Quotes about greatness
page 36

“The great error of the wisest known nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, was the preference invariable given to the imagined interests of an imaginary existence called the state or country, and the real interests of the real existences, or human beings, upon whom, individually and collectively, their laws could alone operate. Another error was the opposition in which they invariably placed the interests of their own nation to the interests of all other nations; and a third and greater error, was the elevating into a virtue this selfish preference of their own national interests, under the name of patriotism. The moderns are growing a little wise on these matters, but they are still very ignorant.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

Law, Error, Imagination, Selfishness

“The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 13

Life, Feeling, Baby

“As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!”

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

Tweet by @realDonaldTrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/887280380423938048 (18 July 2017) 2010s, 2017, July

“I tossed my shoulders and swaggered away, whistling with pleasure. In the gutter I saw a long cigaret butt. I picked it up without shame, lit it as I stood with one foot in the gutter, puffed it and exhaled toward the stars. I was an American, and goddamn proud of it. This great city, these mighty pavements and proud buildings, they were the voice of my America. From sand and cactus we Americans had carved an empire. Camilla's people had had their chance. They had failed. We Americans had turned the trick. Thank God for my country. Thank God I had been born an American!”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Five

God, People, Pleasure, Star

“The more advanced the sciences have become, the more they have tended to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a sort of center towards which they converge. We can judge of the perfection to which a science has come by the facility, more or less great, with which it may be approached by calculation.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Edward Mailly, Essai sur la vie et les ouv rages de Quetelet in the Annuaire de Vacadimie royale des sciences des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique (1875) Vol. xli pp. 109-297 found also in "Conclusions" of Instructions populaires sur le calcul des probabilités p. 230

Mathematics, Science, Perfection

“All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people—the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.”

Rudyard Kipling Life's Handicap

The Mark of the Beast.
Life's Handicap (1891)

God, People, Personality

“MR BROWN You know that the policy in Iraq cannot succeed. Democracy cannot be exported with a gun. You can be the Great Leader and the Great Peacemaker”

Chris Eubank (1966) British former professional boxer

Eubanks new message to the new Prime Minster http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6679611.stm

Democracy

“As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour. The great musicians knew this. w:Beethoven and the rest wrote music — simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in that... Art should be independent of all claptrap — should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
also in a letter to 'The World', London 22 Mai, 1878; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 186
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

Love, Art, Music, Sense

“Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the 'Georgics,' where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, 'I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book III, Ch. 2
My Antonia (1918)

Men, God, Perfection, Country

“Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. II, ch. 8.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Men, Books, History

“Perhaps these in stances [Mewar, Kangra, and Ajmer] made a contemporary poet of his court sing his praises as the great Muslim emperor who converted temples into mosques.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Badshah-Nama Badshah Nama cited by Sri Ram Sharma, p. 63. Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962.

Singing

“Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean formula that gravity causes all bodies to descend with equal rapidity, without reference to their weight, the difference being caused by some other unknown agency, would seem to point a great deal more forcibly to magnetism than to gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the substance than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of everything existing in nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions; the cause of these, traced to the spiritual principle which pervades and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best conditions for this principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law — this was and is the basis of magic.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Law, Nature, Knowledge, Universe

“To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labor, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

“What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive. What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It's just that some of us haven't realized it yet.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Why Don't I Criticize Israel?" http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel (27 July 2014) 2010s

Children, People, Truth, World

“Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

Cuts (1987) p. 42.

“When one speaks of America, millions of Germans think of their relatives who either recently or long ago left their German homeland to seek their fortune in the “New World.” When someone succeeded in quickly making a lot of money in America, people said he had made his fortune. The result was that the “rich uncle” in America was envied and his nephews and nieces were encouraged to join the fortune-seeker. Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear in the agricultural and technical fields. That these people and their descendants now give great help to the enemies of Germany in this Second World War is a tragic fact.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der Stürmer, 1944

Money, War, People, World

“All throughout high school and college everyone told me I couldn’t be an athlete [as a vegetarian], so I wanted to prove them wrong. … Being a vegetarian is great. I have always grown up this way, so it’s not even something I really think about too much. I think a lot of people have to make the decision whether they want to do it or not, but for me it’s been easy; I never even really thought about eating meat, it’s something that always seemed a little gross to me, especially with the way animals are treated and what not. The older I got, the more I started doing a little research, and started realizing all the health benefits as well.”

