Quotes about greatness (10000 quotes, page 54)

“What man would not be a dancer if he could, said the judge. It’s a great thing, the dance.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Dance

“For me, the great myth is the Greek myth of Antaeus, who had to touch Earth to regain his strength. I know I must always keep in contact with the concrete, concrete reality, the small incident and the small, specific truth, which might have wide reverberations.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 32

Truth , Reality

“The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Divinity College Address (1838)

“The Home Rule Movement had just started at that time. I used to attend many of the public meetings held under its auspices. I heard with great interest what Mrs Annie Besant whose language was so charmingly appealing and who used the silver tones of her voice with such effect that many students came under influence. After I passed my intermediate examination, in the last days of 1915, there was an annual session of Indian National Congress in Bombay which Sir Satyendra Prasanna Sanja presided.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

As quoted in Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers (1996) by Janak Raj Jai, Volume 1, p. 210 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=5Wrc1K0uJTgC&pg=PA216

Home , Time

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

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

[Trump finally says Obama born in U.S., blames Clinton for controversy, USA Today, 16 September 2016, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/09/16/donald-trump-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign-birtherism/90471868/]
Conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship were not started by Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign according to PolitiFact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claim-hillary-clinton-/, and Trump continued to question Obama's citizenship for years after he released his long-form birth certificate in 2011 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-he-finished-obama-b/.
2010s, 2016, September

Strong

“Links in the gospels, e. g., with Herod the Great, Joseph Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate, are so problematical on internal grounds that most critical scholars, never meaning to espouse Mythicism, reject these features of the story as legendary.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, https://books.google.com/books?id=qhyzNAEACAAJ, 2011, American Atheist Press, 978-1-57884-017-5, 425, Conclusion: Do You “No” Jesus?]

“No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces, too, of the past. We, in the United States, acknowledge such an injustice in our own history: The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Observing the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7 1991 http://www.navy.mil/navco/pages/2001/01pg-017-ph-bush120791.htm

World , History , Understanding , Past

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Books , Way , Imagination , Mathematics

“While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of the few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Source: Wealth, 1889, p. 655

Law , Business , Future

“The great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. The things that have really made me miss my train have always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in the least afraid.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 61.

Life , Training

“What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art — but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

Love , Life , Truth , Books

“Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says, in Latin: 'God has favored our undertaking.' God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.”

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

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

God , Understanding , Help

“When first to man the privilege was given
To hold by verse an intercourse with Heaven,
Unwilling that the immortal art should lie
Cheap, and exposed to every vulgar eye,
Great Jove, to drive away the groveling crowd,
To narrow bounds confined the glorious road,
For more exalted spirits to pursue,
And left it open to the sacred few.”
Principio quoniam magni commercia coeli Numina concessere homini, cui carmina curae, Ipse Deum genitor divinam noluit artem Omnibus expositam vulgo, immeritisque patere: Atque ideo, turbam quo longe arceret inertem, Angustam esse viam voluit, paucisque licere.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book III, line 358
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Lie , Art

“Many years before, I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need.”

Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) German general

Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Nuremberg, Germany - 1948.

Beauty , Change , Country

“The link between Communism and traditional Christianity is so close that when Communists lose their faith, they usually and naturally flop over into Roman Catholicism. Whittaker Chambers was only the best known of the Marxists who, when disillusioned, reverted to an earlier form of his ruling superstition. Would-be atheists who do not become converted to the Marxist cult often retain in their minds the Christian residue that makes them susceptible to drivel about "all mankind," "One World," and the "humanitarian" sentimentality of do-gooders and similar pests--all of which find no confirmation in the facts of nature and the real world. There are even self-styled atheists who evidently think that the god in whom they do not believe stopped the biological evolution of anthropoids a hundred thousand years ago to make all talking species equal in some mysterious way that transcends the obvious and great difference between extant races in intelligence, character, and instincts, perhaps because the non-existing god equipped the several species with exactly equal souls.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Bear in the Bush", Liberty Bell (September 1990)
1990s

