Quotes about greatness
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“I had this sense that ideas about democracy, theories of democracy which I had learned about of course from graduate school on, from Aristotle and Plato onward, that they were inadequate. I don’t want to diminish them; I have always retained a great respect for classical and medieval and eighteenth-century theory, but meanwhile a whole new kind of political system emerged to which the term democracy became attached, and for which democracy remained an ideal, even though classical democracy as an ideal was so far removed from reality. The gap between that ideal and the actual political institutions that had developed, particularly from about the sixteenth, seventeenth century on, was just enormous. And what we didn’t have enough of, had very little of, was an adequate description of what the actual institutions of so-called democracy, modern democracy, representative democracy, were.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

A Conversation with Robert A. Dahl (2009)

School, Democracy, Idea, Reality

“Some books are drenchèd sands
On which a great soul’s wealth lies all in heaps,
Like a wrecked argosy.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Scene 2.
A Life Drama and other Poems (1853)

Books, Soul, Wealth

“As soon as we started looking at them, we saw the most remarkable situation. My first thought was, "Great guns! Something's gone wrong with the apparatus!" But then we got later North American tapes and everything seemed normal again.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the first results from Explorer I, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“Crippled for life at seventeen,
His great eyes seems to question why:
with both legs smashed it might have been
Better in that grim trench to die
Than drag maimed years out helplessly.”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, In A Soldiers' Hospital 1: Pluck

Life, Question

“I'm not a great believer in writing courses, though it must be said I've never been in one. It probably depends on what kind of writer you are. I'm very un-analytical about what I do. I don't plan much for the first draft. I try to let characters come out by themselves, rather than designing them. But other writers work differently, and for them the teaching process - which at least forces you to consider what you're doing, and why - may be very helpful. At the very least a creative writing course mandates someone to spend a period of their life just writing, which can be hard to do otherwise. But beware of thinking too much about what you do.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Life, Thinking, Help, Dependency

“They were now as a party engaged in carrying laboriously uphill the last few columns out of the Gladstonian quarry. … Foremost among the tasks of Liberalism in the near future was the regeneration of rural life and the emancipation of the land of this country from the paralysing grip of an effete and unprofitable system. … [The reports into rural life] were startling. When they were published they would prove conclusively that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men, women, and children dependent upon the land in this country and engaged in cultivating it, hardworking men and women, who were living under conditions with regard to wages, to housing, as well as hours of labour—conditions which ought to make this great Empire hang its head in shame that such things could be permitted to happen in any corner of its vast dominions, let alone in this country, the centre and source of all its glory.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (31 January 1913), quoted in The Times (1 February 1913), p. 8.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life, Women, Men, Children

“The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years; and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy were destined to triumph.

A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles — the Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some of the ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Bill; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.

Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies of the populace.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 10. Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition

Children, Universe, Change, Fight

“The British government and the British people have been through a searching debate during the last few years on the subject of their relations with Europe. The result of this debate has been our present application. It was a decision arrived at, not on any narrow or short-term grounds, but as a result of a thorough assessment over a considerable period of the needs of our own country, of Europe and of the free world as a whole. We recognise it as a great decision, a turning point in our history, and we take it in all seriousness. In saying that we wish to join the EEC, we mean that we desire to become full, whole-hearted and active members of the European Community in its widest sense and to go forward with you in the building of a new Europe.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Opening statement at the United Kingdom application to join the EEC in Paris (10 October 1961), quoted in Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p. 214.
Lord Privy Seal

People, World, History, Search

“It’s a great honour to be asked to give this talk, especially because I’m arguably not qualified to do so. I am, after all, not a Keynes scholar, nor any kind of serious intellectual historian. Nor have I spent most of my career doing macroeconomics. Until the late 1990s my contributions to that field were limited to international issues; although I kept up with macro research, I avoided getting into the frontline theoretical and empirical disputes.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

" Mr Keynes and the moderns http://www.voxeu.org/article/mr-keynes-and-moderns/" (June 21, 2011)

“God of his Infinite goodness (if we will but take notice of his goodness unto this Nation) hath made this Country a very Granary for the supplying of Smiths with Iron, Cole, and Lime made with cole, which hath much supplied these men with Com also of late 5 and from these men a great part, not only of this Island, but also of his Majestie's other Kingdoms and Territories, with Iron wares have their supply, and Wood in these parts almost exhausted, although it were of late a mighty woodland country.”