Jake Shields (1979) American mixed martial artist

"Proving the Haters Wrong: Jake Shields' Life of Resilience and Self-Belief", interview with Sunwarrior.com (27 July 2012) https://sunwarrior.com/healthhub/proving-the-haters-wrong-jake-shields-life-of-resilience-and-self-belief.

People, Health, School, Way

“Ikenobo Sen'o, a master of flower arranging, once said (the remark is to be found in his Sayings): "With a spray of flowers, a bit of water, one evokes the vastness of rivers and mountains." The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, and this is because the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. Nothing is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail, than the Japanese art of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of stones gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Art, Mountain, Flowers, Nature

“I am the one you saw to-day, who fell
Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell:
A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'
'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Pain, Secret, Memory

“3082. To what Purpose shouldest thou seek great Things for thyself in the World? or having obtained them, prize them at any considerable Rate? or value thyself upon them? seeing thou knowest not, but this Night thy Soul may be required of thee, when thou shalt be divested of them all. 'Twould be as vain and unreasonable, as for a Traveler, that is to stay at his Inn but for a night, to take great Thought and Pains about furnishing and adorning his Chamber, which the next Morning he must leave to the next Comer.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Pain, World, Travel, Soul

“No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano.”

Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) English writer and publisher

Dedicatory letter to Stella Ford http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/fmf/gsdl.htm (1927-01-09) in The Good Soldier, second edition.

Books, Thinking

“Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite”

Eric S. Raymond book The Cathedral and the Bazaar

and reuse
The Cathedral and the Bazaar

“I was at a dinner party at Steve Martin's house not too long ago. Some very funny people were there - Steve, Marty Short, the whole gang. We sat around the table, like eight of us, and we laughed so hard that we were just sitting there laughing and crying. And I thought, 'This is great. This is what it's like when life is really good. Sitting around with people of that quality and that caliber, people being funny. Smart and funny.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

It's great.
Amy Selwyn, Associated Press (December 21, 1997) "Nathan Lane: The String's The Thing", The Orlando Sentinel, p. F1.

Life, People, Housing, Cry

“It is probably best to start off by noting that Hayek knew a lot about Mill, probably for a time more than any other contemporary scholar. So we should not underestimate him.
Next, what he had to say about Mill, what portion of Mill’s work he drew upon, was very much dictated by the sort of project he was working on. When he was making an argument about how the British liberal tradition lost its bearings, or about how Comtean positivism came to be known and gained influence across Europe, Mill was classed among the perpetrators. When he was writing about what made the British liberal tradition great, Mill could be one of the heroes. There is, I think, no inconsistency in the fact that Hayek could hold both views simultaneously.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and Mill", History of Political Economy (2008)

Thinking, Time

“He entered into life with a burden that most of us bear: with the example of great men before his eyes and the desire to follow in their footsteps, but without any knowledge of petty men, who are the only ones we meet.”

Meša Selimović book Death and the Dervish

Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), Part II, page. 329.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

Life, Men, Knowledge

“In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Source: Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967), p. 23

God, Time

“All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

God, Imagination, Forgetting

“I hope very much that the archway into the Chamber from the Inner Lobby—where the Bar used to be—which was smitten by the blast of the explosion, and has acquired an appearance of antiquity that might not have been achieved by the hand of time in centuries, will be preserved intact, as a monument of the ordeal which Westminster has passed through in the Great War, and as a reminder to those who will come centuries after us that they may look back from time to time upon their forbears who “kept the bridge In the brave days of old.””

