Quotes about greatness (10000 quotes, page 33)

“It’s a great thing about not being office—you can just say whatever you want.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Bill Clinton on Libya, Peter King, and more http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/03/11/bill-clinton-on-libya-peter-king-and-more.html, March 2011.
2010s

“We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between mortality and immortality.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

167-169.
On the Virtues

Love , Wisdom , Men , God

“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“I started life with two great advantages: no money, and good parents.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On a 1971 TV interview, when asked if she understands ordinary people's problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tanJYrIh7VU&feature=youtu.be&t=47s
Education Secretary

Life , Money , Parent

“Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Democracy" (1861)

Freedom

“I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Music , Idea , Learning , Past

“Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing — running servants replaced running water. Television and radio — the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 5 “Created Equal”, p. 147

Life , Home , Water , Personality

“All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.”

E.E. Cummings book Tulips and Chimneys

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) IV

Love , Horse

“There may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction of the mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has never wavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would prove that just as there are natural monstrosities, so there are those who are stupid as regards heart and feeling, however great their intelligence, and those who are stupid intellectually, however great their virtue. But, in normal cases, I cannot believe those who assure me that never, not in a fleeting moment, not in the hours of direst loneliness and grief, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed upon their consciousness.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss

Stupidity , Faith , Feeling , Soul

“The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.”

Henry James book What Maisie Knew

What Maisie Knew.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Color , Business , Reality , Effort

“On sound volume and arrangement: "No, high volume levels cause less harm than the awkward arrangement of sounds. Assuming that the sound is a wave: if this wave is not balanced by itself, it causes great damage when it enters the ear. I have tested this on a few people in my studio. I made them listen to two tracks. The first track was considered too loud, whereas the second track was actually louder but more balanced".”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1979

People

“Economists can take a good deal of credit for the stabilization policies which have been followed in most Western countries since 1945 with considerable success. It is easy to generate a euphoric and self-congratulatory mood when one compares the twenty years after the first World War, 1919-39, with the twenty years after the second, 1945-65. The first twenty years were a total failure; the second twenty years, at least as far as economic policy is concerned, have been a modest success. We have not had any great depression; we have not had any serious financial collapse; and on the whole we have had much higher rates of development in most parts of the world than we had in the 1920’s and 1930’s, even though there are some conspicuous failures. Whether the unprecedented rates of economic growth of the last twenty years, for instance in Japan and Western Europe, can be attributed to economics, or whether they represent a combination of good luck in political decision making with the expanding impact of the natural and biological sciences on the economy, is something we might argue. I am inclined to attribute a good deal to good luck and non-economic forces, but not all of it, and even if economics only contributed 10 percent, this would amount to a very handsome rate of return indeed, considering the very small amount of resources we have really put into economics.”

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

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 9

War , World , Failure , Mood

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

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

On his 75th birthday (1947), in reply to a question on whether he was afraid of death, quoted in the N. Y. Times Magazine on November 1, 1964, p. 40 according to Quote It Completely! (1998), Gerhart, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 262 ISBN 1575884003
Post-war years (1945–1955)

For Father

“The Great Western Disease is that we fixate on the future at the expense of enjoying the life we're living now.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 81 (2010 edition)

Life , Disease , Future

“The enthronement in office of a Socialist Government will be a serious national misfortune such as has usually befallen great States only on the morrow of defeat in war. It will delay the return of prosperity; it will check enterprise and impair credit; it will open a period of increasing political confusion and disturbance.”

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

Letter to a correspondent (17 January 1924) shortly before Labour formed its first government, reprinted in The Times (18 January 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

War

“Feeling that the silver chord of life is loosing, and that his spirit is ready to quit her old companion the body, he extends himself on his bed — closes his eyes for the last time, with his own hands — folds his arms decently on his breast, then breathing out "Father of mercies! take me to thyself," — he fell asleep. Swift on angels' wings the brightening saint ascended; while voices more than human were heard (in Fancy's ear) warbling through the happy regions, and hymning the great procession towards the gates of heaven. His glorious coming was seen far off, and myriads of mighty angels hastened forth, with golden harps, to welcome the honored stranger.”

Mason Weems (1759–1825) fictionalizing biographer of George Washington

Description of Washington's death in Life of Washington (1800); this fanciful account bears no relation to the report of Washington's last words by his personal secretary Tobias Lear, who wrote in his journal (14 December 1799) http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/exhibit/mourning/lear.html: About ten o'clk he made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said, — "I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead." I bowed assent, for I could not speak. He then looked at me again and said, "Do you understand me? I replied "Yes." "Tis well" said he.