Dud Dudley (1600–1684) British metallurgist

Source: Metallum Martis, 1665, p. 38 As cited in: ; Cited in: Samuel Smiles (1864) Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA65, p. 65

Men, God, Parting, Country

“Guard against those men who make a great noise about religion, in choosing representatives. It is electioneering intrigue. … If pure religion is the criterion to denominate candidates, those who make a noise about it must be rejected; for their wrangle about it, proves that they are void of it. Let honesty, talents and quick despatch, characterise the men of your choice.”

John Leland (Baptist) (1754–1841) American Baptist minister

Source: An Oration delivered at Cheshire (5 July 1802), p. 267

Men, Religion

“I'm a free trader. But the problem with free trade is you need really talented people to negotiate for you. If you don't have talented people, if you don't have great leadership, if you don't have people that know business, not just a political hack that got the job because he made a contribution to a campaign, which is the way all jobs, just about, are gotten, free trade terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people, but we have people that are stupid. We have people that aren't smart. And we have people that are controlled by special interests. And it's just not going to work.”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People, Stupidity, Way, Business

“In this I saw matter of mirth and matter of moaning: matter of mirth: for our Lord, our Maker, is so near to us, and in us, and we in Him, by sureness of keeping through His great goodness; matter of moaning: for our ghostly eye is so blind and we be so borne down by weight of our mortal flesh and darkness of sin, that we may not see our Lord God clearly in His fair Blissful Cheer. No; and because of this dimness scarsely we can believe and trust His great love and our sureness of keeping. And therefore it is that I say we may never stint of moaning nor of weeping. This "weeping" meaneth not all in pouring out of tears by our bodily eye, but also hath more ghostly understanding. For the kindly desire of our soul is so great and so unmeasurable, that if there were given us for our solace and for our comfort all the noble things that ever God made in heaven and in earth, and we saw not the fair Blissful Cheer of Himself, yet we should not stint of moaning nor ghostly weeping, that is to say, of painful longing, till when we see verily the fair Blissful Cheer of our Maker. And if we were in all the pain that heart can think and tongue may tell, if we might in that time see His fair Blissful Cheer, all this pain should not aggrieve us.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia. — Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418), book II, ch. VI, paragraph 2.
Misattributed

Men, Heart

“I do ask the right hon. Baronet what is the meaning of overproduction? It means that too much is produced; and what can be thought of a country which produces so much, and where the great mass of the inhabitants possess so little? Does it not show that there is some mal-distribution of production? It is because we have lost sight of that science which teaches the right distribution of wealth…Those who are so fond of laughing at political economy, forget that they have a political economy of their own; and what is it? That they will monopolise to themselves the fruits of the industry of the great body of the community—that they allow the productions of the spindle and the loom to go abroad to furnish them with luxuries from the farthest corners of the world, but refuse to permit to be brought back in exchange what would minister to the wants and comforts of the lower orders. This, in one word, is the true reason why the mass of the people is at this time so wretchedly clothed and so miserably fed.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/jul/08/distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (8 July 1842) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

People, World, Communication, Science

“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?””

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light

Life, People, Pleasure, Way

“The nation thus situated, and enjoying forest, mineral, and agricultural resources unequalled, if endowed also with moral energies adequate to the achievement of great enterprises, and favored with a Government adapted to their character and condition, must command the empire of the seas, which alone is real empire.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

On the Admission of California (1850)

Sea

“This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Essay on the Fates of Clergymen (1728)

Men, World, Appearance, Evil

“We need -- we need somebody -- we need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again. We can do that.”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Country

“When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights.
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

The Dong with the Luminous Nose http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/dln.html, st. 1 (1877).