God , World , Faith , Way

“Israel is different. In Israel the great temptation of modernity — assimilation — simply does not exist. Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity. It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

1990s, 1998, At Last, Zion (1998)

God , Time

“ To be able to read and write, therefore, is to learn to profit by and take part in the greatest of human achievements -- that which makes all other achievements possible --namely, the pooling of our experiences in great cooperative stores of knowledge, available […] to all. From the warning cry of primitive man to the latest newsflash or scientific monograph, language is social. Cultural and intellectual cooperation is the great principle of human life. ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pooling of Knowledge, p. 14

Life , Knowledge , Learning , Reading

“The manner in which the subordinates do their work has incontestably a great effect upon the ultimate result, but the operation of management has much greater effect.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: The administrative theory in the state, 1923, p. 102 cited in: Göran Svensson, Greg Wood, (2006) "Sustainable components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 25 Iss: 6, pp.522 - 534

“Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), Ch. 1, "The Cyclone"

“This is a business that’s heavily promulgated by people who have a politically liberal bent. I don’t begrudge them that. I’m a libertarian; frankly, I think my liberalness goes far beyond theirs in a lot of ways. But yeah, we think differently, and maybe that’s cut me out of some things. I don’t care. People know I get along great with all kinds of directors, all kinds of actors. And I tell you, you hire me, I will show up, 24/7, and I will give you 100%. I will help you fix whatever problems come up. You hire me, I’m your boy. It’s just, it’s all about the work. And when that’s done, I am done.”

Kurt Russell (1951) American actor

Kurt Russell on 'Deepwater Horizon,' Hollywood and more http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/kurt_russell_on_deepwater_horizon_hollywood_and_mo.html (September 23, 2016)

People , Way , Boy , Business

“A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.”

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

No. 231 (24 November 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Brexit was a chilling example of how truly intolerant and despicable the left in this country are. I know people whose own parents almost disowned them because they voted leave. I have probably received in the region of 300 death threats – mainly from Muslims who want to prove Islam is a “religion of peace” by killing me, as well as Black Lives Matter supporters. I now really enjoy the death threats because I post them all on social media and they allow me to illustrate how we are stupidly shaping society to cater for the most aggressive, hateful, bigots imaginable. The left denounces people like me as bigots for standing up for true liberal principles which made Western civilisation great in the first place.”

Paul Joseph Watson (1982) English YouTuber, radio host, writer, editor, and conspiracy theorist

"An interview with Paul Joseph Watson", The Tab (7 November 2016)

Death , Hate , People , Peace

“Alas, time comes and time goes, it subtracts little by little; then it deprives a person of a good, the loss of which he indeed feels, and his pain is great. Alas, and he does not discover that long ago it has already taken away from him the most important thing of all-the capacity to make a resolution-and it has made him so familiar with this condition that there is no consternation over it, the last thing that could help gain new power for renewed resolution!”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), p. 48

Pain , Feeling , Loss , Time

“If a minority, losing an election, can break up the government rather than accept the results of the election, free government is impossible. If the only alternatives to rule by a Constitutional majority, I say, Constitutional majority, a majority formed under the rules of the Constitution with minority rights secured. There were no examples of the Republicans doing anything to prevent the opposition from having freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association. There was a great deal of interference with those rights in the Southern states. But they lost the election according to their own rights. And Lincoln said that if people can break up the government rather than accept the results of a fairly conducted election, then the only alternatives are anarchy or tyranny. What is to prevent, he said, anyone of the states seceding from any future union?”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

People , Freedom , Future

“Just when people think they have me or dad brought to the ground in a box, we click into the realm of the great beast. This isn’t science fiction, fantasy, or insanity. Ask the thousands of people I’ve personally known and who have dealt with us personally. We are mindfuckers. Real mindfuckers in the real world.”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

The Telling of Me, by Me (1981)

People , World , Thinking , Science

“Of the splendid constellation of great names… we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"—so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,—so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

On the Theory of Light https://books.google.com/books?id=Lo4_AAAAcAAJ (1828) p.494

