Quotes about greatness
page 47

John Ruskin photo
Merrick Garland photo

“The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Daniel Defoe photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Sholem Asch photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Aristarchus of Samos photo

“Proposition 4. The circle which divides the dark and the bright portions in the moon is not perceptibly different from a great circle in the moon.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Revilo P. Oliver photo
Martha Stewart photo

“Stewart: Well, that's great because we're all trying to do the same thing. Live well.”

Martha Stewart (1941) American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former fashion model

On Charlie Rose, 15 September 1995

Ron White photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an esthetic credo which others before him scattered in the space of long pages. He was an enfant terrible.”

"A Poem by Oscar Wilde" http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_wilde.html (1925) An essay on Wilde and his Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Donald J. Trump photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase.”

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

Encyclical Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html

Mark Steyn photo
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay photo
Ellen G. White photo

“Look up, look up, and let your faith continually increase. Let this faith guide you along the narrow path that leads through the gates of the city into the great beyond, the wide, unbounded future of glory that is for the redeemed.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Prophets and Kings http://www.ccel.org/ccel/white/prophets.html, Ch. 60 http://www.egwtext.whiteestate.org/pk/pk60.html, p. 732
Conflict of the Ages series

John F. Kennedy photo
Mohammed VI of Morocco photo

“We are delighted, at this moment in which we celebrate these two great memorial days, to announce to you, dear people, the good news of the discovery of Oil and Natural Gas, in good quality and abundant quantities, in the region of Talsint, in the provinces of the Oriental, which are so dear to us”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: Nous nous réjouissons, au moment où nous célébrons ces deux glorieux anniversaires, de t’annoncer, cher peuple, la bonne nouvelle de la découverte du pétrole et du gaz, de bonne qualité et en quantités abondantes, dans la région de Talsint dans les provinces de l’Oriental qui nous sont si chères.
Televised speech 20 August 2000 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/discours-de-sm-le-roi-mohammed-vi-%C3%A0-l%E2%80%99occasion-du-47%C3%A8me-anniversaire-de-la

Leigh Brackett photo
Harper Lee photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden photo

“The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property. That right is preserved sacred and incommunicable in all instances, where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole. The cases where this right of property is set aside by private law, are various. Distresses, executions, forfeitures, taxes etc are all of this description; wherein every man by common consent gives up that right, for the sake of justice and the general good. By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my license, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing; which is proved by every declaration in trespass, where the defendant is called upon to answer for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil. If he admits the fact, he is bound to show by way of justification, that some positive law has empowered or excused him. The justification is submitted to the judges, who are to look into the books; and if such a justification can be maintained by the text of the statute law, or by the principles of common law. If no excuse can be found or produced, the silence of the books is an authority against the defendant, and the plaintiff must have judgment.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 (1765), Constitution Society, United States, 2008-11-13 http://www.constitution.org/trials/entick/entick_v_carrington.htm,

Andy Warhol photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Jane Barker photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Sarah Bakewell photo
Philip Rosedale photo

“It's a bit like The Matrix… We provide the land, and the community builds the actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great experiment.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Source: Marco R. della Cava, " Utopia goes digital http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-08-21-virtual-utopia_x.htm," USA TODAY, 8/21/2005

Liam Hemsworth photo

“Jennifer was great. She is fantastic. Really easy to work with, no drama, really down-to-earth, such a funny girl. Nothing but good things to say about her. She really was great to work with. And it always makes it easier when you’re working with people that you like and you enjoy being around.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

On life on the movie set with actress Jennifer Lawrence. — November 1, 2012, Q&A: Liam Hemsworth on The Hunger Games and Losing Weight for His Role, Krista Smith, November 8, 2011, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Liam-Hunger-Games-Post,

Elon Musk photo

“Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave. Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Refering to British diver Vern Unsworth, who participated in the Tham Luang cave rescue. As quoted in Elon Musk calls British diver who helped rescue Thai schoolboys 'pedo guy' in Twitter outburst https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-cave-rescue-elon-musk-british-diver-vern-unsworth-twitter-pedo-a8448366.html (15 July 2018) by Eleanor Busby, The Independent.

Émile Durkheim photo
William Hazlitt photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Stephen Miller photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Greg Egan photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Ali Khamenei photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo

“December 30, 1922, is a truly historic date in the life of our state, an important milestone in the life of all the Soviet peoples, their great festival.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Fundamentals of Political Science http://leninist.biz/en/1975/FPS559/3.1-The.Dawn.of.a.New.Era-

Fidel Castro photo

“Las ideas no necesitan ni de las armas, en la medida en que sean capaces de conquistar a las grandes masas. (Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.)”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech at the Conference on Foreign Debt in Latin America and the Caribbean (3 August 1985) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1985/esp/f030885e.html

Warren G. Harding photo

“I want to see the time come when black men will regard themselves as full participants in the benefits and duties of American citizens. We cannot go on, as we have gone on for more than half a century, with one great section of our population... set off from real contribution to solving national issues, because of a division on race lines.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech delivered to a segregated, mixed race audience at Woodrow Wilson Park in Birmingham, Alabama on the occasion of the city's semicentennial, published in the Birmingham Post (27 October 1921).
1920s

Gautama Buddha photo
Norman Tebbit photo

“The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

The Daily Telegraph (9 February 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/4560371/BBC-faces-fresh-criticism-over-offensive-remarks-about-Baroness-Thatcher.html.