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Rebuilding the House of Commons, Speech to the House of Commons https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1945/jan/25/house-of-commons-rebuilding, 25 January 1945. The Second World War (1939–1945)

War, Hope, Appearance, Time

“From France to the Philippines, from Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, privatisation is on the move…The policies we have pioneered are catching on in country after country. We Conservatives believe in popular capitalism—believe in a property-owning democracy. And it works! … The great political reform of the last century was to enable more and more people to have a vote. Now the great Tory reform of this century is to enable more and more people to own property. Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation. We Conservatives are returning power to the people. That is the way to one nation, one people.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106498 Second term as Prime Minister

Life, People, Way, Democracy

“And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

A version of his staple "Hope Speech," quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), p. 363

People, World, Hope, Feeling

“We could make an epic catalog of male achievements, from paved roads, indoor plumbing, and washing machine to eyeglasses, antibiotics and disposable diapers. We enjoy safe, fresh milk and meat, and vegetables and tropical fruits heaped in snowbound cities. When I cross the George Washington Bridge or any of America’s great bridges, I think: men have done this. Construction is a sublime male poetry. When I see a giant crane passing on a flatbed truck, I pause in awe and reverence as would for a church processions.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 37

Men, Thinking

“The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 214.

Soul, Evil

“Generally speaking, if we look at sports we find that their strong point is that because they are competitive they are interesting, and young people are likely to be attracted to them. No matter how valuable the method of physical education, if it is not put into practice, it will serve no purpose — therein lies the advantage of sports. But, in this regard there are matters to which we must also give a great deal of consideration. First, so-called sports were not created for the purpose of physical education; one competes for another purpose, namely, to win. Accordingly, the muscles are not necessarily developed in a balanced way, and in some cases the body is pushed too far or even injured. For that reason, while there is no doubt that sports are a good thing, serious consideration must be given to the selection of the sport and the training method. Sports must not be undertaken carelessly, over-zealously, or without restraint. However, it is safe to say that competitive sports are a form of physical education that should be promoted with this advice in mind. The reason I have worked to popularize sports for more than twenty years and that I have strived to bring the Olympic Games to Japan is entirely because I recognize these merits. However, in times like these, when many people are enthusiastic about sports, I would like to remind them of the adverse effects of sports as well. I also urge them to keep in mind the goals of physical education—to develop a sound body that is useful to you in your daily life — and be sure to consider whether or not the method of training is in keeping with the concept of”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

http://www.judoinfo.com/seiryoku2.htm seiryoku zenyo
"Judo and Physical Training" in Mind Over Muscle : Writings from the Founder of Judo (2006) edited by Naoki Murata, p. 57

Life, People, Education, Way

“I’ve lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 3, Chapter 12, p. 250
The Gods Themselves (1972)

Love, Life, People, Hurt

“The Great Mogol is a foreigner in Hindustan, a descendent of Tamerlane, chief of those Mogols from Tartary who, about the year 1401, overran and conquered the Indies. Consequently he finds himself in a hostile country, or nearly so; a country containing hundreds of Gentiles to one Mogol or even to one Mahometan. To maintain himself in such a country… he is under the necessity of keeping up numerous armies, even in the time of peace.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Also quoted in part in in Islam in India and Pakistan - A Religious History by Dr.Y P Singh, British India by R.W. Frazer
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Hostility, Peace, Time, Country

“In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,
"I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Epigram.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Fate, Training

“The whole of Germany is an armed camp…The industries of Germany are mobilised for war to an extent to which ours were not mobilised even a year after the Great War had begun. The whole population is being trained from childhood up to war. A mighty army is coming into being. Many submarines are already exercising in the Baltics. Great cannon, tanks, machine guns and poison gas are fast accumulating. The Germans are even able to be great exporters of munitions as well as to develop their own enormous magazines. The German air force is developing at a great speed, and in spite of ruthless loss of life. We have no speedy prospect of equalling the German air force or of overtaking Germany in the air, whatever we do in the near future.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1935/oct/24/international-situation in the House of Commons (24 October 1935) The 1930s

Life, War, Exercises, Loss

“Notwithstanding all the guidance of divine grace Israel did not know the time of her visitation. [-] The great majority of the people rejected the Messiah with the cry: 'His blood be upon us and upon our children”

Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952) German Roman Catholic Cardinal

Matt. xxvii, 25
Sermon Four, p. 79
Sermon Four

Children, People, Time, Cry

“In most Life Situations, the truth is irrelevant. Once in a great while, however, it’s the only thing you've got.”

