"Our guide, a fisherman. A good fellow." "He doesn't hate us?" "Hate us?" "I keep being told how the Spanish hate us, sir." "He hates the French, like I do, Sharpe. If there is one constancy in this vale of tears, it is always hate the damned French, always."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

General Thomas Graham and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 126
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

Hate, Tear

“The last six years afforded me much time and food for thought. I came to the conclusion that the human race is not divided into two opposing camps of good and evil. It is made up of those who are capable of learning and those who are incapable of doing so. Here I am not talking of learning in the narrow sense of acquiring an academic education, but of learning as the process of absorbing those lessons of life that enable us to increase peace and happiness in our world. Women in their role as mothers have traditionally assumed the responsibility of teaching children values that will guide them throughout their lives. It is time we were given the full opportunity to use our natural teaching skills to contribute towards building a modern world that can withstand the tremendous challenges of the technological revolution which has in turn brought revolutionary changes in social values.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life, Women, Children, World

“Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith and see where it gets us. Think about our success Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardobes devoted cupboards…”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 185 [elipsis in original]

Faith, Law, Thinking, Success

“Electricity, n. The cause of all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Nature

“One good Art's better than a thousand bad.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. LVII: Of the Fox and the Cat
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

Art

“I am the guru of greatness, the shaman of sexy, the ECW champion John Morrison. I am beyond good and evil, a portal to the infinite. Punk, you are temporary, fleeting, a footnote to an average reality. You want me to embarrass you at SummerSlam? Is that it? Then go ahead, sign it, but the fact is you can't handle the pressure, Punk. You couldn't handle being the ECW champion.”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

CM Punk/John Morrison contract signing http://youtube.com/watch?v=6EUO__hwKvE

Reality, Evil

“Only one thing, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good.”

Euripidés Hippolytus

Source: Hippolytus (428 BC), lines 426-427; David Kovacs' translation

Life, Heart

“I did The Mike O'Malley Show. It aired twice. You know, that was a really tough experience because Mike is a really good friend of mine, and was before that, and we were all friends, everybody on the show. It was Mike, and it was me, and Mike's sister Kerry, and Missy Yager, who I was then dating… well, we had just broken up; we had lived together for four years and we did that. And this guy Mark Rosenthal and Kate Walsh. And we were all friends, and we were all excited at the opportunity to do this show together. We were kind of shocked, and we thought, "God, this is so cool, that the six of us are doing this show!" And then we realized that they never intended to follow it or support us. You know, I think that show got a really bad rap, but by the end -- by the sixth or seventh episode or whatever it was that we made -- we were starting to find a voice on that show, and we were very disappointed. I took the disappointment of that really to heart, and the year after that got cancelled was probably the darkest year of my life. It was tough. It was a really tough time for me. And I didn't get a lot of work. And I didn't do anything, I just kind of drank those years away.”

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, God, Disappointment, Guy

“As full as a piper's bag; as a tick.
As full as a toad is of poison.
As full as a jade, quoth the bride.
As gant as a greyhound.
As glad as a fowl of a fair day.
To go like a cat upon a hot bake-stone.
To go out like a candle in a snuff.
As good as George of Green.
To go like a cat upon a hot bake-stone.”

John Ray (1627–1705) British botanist

Source: English Proverbs (1670), p. 228

Cats

“"Is our strategy when we actually see him still 'trust me,' by the way?"
"It's still 'trust me.'"
"Oh, good. For a second there I was worried there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could follow. You know, something reassuring."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Isabelle Lightwood and Jace Herondale, about Sebastian/Jonathan Morgenstern, pg. 539
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Way

“When I was about eight or nine, I knew I liked boys. But I soon came to the understanding that gay was not as good as straight. That it would be better to be straight and that people didn't like gays because they can't marry and had to be secretive. Nobody told me directly, but these were messages I got from society.”

Matthew Mitcham (1988) Australian diver

We Asked Australian Diver Matthew Mitcham Why More Gay Athletes Aren't Coming Out https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/wdapzw/we-asked-olympian-matthew-mitcham-why-more-gay-athletes-arent-coming-out, Vice.nz, October 12, 2016.

People, Secret, Boy, Understanding

“Religion asks questions about morals, whereas science just asks questions about the natural world. But when people try to use religion to address the natural world, science pushes back on it, and religion has to accommodate the results. Beliefs can be permanent, but beliefs can also be flexible. Personally, if I find out my belief is wrong, I change my mind. I think that's a good way to live.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

People, World, Religion, Way

“It should be a good story— speak about a time and place that is permanent. It should capture something wonderful with some great characters whether it's set in the past or in the future.”

Ismail Merchant (1936–2005) Indian-born film producer and director

On the making of good films. Interview with the Associated Press (2004).

Time, Past, Future

“I remember sitting down once, [at] three in the morning and probably the only person awake in Stevens Point […] *imitates typing with his fingers* And I stop, and I think: "This is crap! I've spent years of my life writing crap. This will never be published - it isn't good… I've wasted years of my life!" *shrugs and types on* You do it because you like the process. I mean… you write because you like to write.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Suvudu interview with Shawn Speakman, June 2010 http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2011/01/video-interview-patrick-rothfuss.html

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Look at Mother Teresa. She spent her whole life being holy. She didn't benefit anyone in any real sense. She didn't work on stopping disease, helping poverty, doing anything that would relieve the condition of her countrymen. She just went around the city, picked up dying people, and took care of them while they died. It was a good thing, no doubt, but it meant no betterment, no progress, no help, no relief from pain. She longed to be holy. She wanted to be a saint. Now she's a saint.
Salk isn't a saint. But he did more for the human race than Mother Teresa did. He didn't long to be holy, which meant having faith, not asking questions, doing something unpleasant without thought or complaint. He longed to do good, which meant finding things out, asking hard questions, and thinking hard, deep thoughts. Goodness and holiness are two different things, unfortunately.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Strange Horizons interview (2008)

Life, Pain, People, Disease

“No one with any sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 10

Money, Health, Birth, Nature

“You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.”

Carl Bernstein (1944) American journalist

Watergate journalist says media losing public's trust, 2005-04-16, Lawrence Journal-World, Dave Ranney, 2007-03-28 http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/apr/16/watergate_journalist_says/,

Truth