Silence, Night

“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

Men, Question

“This was a delectable Sight and a restful Shewing, that it is so without end. The beholding of this while we are here is full pleasing to God and full great profit to us; and the soul that thus beholdeth, it maketh it like to Him that is beheld, and oneth it in rest and peace by His grace. And this was a singular joy and bliss to me that I saw Him sitting: for the secureness of sitting sheweth endless dwelling.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 68

God, Peace, Soul, Joy

“Donald Trump's political rivals look at the price exacted by a Muslim like Syed Farouk and his bride in the aggregate. To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for 'our freedoms.' Fourteen dead in San Bernardino is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as 'our values,' 'our tolerance,' 'our greatness.' This callous calculus is second nature to neoconservative politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney. Not to Trump.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"No Wonder the Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity," http://www.unz.com/imercer/no-wonder-the-pols-think-businessman-trumps-crazy-he-understands-scarcity/ The Unz Review, December 11, 2015. 2010s, 2015

Nature, Freedom, Dead, Country

“My son, the Great Spirit has seen fit that we should die together; and has sent you here. It is his will. Let us submit. It is best…”

Cornstalk (1720–1777) Native American in the American Revolution

To his son Elinipsico as a mob approached them in Point Pleasant (10 November 1777), as quoted in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" by Rev. William Henry Foote, in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/rothko/420/aniyuntikwalaski/cornstalk.html

“Bert is super kind, a super sweetheart, but he's pretty crazy at the same time. He's a little manic, but he definitely has a great heart and a great soul. He's just a little bit hard to hold down. Which is good. It's a great quality for a frontman.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Jeph Howard, bassist for The Used, reported in Dave Wedge (March 21, 2007) "MUSIC: The Used thrives in chaotic universe", Boston Herald.
About

Soul, Time, Heart

“The greatness of any nation lies in its fidelity to the constitution and adherence to the rule of law and above all respect to God”

David Maraga (1951)

Justice Maraga during the Supreme Coat ruling on the presidential petition on September 1st, 2017 [citation needed]

God, Law

“He is a wholly unpredictable man of many moods and great dimension, a man who responds instantaneously to instinct — suddenly, dramatically, wildly he responds, and nobody can predict what will follow.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Mood

“The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in holding "unlawful [religious] meetings... to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom...."”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country soon after the establishment of official religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.
Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

People, Books, Faith, Religion

“I'm really shallow when I come to guys. I only date really good looking, well-endowed guys, with great bodies. My friends are always going on at me. I'm like "I can't help it! I'm just a woman with high standards!"”

Josie Maran (1978) American model and actress

IMDB Profile http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1036691/bio

Guy, Help

“If they are unwilling to give, they should at least lend with all readiness and alacrity, not with the prospect of receiving anything back except the principal. … In place of the interest which they determine not to accept they receive a further bonus of the fairest and most precious things that human life has to give, mercy neighborliness, charity, magnanimity, a good report and good fame. And what acquisition can rival these? Nay, even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

213.
On the Virtues

Life, Men, Soul, Appearance

“I took down my portfolio, to select a drawing to copy in oil. He had never seen my works before, and appeared astonished as his eyes ranged over the sheets. He expressed the warmest admiration, and said, "How hopeless must be the task of my giving any instruction to one who can draw like this?" I pointed out to him that nature is the great study for the artist, and assured him that the reason why my works pleased him was because they are all exact copies of the works of God, — who is the great Architect and perfect Artist; and impressed on his mind this fact, that nature indifferently copied is far superior to the best idealities.”

John James Audubon (1785–1851) American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter

On a meeting with a young artist, Mr. J. B. Kidd, Ch. X, p. 140
The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868)

God, Nature, Study, Appearance

“Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

How Software Companies Die

Soul, Game, Spring, Lying

“In a letter Hajjaj instructed Muhammad bin Qasim on how to deal with the adversary. “The way of granting pardon prescribed by law is that when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads… make a great slaughter among them… (Those that survive) bind them in bonds… grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of them” etc., etc.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, Kalichbeg, in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Law, Way

“Behind the shower curtain, Zooey closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though his own small craft were listing precariously in the wake. Then he pulled back the shower curtain and stared over at the closed door. It was a weighty stare, and relief was not really a great part of it. As much as anything else, it was the stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