Star , Mathematics , Suffering , Dead

“O faithless brother what has happened that in vain you joined hands to violate my honour, and to stain your own hand with my blood. You gathered round yourself a band of persons addicted to vice … you excited this gang of villains to hate me … I appointed you to act for me. I ordered my friends to obey you … you are now out to destroy me. I was your guest you abused me. You swore at me in my face. That which you yourself deserved you ascribed to me. You inspired your servants with rancorous hatred of me. Even you taught your own barber your own falsehoods. He gave false evidence against the truth. You set in motion this great sedition …. Outwardly you pretended to be my friend. You attended my feast. You ate my meal of trust. Inwardly you manifested your falsehood until Shawal 23 [Presumably March 11, 1866] when I was keeping a fast you withheld bread and water from me. … By deceit you intercepted my epistles. Some of them which were to your advantage you paraded before the inhabitants of the city [i. e. Edirne]. At present am in straitened circumstances and you are in affluence. And yet you pretend the contrary.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Quoted in Mirza Mustafa Katib's Response to Zayn al-Muqarrabin on page 46
Open Letter to Bahá'u'lláh

Hate , Truth , Water , Personality

“I can't stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all in painting, to look and to look a great deal at painting. There is no other way to find out about painting. After looking comes imitating. In my own case it was at first largely a technical immersion. How did Kline put down that color? Why did Guston leave the canvas bare at the edges? Why did H. Frankenthaler used unsized canvas. And so on.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 113

Color , Way , Painting

“The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death , Secret , Memory , Night

“The work of Renoir, after that of Cézanne whose great influence had been manifested among artists, save us from whatever drying effect there is in pure abstraction. The rules that one might deduce in considering the work of these two masters appear to be more difficult to discover in the work of Renoir, who hides his efforts better. Whereas the continuous tension of the mind of Cézanne, his lack of self-confidence, prevent him from giving himself to us entirely even though he shows the evidence of his corrections, from which are easily (too easily) deduced rules that have a mathematical precision.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

critical quote on Cubism
In a short text of Matisse, 1918, written for the catalogue of 'Den Franske Utstilling', 1918, Copenhagen; as quoted in Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 272, note 2
1910 - 1920

Quotes , Confidence , Mathematics , Effort

“Of all the founders of great religions, Jesus alone proclaimed one God, immanent and powerful, holy and righteous, a loving and seeking Father, concerned about the welfare of each of his children.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 43-44

Love , God , Children , Religion

“I remember one clear example of the problem of communicating what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. "That's great, Gary," his mother said. "What is it?" He thought for a moment, then said, "I'll write it down for you." On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. "That's fine, Gary," his mother said. "What does it say?" He looked at the word, then at his mother and said matter-of-factly, "I don't know."The child apparently had learned what the word looked like — he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading — what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.As it turned out, my friend's son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend's child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.237

World , School , Way , Home

“Philosophical thinking peddles its wares today at a fair of self-sublations and falls head over heels in its eagerness to find favor with ironic, pragmatic, and strategic realisms. The risk of such realistic metamorphoses is obvious: It can easily end up by substituting the bad with something worse. It is a short step from the kynical "sublation" of philosophy to the cynical self-denial of what great philosophy had embodied in its best aspects.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 536

Thinking

“Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

War

“All of the character traits, which are in such great need of correction and cultivation—who will cultivate and correct them if we do not give heart to them and subject them to exacting scrutiny?”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Heart

“Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not effected without ideas.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter III, The Movement Of Theory, p. 30.