Bradley Denton (1958) American science fiction author

Source: Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), p. 114

Life, Truth

“Once again, modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact. And, once again, the appropriate response is twofold. First, many many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not as literal fact, how should we take the story? As an allegory? Then an allegory for what? Surely morals could one derive from this appalling story? Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 275 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

People, World

“[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.”

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

Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

Life, Men, Money, People

“See, this hidden brightness in which one contemplates everything that one desires according to the way of emptiness of spirit, this brightness is so great that the loving contemplative neither sees nor feels anything in his ground in which he rests except an incomprehensible light. And according to the simple bareness which encompasses all things, he finds and feels himself to be that very light by which he sees, and nothing else.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, Way, Feeling, Light

“That democratization has never closely approached its theoretical limits, either in the government of the state or in the government of other institutions, is revealed in the three great historical movement toward democratizing the state.”

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

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 1 : Three Criteria for Authority

“And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. I (p. 36)

World, Hell, Knowledge, Thinking

“I like well your idea of issuing treasury notes bearing interest, because I am persuaded they would soon be withdrawn from circulation and locked up in vaults & private hoards. It would put it in the power of every man to lend his 100. or 1000 d. tho’ not able to go forward on the great scale, and be the most advantageous way of obtaining a loan. The other idea of creating a National bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power, (altho’ I sincerely wish they had it exclusively) and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Law (6 November 1813) http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/Vol11/0054-11_Pt07_1813.html#hd_lf054-11_head_125 FE 9:433 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (10 Vols., 1892-99) edited by Paul Leicester Ford 1810s

Way, Idea, Thinking, Sincerity

“It seems to me that art is a great miracle-it is the showing forth of the Holy Spirit transubstantiation. It is to find and proclaim the poetry of life, without which there is no life.”

Jim Ede (1895–1990) art collector

Introduction,In Engrave Glass:David Peace,Cambridge 1973.

Life, Art

“The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

People, Change, Sun, Sea

“In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bells, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery... In those days there was great fertility of the soil in Iceland. But when the Norsemen came to settle here, the Western sorcerers were forced to flee the land, and old writings say that Kolumkilli, determined on revenge, laid a curse on the invaders, swearing that they would never prosper here, and more in the same spirit, much of what has since, to all appearances, been fulfilled.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

Men, Revenge, Appearance, Time

“Great question to ask, to relax: What should I consider right now, decide what, and let go?”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

2 July 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/220039630240747521 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Question

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, God, Age, Religion

“On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Rider Haggard: Still Riding", p. 29
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

“I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington, Gov. Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska. … She has an executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems, like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and she's taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats, and independents to serve in her administration. She's the wonderful mother of five children. She's -- she's helped run a small business. She's worked with her hands and knows -- and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments, and health care, and the cost of gasoline and groceries. She knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, 2008 Republican National Convention (2008)

Children, Health, Business, Problem

“The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.”

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

No. 224.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Art

“The country has great and imperative obligations to the weak, the sick, the unfortunate. It must give to them all the sustenance and support it can. We look forward to social and unemployment insurances, to improved health services, to a wiser control of our economy to avert if possible all booms and slumps which tend to convert labour into a commodity, to a better distribution of wealth, to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility. We not only look forward to these things, we shall demand and obtain them.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

Freedom from Want radio talk, July 10, 1942 (the fifth of "The Forgotten People" series)
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Source: http://menziesvirtualmuseum.org.au/transcripts/the-forgotten-people/63-chapter-5-freedom-from-want

Health, Justice, Support, Sense

“There was something else in the example of my father's life which impressed me very deeply when I was a young man, and which has greatly influenced me since I took up a public career. I suppose most people think of him as a great Colonial Secretary and tariff reformer, but before he ever went to the Colonial Office he was a great social reformer, and it was my observance of his deep sympathy with the working classes and his intense desire to better their lot which inspired me with an ambition to do something in my turn to afford better help to the working people and better opportunities for the enjoyment of life.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the Albert Hall, London (12 May 1938), quoted in The Times (13 May 1938), p. 11.
Prime Minister