Life , Angels , Feeling , Time

“The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance; not the open defiance of law, but an accumulating subversion of norms; not the deployment of state power to intimidate dissidents, but the incitement of private violence to radicalize supporters. Trump operates not by strategy, but by instinct. His great skill is to sniff his opponents' vulnerabilities: "low energy", "little", "crooked", "fake". In the same way, Trump has intuited the weak points in the American political system and in American political culture. Trump gambled that Americans resent each other's differences more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far, that gamble has paid off.”

David Frum (1960) American political commentator

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (2018)

Fear , Law , Way , Democracy

“I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and that you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do things that no number of average people could do.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Steve Jobs at 44, Time (Michael Krantz and Steve Jobs, Oct. 10, 1999) http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,32207,00.html
1990s

People

“For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

People , Evil , Indifference

“Slow yellow river flowing, willows that gesture in tepid August airs, and four children playing at greatness, as, doubtless, great men themselves must play.”

Sinclair Lewis book Ann Vickers

Ann Vickers (1933) First lines.

Men , Children

“An artist’s touches are sometimes no more articulate than the barking of a dog who would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at nothing.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Inarticulate Touches
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Dogs , Dependency

“No nation which refuses to exercise forbearance and to respect the freedom and rights of others can long remain strong and retain the confidence and respect of other nations. No nation ever loses its dignity or good standing by conciliating its differences and by exercising great patience with, and consideration for, the rights of other nations.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Quarantine Speech (1937)

Exercises , Confidence , Freedom , Strong

“Of course the sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: 'What are we here for?' is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the Riddle of the Ages has actually been out in the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few people run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

The Process Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, p. 49.

People , Age , Fear , Time

“I have great respect for the unconditional teachers called books. Because from a book, you can either learn, or you can’t.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

Kamal Hassan: A universal legend

Books , Learning , Teachers

“I had a great time, and I always took care of my body. That's the thing some players don't. For a goalie, there's no reason he can't play until he's 40 if he takes care of himself. The reflexes are still there.”

Tony Esposito (1943) American ice hockey goaltender

Quoted in Andrew Podnieks, "One on One with Tony Esposito," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep198801.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2002-03-04)
Esposito comments on his NHL career.

Time

“I do not wish to depreciate his great gifts and attainments in a country which unfortunately, if I may say so without offense, is suffering from a temporary lack of leading men.”

Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936) Greek politician

Source: Victory of Venizelos, 1920, p. 165; In discussing the responsibility of Zaimes, Venizelos himself remarked in the Greek Chamber.

Men , Suffering , Country

“Thus when Plotinus speaks of "the flight of the alone to the Alone," and the positivist or the empiricist asserts that these words are meaningless, he is right. Yet this does not import that the words are nonsense locutions, mere senseless noises which a man makes like a cough or a sneeze though it is possible that this is what the positivist intends. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain why generations of men have quoted those famous words. The explanation is that the words evoke in us a measure of the same experience which the author of them had. Our experience may be but a dim reflection of what was in him bright and clear. Our spirits vibrate faintly in unison with the soul of the great mystic, as a tuning fork vibrates faintly in response to the sound of the clear bell. But it is our own spontaneous experience which is evoked; it is not his experience which is communicated to us. His words are as grappling irons let down into the depths of our subconsciousness, which draw our own inner experiences nearer to the conscious threshold. But they are not, for most of us, drawn above the threshold. They remain below the surface faintly visible. Therefore they appear at the upper levels of our consciousness as faint hints, glimpses, and sometimes as mere vague feelings.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 91-92.

Men , Feeling , Quotes , Soul

“Great contest follows, and much learned dust
Involves the combatants; each claiming truth,
And truth disclaiming both.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 161.

Truth , Learning

“It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter IV, p. 420.

“My lord, you had showed yourself of much more patience—I wll not say of much more prudency—if ye had contented yourself with their lawful appeal and my lawful injunctions and rather have sought fully to instruct me in the matter than thus to desire to conquer me by shrewd words, to vanquish me by sharp threaps [assertions] of Scripture which, as I know to be true, so I trust to God—as great clerk as ye be—ye allege them out of their place.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Source: Letter to Nicholas Shaxton, quoted in G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (3rd edn., 1991), p. 442

God , Law , Patience

“He's been released to the - I must say - somewhat cryogenic embrace of Mary. He went forth - a big great snog - and she just swerved in a way that none of our English Cricket Team are able to do. The message was loud and clear. You've heard this many times from prostitutes, Jeffrey. No kissing!”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101, The News Quiz

Way , Kiss , Time

“In the first place I have an enormous regard for common sense. Any time we discover some great thing and it contradicts common sense, we better go back to the laboratory and check it.”