Idea , Change

“The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm… If there is no mystery then there is no 'poetry', the quality I value above all else in art. What do I mean by 'poetry'? It is to a painting what life is to man… For me it is a matter of harmony, of rapports, of rhythm and – most important for my own work – of 'metamorphosis”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Life , Art , Painting

“My dearest wish is the liberation of Namibia, for whose freedom I am quite prepared to give my life. I am conscious that I may never see the fulfilment of this hope within my own lifetime. I am more conscious for the many, many failures to achieve or accomplish what I might have achieved, as well as my failures to convince people, to win over support for our struggle within this country and elsewhere. I am deeply conscious of my failures to love, to show more patience when people have shown an inability to grasp our situation or have responded with stubborn aggression or anger. My constant reproach to myself is, if I had been more loving, perhaps Bishop X would have responded or Archbishop Y might have been more positive. But the very failing has its lessons to teach my brother and sister Namibians who will come after me and who will carry forward the struggle, learning from my mistakes. God can use my failures as well as my successes. This is a cause for great hope. "When I am weakest then am strongest!"”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

God can turn my failures into triumphs: this is the mystery of the Cross.
The Breaking Process http://www.getcited.org/pub/103428837, London: SCM Press Ltd., 1981, p. 99. ISBN 0334001390

Love , Life , God , People

“It is over twenty years since I first heard of Hong-lou meng and the great fascination it holds for its readers (despite the fact that there has never been a complete or definitive text). I was once lucky enough to borrow a copy from a friend. Reading it (in this incomplete state) was indeed a tantalizing experience.
In the spring of this year, my friend Cheng Weiyuan came to see me and showed me the complete text that he had purchased. 'This,' he said, 'is the fruit of my labours over several years. Bit by bit I have pieced it together, with a view to publishing it for fellow-lovers of the novel. As you are at a bit of a loose end, and in need of a restorative, will you share the labour [of preparing the manuscript for the press] with me?'
Although it was only a novel, the book contained nothing contrary to the tenets of Confucian teaching, and so I gladly accepted, and fell upon the task with the eagerness of the Persian slave when he saw his pearl! Now that the work is done, I have described these circumstances for the reader's information.”

Gao E (writer)

Preface (dated 27 December 1791) to the first Cheng-Gao edition of Dream of the Red Chamber, as translated by John Minford in The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears (Penguin, 1979), Appendix I, p. 386

Books , Spring , Lovers , Reading

“Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“The Welsh made a very good and a very hard fight against the English in self-defence, and what was the consequence? That the English were obliged to surround your territory with great castles; and the effect of this has been that, as far as I can reckon, more by far than one-half of the great remains of the castles in the whole island south of the Tweed are castles that surround Wales. That shows that Wales was inhabited by men, and by men who valued and were disposed to struggle for their liberties.”

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

Speech to the Eisteddfod in Wrexham (8 September 1888), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 61.
1880s

Men , Fight

“We are sometimes told that we are not a biblical church. We are a biblical church. This wonderful testament of the Old World, this great and good Holy Bible is one of our standard works. We teach from it. We bear testimony of it. We read from it. It strengthens our testimony. And we add to that this great second witness, the Book of Mormon, the testament of the New World, for as the Bible says, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall [all things] be established" (2 Cor. 13:1).””

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Selections from Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Mar. 2001, 64.

Books , World , Reading

“Somnat - A celebrated city of India, is situated on the shores of the sea, and washed by its waves. Among the wonders of that place was the temple in which was placed the idol called Somnat' When the Sultan Yaminu-d Daula Mahmud bin Subuktigin went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnat, in the hope that Hindus would become Muhammadans. He arrived there in the middle of Zil K'ada AH 416 (December AD 1025). The Indians made a desperate resistance' The number of slain exceeded 50,000.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 97-98
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

War , Hope , Effort , Sea

“Man has wants deeper than can be supplied by wealth or nature or domestic affections. His great relations are to his God and to eternity.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 403.

God , Nature , Wealth

“A great deal of what we know about reality is accompanied by little more interest than simple curiosity.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Eight, Symbolic Religious Communication, p. 147

Reality

“Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.”

H. G. Wells book The Soul of a Bishop

The Soul of a Bishop (1917)

Life , People , Idea

“…the principle of three acres and a cow, on which the election of 1885 was fought. The principle was that the local authority was to have power to acquire land by compulsion for the benefit of the community, in letting it out or otherwise disposing of it to individuals…It was on this proposal that the great charge of Socialism was made; but we were all Socialists now.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech on the Labourers' Allotments Bill (11 August, 1887).
'House Of Commons, Thursday, Aug. 11', The Times (12 August, 1887), p. 6.
Harcourt said "we are all Socialists now" but The Times reported his speech in past tense.