Lovers, Parting

“I think it would be great to have a mall that looked like stores but you weren't selling things. You were just going to hang out or do things. Or if somebody bought a mall and turned it into a house that people could kind of come to and you could build rooms, and it's all orange furniture. Or you could just build environments. Reclaim a mall just in the name of aesthetics or to make something beautiful or something that has no real purpose. Wouldn't that be amazing?”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Black Book magazine, Fall 2002

People, Beauty, Thinking, Housing

“Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

per Irving Norton Fisher in a speech to the Yale socialists club 1911 http://praxeology.net/WGS-Anarchy.htm.

Time

“The universe may
be as great as they say.
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

Nothing Is Indespensable : Grook to warn the universe against megalomania
Grooks

Universe

“As in any discipline, to become good you need first to learn the rules. To become great, you need to break them.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Learning

“Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 40
Context: The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history. Mind can never be free of matter. Only by mind imagining itself free can culture advance. The mother-cults, by reconciling man to nature, entrapped him in matter. Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins. Genesis is rigid and unjust, but it gave man hope as a man. It remade the world by male dynasty, canceling the power of mothers.

“When it is a matter of deciding what amount of work might be demanded of the individual, this question concerns not only the people affected, but must be settled for the benefit of the State and on the basis of moral considerations. The admirable thing about the old Germany was that she considered herself as a mediator and held it to be her duty to take into account the interest of the State first of all. The new Germany must have no other task! … We are stripped of power and we must try to regain, little by little and by means of compromises, our rank as a Great Power.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech to the People's Party Congress (11 October 1924), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 352
1920s

People, Question

“I absolutely love Bela Lugosi's Count. One thing that always interesting to bear in mind in the great history of Dracula is that, I think almost without exception the film's release has always been surrounded by controversy. Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula at the time was regarded as essentially a kind of B-movie piece of junk. Whereas now, I think it has real luster and appeal to people. I looked at Bella's Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films, I thought it was kind of good to do that.”

Richard Roxburgh (1962) Australian actor

An Iinterview With Dracula and His Brides http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/an-interview-with-dracula-and-his-brides (May 5, 2004)

Love, People, History, Thinking

“Some young men could not afford to marry or were statutorily forbidden to do so, and then their visits to Japanese brothels engendered guilt as well as VD. The official attitude to taking brown mistresses was always ambivalent. It let the side down, but a sleeping dictionary was the only way to learn the language. Mr Butcher is good on all this, and he gives such tables as one headed ‘Ethnicity of Women from whom European Men Treated at the Sultan Street Clinic Contracted Venereal Disease, 1927-1931.’ The girls of Siam were the great infectresses, but the Malays came a close second. The Japanese, who had regular medical inspections and lived in brothels cleaner than hotels, were down with the Eurasians to 0.4% in 1931. This damnable sex, by no means to be tamed by quinine or cricket. Guilt guilt guilt….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Women, Men, Disease, Sex

“And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne and said: “Amen! Praise Jah!” Also, a voice came from the throne and said: “Be praising our God, all you his slaves, who fear him, the small ones and the great.””

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Revelation 19: 4-5 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/revelation/19/, NWT Revelation

God, Fear

“Men and women, in and of themselves, are desirable. There can not be too many inhabitants of the right kind, distributed in the right place. Great work, there is for each and every one of them to perform. The country needs all the intelligence, and skill, and strength of mind and body it can get. whether we draw such from those within our gates, or from those without, seeking entrance. But since we are confronted by the clamor of multitudes who desire the opportunity offered by American life, we must face the situation unflinchingly, determined to relinquish not one iota of our obligations to others, yet not so sentimental as to overlook our obligations to ourselves.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Life, Women, Men, Intelligence

“If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.”

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

30 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Men, Angels, Dependency

“You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(Roger Steer. Hudson Taylor: Lessons in Discipleship. OMF International, 1995, 51).

God, Faith

“After a long time the great and awful Name was forgotten and the people, men, women and children, only recognized an image of wood or stone and the temple of wood or stone which they had been brought up from infancy to serve by bowing down.”