Harry Harlow (1905–1981) American psychologist

in interview with Carol Tavris, as cited in Love According To Harry Harlow http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/love-according-to-harry-harlow#.WE2jv33d7cs, t the Association for Psychological Science's Observer, by Deborah Blum, January 2012.

Sense , Time

“Sexual exhibitionism—homosexual or heterosexual—is anathema. The heroic and creative inner struggle of an older generation of Gay Greats, exemplified by the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White, was in the Greek tradition: silent and stoic, principled yet private.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“'AYN RAND, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND HUMAN LIBERATION,'” http://www.wnd.com/2004/07/25485/ WorldNetDaily.com, July 9, 2004
2000s

“The Arab world has seen elections before. However, virtually all of them were artificial affairs, their outcomes never in doubt. They were in the end celebrations of one version or another of autocracy, never a repudiation of them. That kind of state-management is not what has just taken place in Iraq. Millions of people actually made choices, and placed claims on those who will lead them in the future. To act upon one's own world like this, and on such a scale, is what politics in the purest sense is all about. It is why we all, once upon a time, became activists. And it is infectious. The taste of freedom is a hard memory to rub out. No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. They had longed for failure. They trotted out the tired old formulas of anti-Americanism to impart legitimacy to the so-called Iraqi "resistance to American occupation." But the people of Iraq have put an end to all that. En masse, ordinary people took to the streets in the second great Iraqi revolt against the politics of barbarism exemplified by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's immortal words: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

Hostility , War , People , World

“The emotional masses of ordinary people who resented the Great Work, the bombs and bacteria and guided missiles, were coming to the surface. The were rising up - finally. Putting an end to super-logic: rationality without responsibility.”

Philip K. Dick book Null-O

"Null-O"
The Phillip K. Dick Reader

People

“Voting for politicians who tell you what you want to hear has all but destroyed civilization, giving in to outrage in the hope of avoiding trouble has all but destroyed freedom, and looking for the easy road to success in bodybuilding has all but destroyed the actually great potential value of weight training.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

Hope , Freedom , Success , Training

“The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 465, Ode (23 August 1712).
Also in The Polite Arts (1749), Chap. XXI. "Of Lyrick Poetry."
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“These plays and stories have for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often 'Time.' His travellers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell of vague rebellion against that power, and all the beautiful things they have seen get something of their charm from the pathos of fragility. This poet who has imagined colours, ceremonies and incredible processions that never passed before the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe or of De Quincey, and remembered as much fabulous beauty as Sir John Mandeville, has yet never wearied of the most universal of emotions and the one most constantly associated with the sense of beauty; and when we come to examine those astonishments that seemed so alien we find that he has but transfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

About

Men , God , World , Beauty

“After being in legal practice for 67 years, I was at first reluctant to write about my professional life because of what C K Daphtary once told me when I pleaded with him to write his own memoirs. “What?” he said angrily, “shall I write one like Setalvad did?” He was referring to the autobiography of a great attorney general Motilal Setalvad — in part self eulogizing. But I was getting on in age and getting forgetful as well, exemplified in that Mathew Arnold quote at the very beginning of the book: “And we forget because we must, and not because we will.” So I compromised. I wrote out the story of my life at the Bar trying to keep the old ego strictly under control. If I have not wholly succeeded, it is only because a man’s ego just cannot be suppressed!”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

On writing about his autobiography.
Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

Life , Books , Age , Quotes

“I enjoyed being in The Ten Commandments. That was a great experience—to suddenly become one of those holy people. I was holier than thou.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

"Yvonne De Carlo Reminds The World There Was Life Before Lily Munster" (1987)

People

“I know something of the good of Moammar Gadhafi that made me to love him as a brother and to feel a great sense of loss at his assassination, He died in honor, fighting for the Libya that he believed in.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

On Muammar Gaddafi's Death http://www.theblaze.com/stories/farrakhan-condemns-killing-of-brother-gadhafi-assassination (26 October 2011]

Love , Feeling , Sense , Loss

“We can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, p. 15.

War

“A great moral reformation will occur only as reformation takes place in the hearts, minds, and lives of each of us; as morality is reinstated as a priority in the homes of the country; and as men and women, boys and girls, realize that their lives are missing a critical moral component and determine to seek a life of virtue.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