Communication

“In the same year of AH 877 (AD 1472-73) the Sultãn made up his mind to destroy Jagat… Jagat is a very famous abode of infidelity and idolatry. Its idol is regarded as higher than all other idols in India and it is because of this idol that the place is called Dwãrkã. It is a very big nest of BrãhmaNas too. The idolaters come here from far off places and the great hardships they undergo in order to reach here is regarded by them as earnest worship… There is a fort nearby known as Bait… “…The Sultãn mounted (his horse) in the morning. The people of Jagat also got this information. They shut themselves in the fort along with Rãi Bhîm. After a few days the Sultãn entered Jagat and got its idols broken. He got its canopies pulled down and established the way of Islãm there.”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Dwarka (Gujarat) Zafaru’l-Wãlih Bi Muzaffar Wa Ãlîhi, S.A.A. Rizvi in Uttara Taimûr Kãlîna Bhãrata, Aligarh, 1959, Vol. II, p. 413-18

People , Way , Horse

“Regional Banks that are constrained to lend within a particular area are a necessary part of the institutional ecology in that they resist the centralising power of capital, allow a more stable access to credit for regional and smaller businesses and encourage relationships and reciprocity to constrain the demand for higher rates of return that have decimated the mutual bank sector in Britain. They also offer an alternative to usurious lending, one of the great growth areas in our economy. Any serious reflection on ‘employment policies’ must confront the centralisation of capital and the state and seek to constrain both through the endowment of decentralised regional and sectoral institutions that constrain centralisation and preserve and renew traditions of virtue within the economy through resisting the commodification of human beings, nature and knowledge demanded by the maximum return on investment. It allows initiative and enterprise to be oriented towards the future.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Politics of Employment, 23 May 2013 http://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/viewpoints/opinion-pieces/articles/maurice-glasman.html

Business , Nature , Knowledge , Future

“How great is your sin in rejecting Jesus Christ! You slight the glorious Person for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, the union of the Divine nature with the human in one person. You have been guilty of slighting that great Saviour, who, after such preparation, actually accomplished the purchase of redemption, and who, after He had spent three or four and thirty years in poverty, labor, and contempt, in purchasing redemption, at last finished the purchase by closing His life under such extreme sufferings; and so by His death, and continuing for a time under the power of death, completed the whole. This is the Saviour you reject and despise. You make light of all the glory of His person, and of all the love of God the Father in sending Him into the world, and all His wonderful love appearing in the whole of His work.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 492.

Love , Life , Death , God

“Sin which men account small brings God's great wrath on men.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Men , God

“Scientific and technological “solutions” which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 31.

“All the terms that we demanded have, since the war began, been substantially conceded…My hon. Friend…[said] that we must obtain a success in order that we may secure better terms; but that is not the public and popular sentiment; the popular feeling is, that as to terms there is no great matter at issue, but that what you want is more military success…It is not only indefensible—it is hideous, it is anti-Christian, it is immoral, it is inhuman; and you have no right to make war simply for what you call success. If, when you have obtained the objects of the war, you continue it in order to obtain military glory…I say you tempt the justice of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle; you tempt Him to launch upon you His wrath; and if this be courage, I, for one, have no courage to enter upon such a course. I believe it to be alike guilty and unwise.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/may/24/prosecution-of-the-war in the House of Commons (24 May 1855) on the Crimean War.
1850s

Fate , War , Justice , Feeling

“I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Problem , Thinking , Country

“We have to-day perhaps the most magnificent opportunity of service to our country that has ever been given to any party. You who have just been elected to the House of Commons are, by the testimony of your fellow-countrymen, their natural leaders for the next four or five years. It is your duty, your primary duty, to educate that great democracy of which we are all a part…Can there be anything that stands before us more clearly or poignantly than the groups of our fellow-countrymen who listened in faith to what we had to say, who trusted us and have given us their confidence, and who believe in their hearts that we have come to London to do what we can to right those things that are hard and difficult for them, and to help them in what is always the difficult struggle that they have in life? Don't ever lose touch with your constituency; don't ever mistake the voice of the clubman and the voice of the Pressman in London for the voice of the country. It is the country that has returned you; it is the country which will judge you.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 72-73.
1924