Life, People, Thinking, Help

“You know, the whole American culture is going down the drain, you can't turn on a television set and see anything, or walk in the street and not find garbage, or neighborhoods that were formerly beautiful now have McDonald's in them, and it's all a part of an enormous degeneration of culture in the United States. People that exist in that culture are forced to make moral decisions all the time about their lives, their occupations, their love-lives, and they make decisions that are commensurate with what's happening to them in this culture, and it's too bad that that's happening because that's what Manhattan is about, that New York used to be such a great city, so wonderful, and it has to fight every day for its survival against the encroachment of all this terrible ugliness that is gradually overcoming all the big cities in America.
This ugliness comes from a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life. They don't know what they're doing, or why they're here. They have no religious center, they have no philosophical center, and so they act, they do what's expedient at the moment. They have no long view of society. They only have the view of quick money, and kill the pain of the moment, and so instead of dealing with the real problems that exist, that are complicated, they sweep them under the rug by turning on the television set, or taking cocaine, or doing many things that enable them to escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

[Allen, Woody, France Roche, Woody Allen, ou L'Anhedoniste; le Plus Drole du Monde, New York, 1979, France 2, 05 January 2013]
Others

Love, Life, Money, Pain

“For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique—the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These signals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 18

Truth, Learning

“The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. … It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 139.

History, Reality

“This whole theory [of John Law and Jean Terrasson], as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American "Greenbackers" in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 169-170

People, Law

“The value of my cry great will be its advantage to degrees.
The chief of men, shield of warriors.
The extensive booty of the ashen shaft is my fair Awen.
A shield before a prince, bright his smile,
Heroic, aspiring, the most heroic is Urien”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Taliesin, a Song to Urien

Men, Smile, Cry

“Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html 1770s

God, World, Exercises, Heart

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life, God, Truth, Books

“We should embrace the disagreement that echoes in this chamber because this is the forum that the founders of our great country envisioned.”

Robert Agresta (1983)

Scribd:Robert Agresta Inauguration speech Quoted in Mayor & Council Meeting of January 2009 http://www.scribd.com/full/54569111?access_key=key-11gd71r31loly41co5n5

Country

“A baby is shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently, the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the possession of such a small child.
The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical. … That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always so obviously wrong.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"Measure Your Mind", in Love Conquers All (1922)

Imagination, Lying, Appearance, Baby

“So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake.”

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

1963, Remarks Intended for Delivery to the Texas Democratic State Committee in the Municipal Auditorium in Austin

Future

“Whether the associations of the Imperial name are bad, as Mr. Gladstone thinks, I will not discuss. Splendid and imposing they certainly were, not only in the age of the Antonines, but in the best days of the mediaeval Empire, from Otto the Great to Frederick II. But that splendour they have lost. … In fact, the title of King is now the less common of the two, and, with such associations as our kingship has, it is far more dignified. There has been a King of the English ever since the ninth or tenth century; no other Monarchy in Europe (except the lands of our Scandinavian kingsfolk and except the Crown of St. Stephen) can boast of anything like an equal antiquity. … Why endanger the pre-eminence of style of the only European Crown which combines the glories of ancient legitimacy with those of equally ancient constitutional freedom?”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Letter to The Times (13 March 1876), p. 8, after Queen Victoria was given the title "Empress of India".
1870s

Age, Thinking, Freedom

“My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung!
Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid.
Narrow is thy dwelling now! dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before. Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass, which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

War, Lie, Peace, Art

“… my unhealthy timidity might be a great obstacle to me in my life.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

Life

“O fortunate one, thy vow hath become successful. The lord of the celestials hath been gratified, and is willing to give thee a son such as thou desirest, of superhuman achievements and great fame. He will be the oppressor of all enemies and possessed of great wisdom. Endued with a great soul, in splendour equal unto the Sun, invincible in battles, and of great achievements, he will also be extremely handsome. O thou of fair hips and sweet smiles, the lord of the celestials hath become gracious to thee. Invoking him, bring thou forth a child who will be the very home of all Kshatriya virtues.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu to Kunti
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

Wisdom, Smile, Home, Soul

“Prosper's earliest memory was of hearing the enormous Hoover starting up somewhere in the house, brand-new then possibly, anyway unknown to him, an inexplicable noise at once a roar and shriek and coming closer; moving away; closer again, and evidently seeking him out where he lay in bed. Then to find the great gray floor-sucker thing entering his room, manipulated by his grim-faced mother, therefore not dangerous at all, maybe.”