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

Life , Women , Men , Home

“Evidently, there is a political element in the attack on The Satanic Verses which has killed and injured good if obstreperous Muslims in Islamabad, though it may be dangerously blasphemous to suggest it. The Ayatollah Khomeini is probably within his self-elected rights in calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, or of anyone else for that matter, on his own holy ground. To order outraged sons of the Prophet to kill him, and the directors of Penguin Books, on British soil is tantamount to a jihad. It is a declaration of war on citizens of a free country, and as such it is a political act. It has to be countered by an equally forthright, if less murderous, declaration of defiance…. I do not think that even our British Muslims will be eager to read that great vindication of free speech, which is John Milton’s Areopagitica. Oliver Cromwell’s Republic proposed muzzling the press, and Milton replied by saying, in effect, that the truth must declare itself by battling with falsehood in the dust and heat…. I gain the impression that few of the protesting Muslims in Britain know directly what they are protesting against. Their Imams have told them that Mr Rushdie has published a blasphemous book and must be punished. They respond with sheeplike docility and wolflike aggression. They forgot what Nazis did to books … they shame a free country by denying free expression through the vindictive agency of bonfires…. If they do not like secular society, they must fly to the arms of the Ayatollah or some other self-righteous guardian of strict Islamic morality.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

'Islam's Gangster Tactics', in the London Independent newspaper , 1989
Writing

War , Truth , Books , Thinking

“I was still in Europe at the time. Truman said he had the authority to relieve him and he did it. I have never made up my mind whether he was right or not, but I happened to be with a British unit the night we learned of MacArthur's dismissal. The British had a brigade in Korea at the time and the British officers in the Mess were very anti-MacArthur and celebrating his demise. I think MacArthur was a magnificent general, but he became more and more insulated from the world by his staff, many of whom had been with him since the Bataan days. I think that was part of the problem. He was not a young man at the time of Korea. I think, perhaps, he got too dependent on his staff officers and certain things happened which were not in MacArthur's best interest… Even after MacArthur was relieved by the President of the United States he had a tickertape parade in New York City and he made two great speeches, one to Congress and one about Duty, Honor, Country. The Duty, Honor, Country speech is one of the greatest ever made by a military man, and he made it without a note at the age of seventy-five. I believe Douglas MacArthur in 1945 could have come home and run for president and won going away. He was worshiped at the end of the war.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 67

War , Age , World , Home

“He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has neither to command nor to obey.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Götz von Berlichingen

So gewiß ist der allein glücklich und groß, der weder zu herrschen noch zu gehorchen braucht, um etwas zu sein!
Alternative translation: So certain is it that he alone is great and happy, who requires neither to command nor to obey, in order to secure his being of some importance in the world.
Götz von Berlichingen, Act I (1773), p. 39
Source: Goethe’s Works, vol. 3, Götz Von Berlichingen (With the Iron Hand) http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2113&layout=html#chapter_164458
Source: Beautiful thoughts from German and Spanish authors, by C. T. Ramage (1868) https://archive.org/stream/beautifulthough00unkngoog#page/n112/mode/2up

Happiness

“Swaraj means that we must live within ourselves, we must be self-contained. I tell you we are great slaves to-day. Our economic slavery is greater than our political slavery… From Manchester comes 60 crores rupees worth of cloth every year. You will not have to pay these 60 crores rupees which go out of India. If a householder works by Charkha for one o two hours a day at the end of the year he will find himself with all the necessaries of his family.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Address delivered on 11th February 1921 at a meeting held in Maulana Mazhar-ul-Haq’s compound at Patna. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1921

Family , Clothes

“Had Mittag-Leffler had his way, I should have to wait until the year 1984, which to me seemed too great a demand!”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Letter (1885), written after Gösta Mittag-Leffler persuaded him to withdraw a submission to Mittag-Leffler's journal Acta Mathematica, telling him it was "about one hundred years too soon."

Way , Waiting

“This year marks the beginning of Opus Dei's work in Kaunas, which I have received with great happiness and pleasure. My hope is that Opus Dei will bring the benefits of holiness that come to all the countries where the Prelature works. I am convinced that the Catholic Church in Lithuania needs the spirit of Blessed Josemaría that is embodied in his children, who uphold the authentic Magisterium of the Church…. The faithful of Opus Dei, fulfilling the desire of their Founder and following in his steps, grasp the essence of and faithfully respond to the invitation of His Holiness John Paul II – 'Put out into the deep!”

Sigitas Tamkevičius (1938) Lithuanian archbishop

" From Chicago to Kaunas, bishops commend Opus Dei's founder http://www.opusdei.org/en-us/article/from-chicago-to-kaunas-bishops-commend-opus-deis-founder/," on: opusdei.org, Feb. 27, 2002; Quote about Opus Dei from speech in Cathedral of Kaunas, January 8.