Maimónides book Mishneh Torah

“Idolatry,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 72
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)

Women, Men, Children, People

“I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of — I am, however young, writing at random — straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness — without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (March 19, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)

Thinking, Light, Animals

“Went for a walk, whistling. Saw a throne in a window. I said: What chair is this? Is it the one great Ferdinand sat in, when he sent the ships to find the Indies? The seat is frayed. Hardly a day passes without an announcement of some kind of marriage, a pregnancy, a cancer, a rebirth. Sometimes they drift in from the Yukon and other far places, come in and sit down at the kitchen table, want a glass of milk and a peanut-butter-and-jelly, I oblige, for old times’ sake. Sent me the schedule for the Little League soccer teams, they’re all named after cars, the Mustangs vs. the Mavericks, the Chargers vs. the Impalas. Something funny about that. My son. Slept with What’s-Her-Name, they said, while she was asleep, I don’t think that’s fair. Prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights. They went away, then they came back, at Christmas and Eastertide, had quite a full table, maybe a dozen in all including all the little…partners they’d picked up on their travels….”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

Marriage, Cars, Travel, Thinking

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“But I felt it was important to put those kinds of decisions in the book. And I've got to tell you I really - I mean, I don't want to be cavalier about it but I've done what I've done and I, frankly, if people like what I did, great. And if they don't like what I did at least read the book. That's all I ask. And at least be open minded enough to figure out the decision making process. Why did I do what I did?”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2011, Q&A with Former President George W. Bush (January 2011)

People, Books, Decision, Reading

“It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.”

William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995) American nuclear physicist

William A. Fowler's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/fowler-speech.html, December 10, 1983.

Pleasure, Knowledge, Learning

“Great things thro' greatest hazards are achiev'd,
And then they shine.”

John Fletcher The Loyal Subject

Act I, scene 5.
The Loyal Subject (c. 1616–19; published 1647, 1679)

“One of the characters of the Senate, and one of the upheavals of the Populist movement was Senator Jeff. Davis, of Arkansas. Davis was loudly, vociferously, and clamorously a friend of the people. Precisely what he did to benefit the people was never very clear, but if we must take his word for it, he was the only friend the people had. Among his efforts to help the people was to denounce big business of all kinds and anything which gave large employment or had great capital. I think that in his own mind the ideal state would have been made of small landowners and an occasional lawyer. He himself was a lawyer.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 184

People, Business, Thinking, Effort

“The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) English composer

National Music (1934) p. 129.

Soul, Business, Future

“I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Attributed to Camus on social media, this sentence was taken from the Wikipedia article on Camus: "In Le Mythe, dualism becomes a paradox: we value our own lives in spite of our mortality and in spite of the universe's silence. While we can live with a dualism (I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come), we cannot live with the paradox (I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless)." Retrieved 16 July 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus#Ideas_on_the_absurd
Misattributed

Life, Thinking

“Crazy-busy’ is a great armor, it’s a great way for numbing. What a lot of us do is that we stay so busy, and so out in front of our life, that the truth of how we’re feeling and what we really need can’t catch up with us.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Washington Post, October 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/exhaustion-is-not-a-status-symbol/2012/10/02/19d27aa8-0cba-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story_2.html

Life, Truth, Way, Feeling

“Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness — waiting for the Food.”

H. G. Wells book The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) - Online PDF and Epub http://books.google.com/books?id=VOyeAAAAIAAJ

Food, Understanding, Waiting

“If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

“The greatness is not what we do, but, unavoidably it is always in how we do what we do. Our present work may be great or small, Yet, the important is to do it well.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

People, Exercises, Way, God

“A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as a good one is a great blessing.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 346.