Life , Education , Faith , Democracy

“[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder perished in 79 A. D. when he refused to flee from the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, insisting that everything would be all right. It wasn't.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Ostrich, from Birds Who Can't Even Fly
How to Attract the Wombat (1949)

“I would say off the cuff that I am an anxious person. I worry about everything. I need to know everything. I tend to live in a state of anxiety with the feeling that life is some kind of great catastrophe. I feel the desire, or rather the intense need, to do something useful for society, and that is what stimulates me. In every situation I always look for what is positive and beneficial for my fellow citizens. I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy — but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

As quoted in "Antoni Tapies" by Serafin Garcia Ibanez in the UNESCO Courier (June 1994) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1994_June/ai_15630919/print?tag=artBody;col1.
1991 - 2000

Life , Feeling , Study , Personality

“From my tenderest youth I have considered the union of Ireland with Great-Britain as the scourge of the Irish nation. And that the people of this country can have neither happiness nor freedom whilst that connection endures. Every day's experience, and every fact that arose, convinced me of this truth; and I resolved, if I could, to separate the two countries. But as I knew Ireland could not of herself, throw off the yoke, I sought for help wherever I could find it.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Speech to the Court-Martial, assembled to pass sentence on his life (November 10, 1798) http://rewinn.com/8043.html

People , Truth , Youth , Freedom

“Hewson: I ask the Prime Minister: if you are so confident about your view of Fightback, why will you not call an early election?
Keating: The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the Australian public with this thing, trying to rip away our social wage, trying to rip away the Australian values which we built in our society for over a century.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Question Time, Australian House of Representatives, 1992, Labor in Power (w:Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1993), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_CHXDBq9Ps

Confidence , Sport

“If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

“I can't do it, and as for you
Can you in good conscience even ask me to? 'Cause what do you care about the great divide
As long as you come down on the winner's side?”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"How Am I Different"
Song lyrics, Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo (2000)

“Sir George Ross (Federal Cabinet, Premier of Ontario)– “Mackenzie was sui generis a debater. His humorous sallies blistered like a blast from a flaming smelter. His sterling honesty is a great heritage, and will keep his memory green to all future generations.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Ross 1913, p. 31
His Character

Memory , Future

“I imagine there will be great interest made for the eastern troops to be posted on the east side of the North River, to favor their recruiting. These reasons have something plausible in them, but I have my doubts with respect to their truth and reality. Men, when they are near home, are much more influenced by domestic attachments than they are when they are at a great distance. The friends and relations of the soldiers very seldom use their influence to engage them in the service. On the contrary, they commonly make use of every argument to dissuade them from it. I am of opinion, therefore, the further the troops are removed from home, the more favorable it will be to the recruiting service in camp.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Men , Truth , Home , Imagination

“Helping people directly can be a noble thing. Forcing other people to do it with great inefficiency? Not so much. There isn’t a single thing that I would petition the federal government to add to its task list, and I would ask that it stop doing the majority of the things that it is currently doing. My vote is going to the candidates that at least vector in that direction.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in "John Carmack's Blog" http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/misc/government.htm

People , Help

“Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Wave Mechanics,” p. 75
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Intelligence , Idea , Drink , Science