Children , Pleasure , Faith , Hope

“If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on, — if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the "Sciences", and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies — their name is legion — and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupefying ballast — the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI

Love , God , People , World

“[The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods? … There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Queen of the Black Coast" (1934)

Men , God , People , Pleasure

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men , God , Truth , Fear

“For 30 years I have watched from a central position the manifestations of the will power of Great Britain, and I do not believe the people will consent to be edged, pushed, talked and cozened out of India. No nation of which I am aware, great or small, has ever voluntarily or tamely suffered such an overwhelming injury to its interests or such a harsh abrogation of its rights. After all, there are British rights and interests in India. Two centuries of effort and achievement, lives given on a hundred fields, far more lives given and consumed in faithful and devoted service to the Indian people themselves. All this has earned us rights of our own in India.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1931/jan/26/india-1#column_702 in the House of Commons (26 January 1931)
The 1930s

People , Faith , Effort , Suffering

“Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, [Beckmann lived and worked in the heart of Amsterdam during World War 2. ] an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

God , War , World , Imagination

“A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”

G. Gordon Liddy (1930) American lawyer in Watergate scandal

As quoted in "The Best Of The Rest: 20 More Quotes About Liberals" at Right Wing News (24 November 2010) http://rightwingnews.com/quotes/the-best-of-the-rest-20-more-quotes-about-liberals/

Money , Feeling

“Even though I now feel more confident and happy, I was really paranoid for about a year and a half. Basically, what happened was that I quit taking drugs and I walked out into the world and was sort of in this film that was really well received. So, after years of living a more destructive lifestyle, I had to, instantly, kind of court this world which had incredibly nice value systems, but with protocols that I had never encountered before. And then I had to reconcile these two worlds. You know—I want to live a happier, more productive lifestyle, but the question was, did I want to renounce being in a great rock ’n’ roll band for that? The answer was ‘No way.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On reconciling her career in acting and music, interview with The Georgia Straight (1999)
1996–2005

World , Way , Feeling , Confidence

“Go by reverently, and read with sober care
How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
The centaur of Revolution,
Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea
Over the precipice they were nearing,
And fell from his back in precipitate awe
To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

" Captain Orlando Killion http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/captain-orlando-killion/'

People , Reading , Sea

“Of a great spirit is moderation in prosperity.”
Magni pectoris est inter secunda moderatio.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca (-54–39 BC) Roman scholar

Suasoriae; Chapter I

“Over this landscape, Göran Therborn’s Between Sex and Power rises up like some majestic volcano. Throwing up a billowing column of ideas and arguments, while a lava of evidence flows down its slopes, this is a great work of historical intellect and imagination, the effect of a rare combination of gifts. Trained as a sociologist, Therborn is a highly conceptual thinker, allying the formal rigour of his discipline at its best, with command of a vast range of empirical data. The result is a powerful theoretical structure, supported by a fascinating body of evidence. But it is also a set of macro-narratives that compose perhaps the first true example of a work of global history we possess.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 11. "Atlas of the Family, Göran Therborn" (2005)

Sex , Imagination , History , Idea

“One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound…”

Jane Austen book Emma

Emma (1815)
Works, Emma

Hope

“Whether you do your work with notes or without them, do it courageously, earnestly, with devotion; with a glad sense of the greatness of it, and a full consecration of every force and faculty to it.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 483.

Courage , Sense

“Afore this time I had great longing and desire of God’s gift to be delivered of this world and of this life. For oftentimes I beheld the woe that is here, and the weal and the bliss that is being there: (and if there had been no pain in this life but the absence of our Lord, methought it was some-time more than I might bear;) and this made me to mourn, and eagerly to long. And also from mine own wretchedness, sloth, and weakness, me liked not to live and to travail, as me fell to do.
And to all this our courteous Lord answered for comfort and patience, and said these words: Suddenly thou shalt be taken from all thy pain, from all thy sickness, from all thy distress and from all thy woe. And thou shalt come up above and thou shalt have me to thy meed, and thou shalt be fulfilled of love and of bliss. And thou shalt never have no manner of pain, no manner of misliking, no wanting of will; but ever joy and bliss without end. What should it then aggrieve thee to suffer awhile, seeing that it is my will and my worship?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 63

Love , Life , God , Pain

“If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individual's talents and the company's goals, then great leaders are alchemists. Somehow they are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Source: The One Thing You Need to Know (2005), p. 145

Fear , Confidence , Future , Speed

“Now, having a play on the same bill with a play by the one and only, the good and great, the impish and noble, the man and superman, George Bernard Shaw, is for me an honor, and I think a most fitting thing.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Hello Out There (1941)

Thinking

“I think that for me any picture that works even if it is in the guise of pure color application, if it works, involved drawing. That is falt space on a flat surface. And for me, and I always say this, whether it's a Titian or a [Kenneth] Noland, the ones that come off work in that depth and the color perhaps it is divine and the thing that makes it work, but it is line color. If it doesn't work then it's decorative or dead or just applied colors on a surface. That's what wallpaper is. And that's the difference between the striped wallpaper and a great Noland.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about drawing in a picture
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Color , Thinking , Drawing , Dead

“There is great freedom in simplicity of living.”

Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) American non-denominational spiritual teacher

Source: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982), Ch. 2 : My Spiritual Growing Up : My Steps Toward Inner Peace

Freedom

“I listened while he thought aloud and had almost forgotten my Machiavellian combination, so keen was my relish of the joyous intimacy of this communion with a mind I had passionately loved in his works. He was the first of the great writers of our day whom I had thus approached on something like terms of intimacy. As we talked I observed the strange similarity between his spoken and his written words. I admired the charming simplicity with which he abandoned himself to the pleasures of imagination, his superabundant intelligence, the liveliness of his impressions and his total absence of arrogance and of pose.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

The Age for Love

Love , Pleasure , Imagination , Intelligence

“A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

Nature , Universe , Sun , Past

“Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

Science

“With respect to animal diet, let it be considered, that taking away the lives of animals, in order to convert them into food, does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found amongst those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of animals.”

David Hartley (philosopher) book Observations on Man

Observations on Man (1749; 6th edition, 1834), Part II, Chapter III, Section II.

Life , Food , Feeling , Appearance

“I've listened to Republicans say over and over again that we should focus on enforcing the laws that we have. The great hypocrisy of that statement is that they are deliberately handcuffing the enforcement agency that oversees current law.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

2016 Could Be Pivotal in the Battle Over Guns" http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/guns-senator-chris-murphy/"How, Mother Jones, 8 September 2016.

Law

“Psychology is familiar with the “eternal victim,” who exploits this position for disguised aggressions. Also belonging to this category, in a broader sense, are those permanent losers as well as medical and political hypochondriacs who lament that conditions are so terrible that it is a great sacrifice on their part not to kill themselves or emigrate. On the German Left, not least of all under the influence of the sociologized schema of the victim, a certain type of renegade has emerged who feels that it is a dirty trick to have to live in this land without summer and without oppositional forces. Nobody can say that such a viewpoint does not know what it is talking about. Its mistake is that it remains blind to itself. For the accusation becomes bound to misery and magnifies it under the subterfuge of unsuspecting critical observations. With the obstinacy of a Sophist, in aggressive self-reification, many a “critical” consciousness refuses to become healthier than the sick whole.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 58

Feeling , Sense , Summer , Parting

“He represents a noble and courageous dedication to the service of freedom. He never sought for personal aggrandizement, but under heavy temptation remained loyal to the great Cause. He possessed a character that will abide with us through the generations. He loved his fellowmen, and believed in the ultimate triumph of self-government. But he did not consider France had reached a point where representative democracy would be a success. He was practical. Like Washington, he refused a crown. But while he believed Washington performed a great service in accepting the Presidency of America, he believed he had performed an equally great service in rejecting the Presidency of France. He approved the establishment of our republican institutions, and hoped they would one day be a model for the government of his own country. He recognized the value of native institutions. So, while he was loyal to freedom, he was likewise loyal to the Crown. In moderation, in the gradual evolution of government and society, he perceived the strongest defense against both reaction and revolution, and the greatest hope for permanent progress.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Love , Hope , Democracy , Courage

“The reason why the foreign producer gets his produce to market cheaper, relatively, is this — that foreign produce is collected and brought in such large quantities and is sent in great masses to the market. That is the secret of cheap carriage… We must try to make our pounds of produce into tons — or must bring together a number of producers. If you small agriculturists can collectively offer a great bulk of merchandise to the railway companies, they will give you good terms.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Hawarden (5 January 1884), quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 258
1880s

Secret

“I was attracted to video art because it allowed me to combine a strong sense of content with formal innovation. The field was wide open and allowed for a great deal of experimentation for creating new forms.”

Beryl Korot (1945) American artist

Source: Meeker, Carlene. " Beryl Korot http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/korot-beryl." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on July 9, 2015)

Art , Sense , Strong

“This is great stuff, but does it have to be so complicated?”

Elliott Organick (1925–1985) American computer scientist

Often remarked when hearing about new technological advances; quoted in Communications of the ACM http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=6325, pg. 231.

“Gravitational force is simple, and a thing by itself, as also are electric and magnetic forces as long as the electric and magnetic poles stand at rest. But as soon as motion comes into the picture, the whole situation is changed. Forces of new kinds come into play, for moving electric charges exert magnetic forces in addition to the electric forces they exert when at rest, while moving magnets exert electric forces in addition to the magnetic forces they exert while at rest. When the exact laws governing these intricate laws had been discovered by a great number of experimenters, Clerk Maxwell succeeded in expressing them in a mathematical form which was both simple and elegant.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Law , Mathematics , Change

“Thomas [...] could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as probable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the very reason that it allowed great liberty in detail.