“With the defeat of the Reich and pending the emergence of the Asiatic, the African and, perhaps, the South American nationalisms, there will remain in the world only two Great Powers capable of confronting each other—the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of both history and geography will compel these two Powers to a trial of strength, either military or in the fields of economics and ideology.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

2 April 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

World, Law, History

“Here's the thing, it's the same person. It's just that some things that are appropriate on stage aren't appropriate at a dinner party, you know with a bunch of judges and lawyers. It's still saying how you feel, it's still being yourself, it's just knowing when and where. It's also knowing when to let someone else take the lead. That's exactly why Erika Jayne is so great, because when she's onstage, that's what she's supposed to do. To be over the top, to be peacocking. But it still resonates from the same place inside”

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

me
Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

Feeling, Personality

“Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves — that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Problem, Thinking, Suffering

“Knowledge is like the carrot, few know by looking at the green top that the best part, the orange part, is there. Like the carrot, if you don't work for it, it will wither away and rot. And finally, like the carrot, there are a great many donkeys and jackasses that are associated with it.”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Dan Keding, Elder Tales: stories of wisdom and courage from around the world (2008), ISBN 1591585945, p. 151

Knowledge, Parting

“All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (September 8, 1891)
Letters

Confidence

“This is the next great diversity issue of our time.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Walsh, Colleen (staff writer), "Women in the law" article re "Celebration 60" event, Harvard Gazette, September 30, 2013. (Quotation referring to introversion and extroversion)
Variant: I'm seeing businesses embrace the Quiet Revolution as the next great diversity issue of our time.

Time

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987). 1980s

People, Way, Personality, Country

“I find our modern emphasis on 'rights' somewhat overdone and misleading … It makes people forget that the other and more important side of rights is duty. And indeed the great historic codes of our human advance emphasised duties and not rights … The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and … the Sermon on the Mount … all are silent on rights, all lay stress on duties.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

On the rights embodied in the United Nations Charter of which he drafted the Preamble, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 144. ISBN 978-1-86842-390-3

People, Forgetting

“Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

James Longstreet (1821–1904) Confederate Army general

The New York Times http://www.granthomepage.com/intlongstreet.htm (24 July 1885)

Men, God, Heart, Fight

“A great library easily begets affection, which may deepen into love.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

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

Love

“There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.”

John Keats Endymion

Preface
Endymion (1818)

Failure, Hell

“The real emancipation of the Chinese people from age-long slavery would be impossible without the great, sincerely democratic enthusiasm which is rousing the working masses and making them capable of miracles, and which is evident from every sentence of Sun Yat-sen’s platform.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 163–169.
Collected Works

People, Age, Sun, Sincerity

“It has been the White Race who has been the world builder, the maker of cities and commerce and continents. It is the White Man who is the sole builder of civilizations. It was he who build the Egyptian civilization, the great unsurpassed Roman civilization, the Greek civilization of beauty and culture, and who, after having been dealt a serious blow by a new Semitic religion, wallowed through the Dark Ages, finally extricated himself, and then build the great European civilization.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), Ch. 2, Paragraph 2
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973)

Age, World, Religion, Beauty

“It is a great joy to admire someone without reserve; love which is founded upon admiration of the mind as well as the body of the chosen person undoubtedly affords the keenest delight.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Love, Joy, Personality

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Pope http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5101 Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Graduation, Confidence, Self-confidence

“Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter.
The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength.
The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities.
The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Children, People, Winter

“Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth

:lie—
Dust unto dust—
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who

:die
As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must

:dwell—
Too strong to strive—
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng—
The cowed and the meek—
Who see the world’s great anguish and its

:wrong
And dare not speak!”

Ralph Chaplin (1887–1961) American writer, artist and labor activist

Mourn Not The Dead

Men, Lie, World, Strong

“Nevermore
Let the great interests of the State depend
Upon the thousand chances that may sway
A piece of human frailty; swear to me
That ye will seek hereafter in yourselves
The means of sovereignty.”