John Crowley book Four Freedoms

Part Two, Chapter 2
Four Freedoms (2009)

Memory, Housing

“I’ve always said that I believe deeply in creative conflict, and that means passionately arguing–whatever your thoughts are, whatever the point is. Some people love that and it helps them grow, learn, etc. Some people run for the hills. I’ve always said to people, “Look, it’s not a room for everybody. If you like this environment, great. If you don’t, please leave, because it’s not good for any of us.””

Barry Diller (1942) American businessman

Fast Company: "Why Barry Diller believes in cultivating creative conflict" https://www.fastcompany.com/90205552/why-barry-diller-believes-in-cultivating-creative-conflict (8 August 2018)

Love, People, Learning, Passion

“And I say to you this morning in conclusion that I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in things. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in gadgets and contrivances. As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Not in the little gods that can be with us in a few moments of prosperity, but in the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil. That's the God. Not in the god that can give us a few Cadillac cars and Buick convertibles, as nice as they are, that are in style today and out of style three years from now, but the God who threw up the stars to bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity. Not in the god that can throw up a few skyscraping buildings, but the God who threw up the gigantic mountains, kissing the sky, as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blues. Not in the god that can give us a few televisions and radios, but the God who threw up that great cosmic light that gets up early in the morning in the eastern horizon, (who paints its technicolor across the blue—something that man could never make. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in the little gods that can be destroyed in an atomic age, but the God who has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home. That's the God that I'm putting my ultimate faith in.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Life, Death, God, Age

“Scripture tells us that 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Captain Humayun Khan of the United States Army showed in his final moments that he was filled and motivated by this love. His name will live forever in American memory, as an example of true American greatness.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2010s, 2016, Statement regarding the Khan family (1 August 2016)

Love, Life, Motivation, Memory

“The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators.
Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy. While John Rohr, in his outstanding new introduction carefully notes loopholes in the theoretical scaffold of Goodnow's argument, he is also careful to express his appreciation of the pragmatic ground for this new sense of government as needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed.
Goodnow was profoundly influenced by European currents, especially the Hegelian. As a result, the work aims at a political philosophy meant to move considerably beyond the purely pragmatic needs of government. For it was the relationships, the need for national unity in a country that was devised to account for and accommodate pluralism and diversity, that attracted Goodnow's legal background and normative impulses alike. That issues of legitimacy and power distribution were never entirely resolved by Goodnow does not alter the fact that this is perhaps the most important work, along with that of James Bryce, to emerge from this formative period to connect processes of governance with systems of democracy.”

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) American historian

Abstract, 2009 edition:
Politics and Administration (1900)

People, Democracy, Sense, Partnership

“Ye subterranean gods! whose awful sway
The gliding ghosts and silent shades obey:
O Chaos, hear! and Phlegethon profound!
Whose solemn empire stretches wide around!
Give me, ye great tremendous powers! to tell
Of scenes and wonders in the depths of Hell;
Give me your mighty secrets to display
From those black realms of darkness to the day.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book VI, line 371
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

God, Secret, Hell

“Well if you reduce religion to social work, so does USAID produce…do all that. Actually, a secular organization, actually rather more convincingly. Most of the great philanthropist of the united states have been atheists…doesn't prove that atheism is correct.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2007
Source: Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created

Religion

“It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming.”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

as quoted in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3.

Pleasure, Dreams

“Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.”

Larry Ellison (1944) American internet entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist

Evan Elite : Lesson #4: Break Through That Wall http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/649/Lesson-4-Break-Through-That-Wall.html.

Fear, Failure, Success

“… [enabled] to touch the core, the essence of things. Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we immediately respond. [1937, referring to a still life by Cézanne and a river-sight with sandbank by Monet ]”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in Giorgio Morandi, E. Roditi; p. 63
1925 - 1945

Life, Feeling

“In any case there is an intense modern interest in machines that imitate life. The great difference between magic and the scientific imitation of life is that where the former is content to copy external appearance, the latter is concerned more with performance and behavior.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Life, Behavior, Appearance

“We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, World, Birthday

“In order to make the changes work, the majority of members of society that has entered changes must wake up every morning with a feeling of the great historical moment, with the feeling of something big and extraordinary.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Nedeljni telegraf, 07.08.2001.