One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers suggestion rather than proof;— apology, the weaker because of obvious effort to apologise, rather than defence, for infinite Goodness, Justice and Power; [...] but at all events society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals, or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Justice , Law , Way , Feeling

“[learning European modern art by seeing it in the art-magazine 'w:Cahiers d'art']…. my heritage was all those things; [De Stijl, Constructivism, Cubism, Surrealism ] simultaneously, so I am all those things. I hope with a very strong intellectual regard for Cubism, and an admiration for it, because it was great at a particular time. It was both painting and sculpture. It was a great point of liberation in both painting and sculpture, and especially sculpture. [David Smith was one of the few sculptors in the art scene of American Abstract Expressionism ]”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

In an interview with w:David Sylvester (1960), edited for BBC broadcasting: first published in 'Living Arts', April 1964; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 8
1960s

Hope , Art , Strong , Learning

“It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"In the Name of the Bodleian"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

Idea , Birth

“There are buildings which will hold a few, but which will break down under the weight of a crowd. The ice of the river may be strong enough to bear a man, but would break through under the weight of an elephant. The ice under us in this country is very thin, and is made very weak by the warm fogs of prejudice… Our policy should be to unite with the great mass of the American people in all their activities, and resolve to fall or flourish with our common country. We cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics, trade, education, manners, religion, fashion, or civilization. Especially we cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics. No folly could be greater. A party acting on that basis would be not merely a misfortune, but a dire calamity to our people.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

People , Education , Religion , Color

“Let me tell you quite frankly: in one way or another we will have to finish with the Jews. The führer once expressed it as follows: should Jewry once again succeed in inciting a world war, the bloodletting could not be limited to the peoples they drove to war but the Jews themselves would be done for in Europe. If the Jewish tribe survives the war in Europe while we sacrifice our blood for the preservation of Europe, this war will be but a partial success. Basically, I must presume, therefore, that the Jews will disappear. To that end I have started negotiations to expel them to the east. In any case, there will be a great Jewish migration. But what is to become of the Jews? Do you think that they will be settled in villages in the conquered eastern territories? In Berlin we have been told not to complicate matters: since neither these territories, nor our own, have any use for them, we should liquidate them ourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to remain unmoved by pleas for pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we encounter them and wherever possible, in order to maintain the overall mastery of the Reich here… For us the Jews are also exceptionally damaging because they are being such gluttons. There are an estimated 2.5 million Jews in the General Government, perhaps. 3.5 million. These 3.5 million Jews, we cannot shoot them, nor can we poison them. Even so, we can take steps which in some way or other will pave the way for their destruction, notably in connection with the grand measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as judenfrei (free of Jews) as the Reich!”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To senior members of his administration, December 16, 1941, quoted in "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: the final solution in history" - Page 302 - by Arno J. Mayer - History - 1988

War , People , World , Way

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Truth

“… I must say, it [the Koran] is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite; — insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran … It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words … We said "stupid:" yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech … The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart … we will not and cannot take him. Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men … Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling.”

Thomas Carlyle book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History

Thomas Carlyle, "On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History" (1841), pg. 64-67
1840s

Men , Books , Stupidity , Soul

“Well, maybe 'tis natural. Of course things you don't know about are always nicer'n things you do, same as the pertater on 'tother side of the plate is always the biggest. But I wish I looked that way ter somebody 'way off. Wouldn't it be jest great, now, if only somebody over in India wanted ME?”

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) American novelist

Jimmy Bean
Works, Pollyanna (1913)

Way , Nature

“I update negatively on people who mislead (including expressing great confidence while being wrong, and especially including avoidable mischaracterizations of others' views); people who do tangible damage (usually by misleading); and people who create little of value despite large amounts of opportunity and time investment.”

Holden Karnofsky (1981) American nonprofit executive

In "Some Thoughts on Public Discourse" http://effective-altruism.com/ea/17o/some_thoughts_on_public_discourse/, February 2017

People , Confidence , Time

“Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."”

Louis Nizer (1902–1994) American lawyer

And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.
"Ministers of Justice", Address delivered at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Tennessee Bar Association at Gatlinburg, June 5, 1963; published in 31 Tennessee Law Review 1 (Fall 1963), p. 19.