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854) British politician

Act v.
Ion (1835)

Chance, Dependency

“Being prepared to die is one of the great secrets of living.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

Secret

“The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

Carl Schurz (1829–1906) Union Army general, politician

Remarks in the Senate http://www.bartleby.com/73/1641.html (29 February 1872) He was here responding to the famous slogan derived from a statement of Stephen Decatur: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

Sense, Country

“Diophantus shows great Adroitness in selecting the unkown, especially with a view to avoiding an adfected quadratic…. The most common and characteristic of Diophantus' methods is his use of tentative assumptions which is applied in nearly every problem of the later books. It consists in assigning to the unknown a preliminary value which satisfies one or two only of the necessary conditions, in order that, from its failure to satisfy the remaining conditions, the operator may perceive what exactly is required for that purpose…. a third characteristic of Diophantus [is]… the use of the symbol for the unknown in different senses…. The use of tentative assumptions leads again to another device which may be called… the method of limits. This may best be illustrated by a particular example. If Diophantus wishes to find a square lying between 10 and 11, he multiplies these numbers by successive squares till a square lies between the products. Thus between 40 and 44, 90 and 99 no square lies, but between 160 and 176 there lies the square 169. Hence x^2 = \tfrac{169}{16} will lie between the proposed limits.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

Lie, Books, Lying, Failure

“As the day is long,
so the well runs dry,
and we came to see Time is taller
than Space is wide.
And we bade goodbye
to the Great Divide:
found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

Time

“It is evident that Bhoja had the reputation of a strong ruler, able to maintain peace in his kingdom and defend it against Muslim aggression and left this task as a sacred legacy to his succession. He was undoubtedly one of the outstanding political figure of India in ninth century and ranks with Dhruva and Dharmpala as a great general and empire builder.”

Mihira Bhoja I (836–885) Ruler of the Gurjara Pratihara dynasty

According to historian Dr. R. C. Majumdar [History of Ancient India: Earliest Times to 1000 A. D., http://books.google.co.in/books?id=cWmsQQ2smXIC&pg=PA207&dq]
About

Peace, Strong, Success

“In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Morning Star, 1980
1980s

Business

“As I consider a future political and economic agreement with Great Russia to be the immutable aim of our foreign policy, we must attempt at least not to make an enemy of Russia…I refuse to support Poland, even if that means that Poland will be eaten up. On the contrary, I reckon with this, and if at the moment we cannot help Russia to regain her old Imperial frontiers, we should at least not hinder her from doing so…The same applies to Lithuania and Latvia.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to General von Massow (31 January 1920), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 67-68.

Support, Future, Help

“Great physicists fight great battles.”

Jean-Pierre Vigier

[Jean-Pierre Vigier, 1982, October, Louis de Broglie - Physicist and thinker, Foundations of Physics, 12, 10, 923-930, 10.1007/BF01889266]

Fight

“I believe that there are very few scientists who deliberately falsify their work, cheat on their colleagues, or steal from their students. On the other hand, I am afraid that a great many scientists deceive themselves from time to time in their treatment of data, gloss over problems involving systematic errors, or understate the contributions of others. These are the 'honest mistakes' of science. The scientific equivalent of the 'little white lie' of social discourse. The scientific community has no way to protect itself from sloppy or deceptive literature except to learn whose work is suspect as unreliable.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

(1994, p. 44) cited in: Leonard Brand (1997) Faith, reason, and earth history
Integrity in Science (1985)

Lie, Way, Error, Communication

“Decades of providing technology in growing volume and at decreasing costs have driven great gains for developing nations, communities and people worldwide, but there is still much to do.”

Paul Otellini (1950–2017) former president & CEO of Intel

Intel: "Intel Commits $1 Billion To Further Emerging Markets Strategy" https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2006/20060502corp.htm (2 May 2006)

People, Communication

“I can assure you that there is no career which you will adopt when you leave college that will bring you a more and greater sense of satisfaction and a greater feeling of participation in a great effort than will your work here or in your state or in your community…this generation of Americans — you here who will be in positions of responsibility for the rest of this century — will deal with the most difficult, sensitive, and dangerous problems that any society of people has ever dealt with at any age…The Greeks defined happiness as the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence, and I can imagine no place where you can use your powers more fully along lines more excellent in the 1960's than to be in the service of the United States.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks to Student Participants in the White House Seminar in Government (334)" (27 August 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1963

People, Age, Feeling, Imagination

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world—allude to the Russians and the Americans— All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding—along a path to which no limit can be perceived.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

World, Time