Feeling, Change

“The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented… I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 268

Universe

“I came back sophomore year and decided to do some shows because I did one small play senior year of high school and I had a lot of fun. I had one line, I think. I did an audition for a show; it was experimental theater and we had a great time. For my second show, I had a great role and a great time and my aunt came to see the show. I’m doing shows just to meet folks at this point, so that I could figure out what I want to do. When she saw the show, she said, “You know what? You may want to think about this as a career! You’re really good!””

Courtney B. Vance (1960) American actor

Alumni Spotlight: Courtney B. Vance http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/18/alumni-spotlight-courtney-vance/, The Harvard Crimson (October 18, 2016)

School, Thinking, Time

“Great men take themselves and the world too seriously to become what is called merely intellectual. Men who are merely intellectual are insincere; they are people who have never really been deeply engrossed by things and who do not feel an overpowering desire for production. All that they care about is that their work should glitter and sparkle like a well-cut stone, not that it should illuminate anything. They are more occupied with what will be said of what they think than by the thoughts themselves.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Große Männer nehmen sich selbst und die Dinge zu ernst, um öfter als gelegentlich »geistreich« zu sein. Menschen, die nichts sind als eben »geistreich«, sind unfromme Menschen; es sind solche, die, von den Dingen nicht wirklich erfüllt, an ihnen nie ein aufrichtiges und tiefes Interesse nehmen, in denen nicht lang und schwer etwas der Geburt entgegenstrebt. Es ist ihnen nur daran gelegen, daß ihr Gedanke glitzere und funkle wie eine prächtig zugeschliffene Raute, nicht, daß er auch etwas beleuchte! Und das kommt daher, weil ihr Sinnen vor allem die Absicht auf das behält, was die anderen zu eben diesen Gedanken wohl »sagen« werden—eine Rücksicht, die durchaus nicht immer »rücksichtsvoll« ist.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 104.

Men, People, World, Feeling

“I have seen the astrolabe called Zuraqi invented by Abu Sa'id Sijzi. I liked it very much and praised him a great deal, as it is based on the idea entertained by some to the effect that the motion we see is due to the Earth's movement and not to that of the sky. By my life, it is a problem difficult of solution and refutation. […] For it is the same whether you take it that the Earth is in motion or the sky. For, in both cases, it does not affect the Astronomical Science. It is just for the physicist to see if it is possible to refute it.”

Al-Biruni (973–1048) Persian scholar and polymath

[citation needed]

Life, Idea, Problem, Science

“The Democratic Party, whatever that is, lacks a vision or an ideology. But many people have said this. Why? That is because it is a conglomeration of mutually exclusive parts. It contains a large part of the American working class, which has suffered greatly since the Great Recession began. But it also contains a lot of Wall Street people and well-to-do people, and new technologists. What policies is going to unite these people? It's hard to find a unifying theme among them, other than they don’t want the Republicans in power. Now, that often gets you fairly far, but it doesn't allow you to govern very effectively.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

"How Radical Change Occurs: An Interview With Historian Eric Foner" http://www.thenation.com/article/how-radical-change-occurs-interview-historian-eric-foner/ (3 February 2015), by Mike Konczal, The Nation 2010s

People, Suffering, Parting

“I do not mock men who have faith. It goves them comfort, and oft times leads them to help others. Yet I have also seen great evils done in the name of the Source. And never have I witnessed a miracle. Until I do I shall remain sceptical.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 2

Men, Faith, Evil, Time

“The main Roman contribution to the idea of property lay in the realm of law. Roman jurists were the first to formulate the concept of absolute private ownership, which they called dominium… Roman jurisprudence went to great lengths to stipulate every conceivable nuance of property rights: how acquired and how lost, how transferred, how sold. The rights implicit in dominium were so absolute that ancient Rome knew nothing of eminent domain.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 11