Bruno Schulz photo
Thomas Watson photo

“The two great graces essential to a saint in this life are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven.”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

The Doctrine of Repentance (1668)

George Chapman photo
John Calvin photo

“Moreover, in order that we may be aroused and exhorted all the more to carry this out, Scripture makes known that there are not one, not two, nor a few foes, but great armies, which wage war against us. For Mary Magdalene is said to have been freed from seven demons by which she was possessed [Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2], and Christ bears witness that usually after a demon has once been cast out, if you make room for him again, he will take with him seven spirits more wicked than he and return to his empty possession [Matt. 12:43-45]. Indeed, a whole legion is said to have assailed one man [Luke 8:30]. We are therefore taught by these examples that we have to wage war against an infinite number of enemies, lest, despising their fewness, we should be too remiss to give battle, or, thinking that we are sometimes afforded some respite, we should yield to idleness.
But the frequent mention of Satan or the devil in the singular denotes the empire of wickness opposed to the Kingdom of Righteousness. For as the church and fellowship of the saints has Christ as Head, so the faction of the impious and impiety itself are depicted for us together with their prince who holds supreme sway over them. For this reason, it was said: "Depart, …you cursed, into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels"”

Matt. 25:41
“Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion” https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1611644453 Book 1, ch.14, sect. 14, edited by John T. McNeill pp.173-174.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Thérèse of Lisieux photo
Francois Rabelais photo
David Myatt photo
Ben Jonson photo

“If all you boast of your great art be true;
Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

VI, To Alchemists, lines 1-2
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Frederick Douglass photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Vitruvius photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo

“The great difficulty in forming legitimate governments is in persuading those forming the governments that those who are to be their fellow citizens are equal to them in the rights, which their common government is to protect. Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth-century Europe looked upon each other as less than human, and slaughtered each other without pity and without compunction. It was impossible for there to be a common citizenship of those who did not look upon each other as possessing the same right of conscience. How one ought to worship God cannot be settled by majority rule. A majority of one faith cannot ask a minority of another faith to submit their differences to a vote. George Washington, in 1793, said that our governments were not formed in the gloomy ages of ignorance and superstition, but at a time when the rights of man were better understood than in any previous age. Washington was right, in that such rights were, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in America, better understood. But they were not perfectly understood, as the continued existence of chattel slavery attests. A difference concerning the equal rights of persons of color made the continued existence of a common government of all Americans impossible. A great civil war had to be fought, ending the existence of slavery, reuniting the nation and rededicating it to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“All should be well acquainted with and each in his measure actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation that man has had about what is and should be.”

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

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

Luther H. Gulick photo
Jacques Lipchitz photo
Anil Kumble photo
Indra Nooyi photo
Larry Fessenden photo
Cato the Elder photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“I must own your calculations & comparisons betwixt our different professions to be just, provided you remember that in mine a Man may do great things and starve in a garret if he does not conquer his Passions.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in: Undated letters to Jackson, in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
undated, Undated letters to William Jackson

André Breton photo
Andrei Codrescu photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Torrey DeVitto photo
Courtney Love photo
Jane Roberts photo
Charles Fort photo
Italo Svevo photo

“Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain…in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space?”

La vita attuale è inquinata alle radici. L'uomo s'è messo al posto degli alberi e delle bestie ed ha inquinata l'aria, ha impedito il libero spazio. Può avvenire di peggio. Il triste e attivo animale potrebbe scoprire e mettere al proprio servizio delle altre forze. V'è una minaccia di questo genere in aria. Ne seguirà una grande chiarezza... nel numero degli uomini. Ogni metro quadrato sarà occupato da un uomo. Chi ci guarirà dalla mancanza di aria e di spazio?
Source: La coscienza di Zeno (1923), P. 364; p. 436.

Rex Stout photo

“There are damn few great writers and I'm not one of them. While I could afford to I played with words. When I could no longer afford that I wrote for money.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, on why he turned from writing serious fiction to detective stories
The New York Times, "An Interview with Mister Rex Stout"

Ray Bradbury photo

“Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye.”

Here There Be Tygers (1951)
R Is for Rocket (1962)

Jack McDevitt photo
Vin Scully photo
Vince Cable photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Margrethe II of Denmark photo

“Gradually he [King Frederik] showed me everybody was going to help me in this…it was not a terrifying thing, but a great challenge.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Television documentary 'Queen Margrethe of Denmark', BBC & Jørgen Bonfils, 01:20, 28 April 1974.
Becoming Heir to the Throne

Richard Cobden photo

“I think we have been the most Conservative. I think that myself, and my friend Mr. Bright, and many I see about me, who have voted for twenty years for what have been considered revolutionary measures, have been the great Conservatives of our own age.”

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

Speech in Rochdale (26 June 1861), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. 437.
1860s

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo

“That no one who had followed the events of the Great War could help realising that while it had resulted in overthrowing the three great monarchies of Europe, its effect on the British Empire had been to strengthen the bonds between king and people and to leave the British Throne more deeply seated in the affections of every class of His Imperial Majesty's subjects.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

Lord Irwin on the occasion of the State Banquet held on the 29th July on his taking over as Viceroy. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 345-46 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.”

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

Bk. III, ch. 5.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Konrad Lorenz photo
Gerald Ford photo

“Obviously, it's a great privilege and pleasure to be here at the Yale Law School Sesquicentennial Convocation. And I defy anyone to say that and chew gum at the same time.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Address at Yale Law School's 150th anniversary (25 April 1975) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4869
1970s

Enver Hoxha photo
John Harvey Kellogg photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo
Paul Krugman photo
Don Soderquist photo

“Today’s great leaders will make sure they have all the important information, appropriate discussion, and reflection so that they can act decisively when time is of great importance.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 119.
On Leading Well

George Eliot photo
Thomas Little Heath photo