“Asjadi composed the following qaSida in honour of this expedition: When the King of kings marched to Somnat, He made his own deeds the standard of miracles' 'Once more he led his army against Somnat, which is a large city on the coast of the ocean, a place of worship of the Brahmans who worship a large idol. There are many golden idols there. Although certain historians have called this idol Manat, and say that it is the identical idol which Arab idolaters brought to the coast of Hindustan in the time of the Lord of the Missive (may the blessings and peace of God be upon him), this story has no foundation because the Brahmans of India firmly believe that this idol has been in that place since the time of Kishan, that is to say four thousand years and a fraction' The reason for this mistake must surely be the resemblance in name, and nothing else' The fort was taken and Mahmud broke the idol in fragments and sent it to Ghaznin, where it was placed at the door of the Jama' Masjid and trodden under foot.'….'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011) he set out for Thanesar and Jaipal, the son of the former Jaipal, offered him a present of fifty elephants and much treasure. The Sultan, however, was not to be deterred from his purpose; so he refused to accept his present, and seeing Thanesar empty he sacked it and destroyed its idol temples, and took away to Ghaznin, the idol known as Chakarsum on account of which the Hindus had been ruined; and having placed it in his court, caused it to be trampled under foot by the people… From thence he went to Mathra (Mathura) which is a place of worship of the infidels and the birthplace of Kishan, the son of Basudev, whom the Hindus Worship as a divinity - where there are idol temples without number, and took it without any contest and razed it to the ground. Great wealth and booty fell into the hands of the Muslims, among the rest they broke up by the orders of the Sultan, a golden idol.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Muntakhabut-Tawarikh, translated into English by George S.A. Ranking, Patna Reprint 1973, Vol. I, p. 17-28
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God , People , Peace , Time

“What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Part 1, 1919 - 1968 The Road to 24 Sussex Drive, p. 46
Memoirs (1993)

Knowledge , Learning , Universe

“God is a great concept, [but it] doesn't work”

Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director

Interview from the movie Fuck (2005)

God

“Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Sadness , Family , Nature , Heart

“Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Thomas Babington Macaulay, ‘ Warren Hastings http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/hastings/txt_complete.html’, Edinburgh Review LXXIV (October, 1841), pp. 160–255.
About

Life , Men , Age , Appearance

“I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

August Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Life , Food , Way , Past

“It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Wisdom , God , World , Law

“A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 13, Section V, p. 155

Business , Reading

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

Life , Men , God , People

“Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined…or one great figure…or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Fate , World , Chance

“When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

34 Philip
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Success

“The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Past , Future , Sincerity

“Great novelists are philosopher novelists — that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

“It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no eminence can escape; it was the grievous collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her own greatness.”
Invida fatorum series summisque negatum<br/>stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus<br/>nec se Roma ferens.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Invida fatorum series summisque negatum
stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus
nec se Roma ferens.
Book I, line 70 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Fate , Support

“Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies, and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: —
"Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers save the growing heritage
That makes complete manhood."
But it will be well to put the story in harness with some other productions of mine, and not send it forth in its dismal loneliness. There are many things in it which I would willingly say over again, and I shall never put them in any other form. But we must wait a little. The question is not in the least one of money, but of care for the best effect of writing, which often depends on circumstances, much as pictures depend on light and juxtaposition.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Comments on The Lifted Veil with a motto for it used in the "Cabinet Edition" of her works (1878), in a letter to John Blackwood (28 February 1873), published in George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals (1885), Vol. 4

Money , Pain , Idea , Question

“Karl Marx; the great enemy of human freedom.”

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

As quoted in "What Would Lincoln Think?" http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=knpGZGYLrRM#What_Would_Lincoln_Think__Harry_Jaffa_on_The_American_Mind (20 February 2014), by Charles Kesler, The Claremont Institute
2010s, Interview with Charles Kesler (2014)

Freedom

“I have, in every respect, since I had my appointment, strove to accommodate the business of the department to the plan of jour Excellency's operations. And I can say, with great truth, that ever since I had the honor to serve under you, I have been more attentive to the public interest, and more engaged in the support of your Excellency's character, than ever I was to my own ease, interest, or reputation.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Truth , Business , Support

“Regarding public Christmas displays: At some point, someone who worked at Rockefeller Center must have said, "Boys, I have a great idea for Christmas. Let's kill a beautiful tree that's been alive for seventy-five years and bring it to New York City. We'll stand it up in Rockefeller Plaza and conceal its natural beauty by hanging shiny, repulsive, man-made objects on it, and let it stand there slowly dying for several weeks while simpleminded children stare at it and people from Des Moines take pictures of it. That way, perhaps we can add our own special, obscene imprint to Christmas in Midtown."”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