Law, Idea

“As I came to Munich in 1901 it was in a period of great artistic renewal. Jugendstil began in its way to attack the old naturalism and to cultivate the qualities of pure line.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

as quoted in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 11

Way, Nature

“The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Homily during the Holy Mass at the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C., on 7 October 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to the United States Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19791007_usa-washington_en.html

Life, People, Pleasure, Family

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life, Children, Books, Youth

“The greatness of an estate, in bulk and territory, doth fall under measure; and the greatness of finances and revenue, doth fall under computation. The population may appear by musters; and the number and greatness of cities and towns by cards and maps. But yet there is not any thing amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgment concerning the power and forces of an estate.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
Essays (1625)

Error, Appearance

“These days the accursed infidel of Gobindwal was very fortunately killed. It is a cause of great defeat for the reprobate Hindus. With whatever intention and purpose they are killed – the humiliation of infidels is for Muslims, life itself. Before this Kafir (Infidel) was killed, I had seen in a dream that the Emperor of the day had destroyed the crown of the head of Shirk or infidelity. It is true that this infidel [Guru Arjun] was the chief of the infidels and a leader of the Kafirs. The object of levying Jizya (tax on non-Muslims) on them is to humiliate and insult the Kafirs, and Jihad against them and hostility towards them are the necessities of the Mohammedan faith.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

– Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Letter to Murtaza Khan, On the execution of Guru Arjan. Sirhindi, Maktubat-i Imam-i Rabbani, I-iii, letter No. 193, pp. 95-6. Friedman Yohanan (1966), Shaikh Ahmad Sirhandi: An Outline of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity, Ph.D. Thesis, McGill University, pp. 110-112 (This is from records of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, composed after the punishment and execution of Guru Arjun)

Life, Hostility, Faith, Dreams

“Mankind's great adversary.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Il gran nemico dell'umane genti.
Canto IV, stanza 1 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“In the past directors have always portrayed me as this strange girl who hardly talks but who has a great effect on people. They don't give me a chance to do something more, let more out of what is inside of me. The time is only coming up now when I feel I can open up. I have been almost a creature of these directors' imaginations. I guess that is what they saw in me and why they picked me. But if I was an object at moments in movies, I was also alive. I wasn't dead. I always gave everything I could while I worked. I could give maybe more today, but I gave what I could then.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

People, Feeling, Imagination, Girl

“From 1931 to 1935, I was an undergraduate at Cambridge in my father's old college, Gonville and Caius, which was particularly strong in medicine and the law. However, after two years of law I switched to economics, much to my father's disappointment. At that time the world was in the depth of the great depression and my motive for wanting to change subject was the belief, bred of youthful ignorance and optimism, that if only economics were better understood, the world would be a better place.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

"Richard Stone - Biographical," 1984

Youth, World, Law, Disappointment

“For a great leader, colleague, friend, or parent to be his best, he has to acknowledge his worst. Throughout my life I've met plenty of superheroes, but the strongest and most effective among them were simply human and knew they weren't perfect. They were the men and women who, like my father, believed in their duty to country and sacrificed for others without hesitation. They all had their strengths and weaknesses. They excelled at times; they stumbled at times. But the great ones always made sure they could walk tall by recognizing their own enemy within and confronting it.”

Ann E. Dunwoody (1953) U.S. Army, first four-star general in U.S. military history

Source: A Higher Standard (2015), p. 72

Life, Women, Men, Parent

“Buffon’s work created a great furore, of course. The theologians at the Sorbonne condemned him, and Buffon dutifully retracted. But he wasn’t sincere: ‘It is better to be humble than hanged.”

Stephen Baxter (1957) author

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 6, “Upon this chaos rode the distressed ark” (p. 55)

Sincerity

“I say thank you in advance to us all working together to achieve great victories, not just electorally for Labour but emotionally for the whole of our society to show we don't have to be unequal, it doesn't have to be unfair, poverty isn't inevitable, things can and they will change. Thank you very much.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/sep/12/jeremy-corbyns-victory-speech-as-labour-leader-video Jeremy Corbyn’s victory speech as Labour leader (11 September 2015). 2000s

Change, Victory

Quotes about greatness page 36

Quotes about greatness
page 36