Books , World , Communication , Lying

“I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On Israel, America and AIPAC (2007)

“Sometimes it's great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter

Children , Laughter

“We have been blessed with great presidents, with giants among us. Men of character, integrity and selflessness have led our nation from its very beginning. None were perfect: each surely made mistakes. But in every case, they acted out of the desire to do what was right for America and for freedom.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Men , Freedom , Perfection

“Passive resistance and boycotting are now prominent features of every great national movement.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance

“Gary Ross is just an incredible director, and it was great to have someone like him.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

[Davia L. Mosley, 'The Hunger Games' exclusive Cast members share highlights, behind-the-scenes action, Marietta Daily Journal, Georgia, United States, March 13, 2012]

“He came to a halt in a hollow and got his breath back. He felt himself freed of a great burden by getting out of sight of other people. The previous days and nights had been eventful, and he had lost himself. But now he was sure he would find himself again, like a dead man who finds himself, little by little, in the next world. In spite of everything, and although he was in reality a newborn babe in this new world, it was delightful to be born anew and to own a share of the sun like others instead of having to wait half the year perhaps for one little ray of sunshine.... No, there's probably no way of making something cease to exist once it has come into existence. He was no longer afraid of the immortality of the soul, that doctrine which for a time had seemed to him the height of human cruelty. Today it was the many and various abodes of the Creator which enchanted the mind.... and death did not exist.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Death , People , World , Way

“I have great sympathy with America. It's very, it's very tough to be the only remaining superpower in the world.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Interview with Richard Stengel https://web.archive.org/web/20110622073025/http://www.cfr.org/southern-africa/hbo-history-makers-series-frederik-willem-de-klerk/p7114?breadcrumb=%2Fregion%2F151%2Fsouthern_africa (8 June 2004)
2000s, 2004

World

“From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Before the US House of Representatives, introducing the The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul504.html (9 February 2009)
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , Suffering , Past , Housing

“I got a new Ford and learned to drive it – I even painted – and I laughed a great deal – I went every place that I had time for – and I am ready to go back East as long as I have to go sometime – If it were not for the Stieglitz [her husband then]] call I would probably never go – but that is strong – so I am on the way... I hope a little of it stays with me till I see you – It is my old way of life – you wouldn't like it – it would seem impossible to you as it does to Stieglitz, probably – but it is mine – and I like it – I would just go dead if I couldn't have it..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Source: 1917 - 1929, Letter to Ettie Stettheimer' (August 1929), p. 227

Life , Hope , Way , Strong

“Being happy with less is what makes a great human being, not a big house with marble floors, or everyone knowing who you are.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Housing , Happiness

“A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Connoisseur of Chaos"
Parts of a World (1942)

“It would be a mistake to think…that by what we are doing tonight we are giving a vote of confidence or congratulation to homosexuality. Those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of loneliness, guilt and shame. The crucial question, which we are nearly at the end of answering decisively, is, should we add to those disadvantages the full rigour of the criminal law? By its overwhelming decisions, the House has given a fairly clear answer, and I hope that the Bill will now make rapid progress towards the Statute Book. It will be an important and civilising Measure.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/jul/03/clause-8-restrictions-on-prosecution in the House of Commons in favour of the Bill decriminalising homosexuality (3 July 1967).
1960s

Books , Law , Hope , Confidence

“Grace and peace from God to you, respected, honoured, wise clement, gracious and beloved Masters: An exceedingly unfortunate affair has happened to me, in that I have been publicly accused before your worships of having reviled you in unseemly words and, be it said with all respect, of having called you heretics, my gracious rulers of the State. I am so far from applying this name to you, that I should as soon think of calling heaven hell. For all my life I have thought and spoken of you in terms of praise and honour, gentlemen of Abtzell, as I do to-day, and, as God favours me, shall do to the end of my days. But it happened not long ago when I was preaching against the Catabaptists that I used these words: 'The Catabaptists are now doing so much mischief to the upright citizens of Abtzell and are showing so great insolence, that nothing could be more infamous. You see, gentle sirs, with what modesty I grieved on your account, because the turbulent Catabaptists caused you so much trouble. Indeed I suspect that the Catabaptists are the very people who have set this sermon against me in circulation among you, for they do many of those things which do not become true Christians. Therefore, gentle and wise sirs, I beg most earnestly that you will have me exculpated before the whole community, and, if occasion arise, that you will have this letter read in public assembly. Sirs, I assure you in the name of God our Saviour, in these perilous times you have never been our of my thoughts and my solicitious anxiety; and if in any way I shall be able to serve you I will spare no pains to do so. In addition to the fact that I never use such terms even against my enemies, let me say that it never entered my mind to apply such insulting epithets to you, pious and wise sirs. Sufficient of this. May God preserve you in safety, and may He put a curb on these unbridled falsehoods which are being scattered everywhere, which is an evidence of some great peril - and may He hold your worships and the whole state in the true faith of Christ@ Take this letter of mine in good part, for I could not suffer that so base a falsehood against me should lie uncontradicted.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Abtzell February 12, 1526 (vi., 473), ibid, p.250-251

Life , God , Pain , People

Quotes about greatness page 33

Quotes about greatness
page 33