Children , People , Beauty , Way

“Great Britain is certainly suspect to Americans. They cannot make head or tail of her. She is a stuck-up old girl who owes a lot of money - an odd thing for such a highly respectable old lady to do. She is rather flighty, which is alarming in one so old - she never seems quite serious, that is - goes into giggles all of a sudden, or smiles enigmatically, if politely. She seems to the average American slightly phoney. Let us face up to that. She has many habits which baffle and put one on one's guard - the curious way she has of speaking English with a foreign accent, for instance. Then she must be the most quarrelsome old dame which ever stepped: always - umbrella in hand - getting into scraps with her neighbours, and spitting at them over the garden wall.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

The Hitler Cult (Dent, 1949)

Money , Smile , Way , Girl

“Individualism is one of the great foundations of Western culture. But unless society secures personal independence and basic security for the individual, it can lead to disaffection, anxiety, and chaos. For a long time now the United States has been turning toward its Wild West past, while the Nordic nations have been taking individualism in the logical direction of further progress, and into the future.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 9

Time , Past , Future , Personality

“My obsession was the preservation of the Gaelic language so that there would be people left in the world who could hear its great songs as they really were. No poetry could be translated, still less could song poetry, and the great language of Gaelic song made me fanatical about the beauty of the Gaelic language and its astonishing ability to indicate shades and positions of emphasis with natural inversions and the use of particles.”

Sorley MacLean (1911–1996) Scottish poet

Sorley MacLean, 1982, quoted in Krause, Corinna. Eadar Dà Chànan: Self-Translation, the Bilingual Edition and Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/3453/Krause2007.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Letters and interviews

People , World , Beauty , Nature

“Never wage war on religion, nor upon seemingly holy institutions, for this thing has too great a force upon the minds of fools.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Non combattete mai con la religione, né con le cose che pare che dependono da Dio; perché questo obietto ha troppa forza nella mente degli sciocchi.
Number 253.
Counsels and Reflections (1857)

War , Religion , Fools

“Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
Et sane arduum debet esse, quod adeo raro reperitur. Qui enim posset fieri, si salus in promptu esset et sine magno labore reperiri posset, ut ab omnibus fere negligeretur? Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt.

Baruch Spinoza book Ethics

Part V, Prop. XLII, Scholium
Ethics (1677)

Men

“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III, Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Universe , Time , Personality

“It doesn’t do a great deal to advance the goal of humanity. I would pay $20 million not to spend six months in Russia. And besides this, my interest is how do we enable many other people to go to space, not necessarily me, personally.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People , Personality

“An alternate career path for a woman lay in the Church, where as a nun she escaped the dangers of childbirth. In the convent she could hold any position except that of priest, and as an abbess or prioress she had great power and responsibility.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

“The impregnability of his stonewall defense rested on his ability to reach the ball, and then throw it. Now he could move less well; now he was not coming up with the ball with that "perfect technique" Eddie Brannick had once admired, his body beautifully balanced, the ball directly in front of him. Now it was a movement full of desperate lunges. Fortunately he had his great arm, so even off-balance, he was throwing out runners, and each time he'd throw—though it had happened hundreds of prior times—the fans at the Polo Grounds, or elsewhere around the league, would gasp at the low blur that streaked across the diamond, dead on target. But he had more than a powerful arm. He had courage. And on he played, in pain and out.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Travis "Stonewall" Jackson, from "Stonewall," in Greatest Giants of Them All (1967), p. 172
Sports-related

Pain , Courage , Time , Perfection

“We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 14
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

Men , Sex , Exercises , Fashion

“I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me […]. Much of this fascination lies in the stunning historical paradox that organized religion has fostered, throughout Western history, both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heartrending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in an occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held great secular power during much of Western history. When my folks held such sway, more briefly and in Old Testament times, we committed similar atrocities with the same rationales.)”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Non-Overlapping Magisteria", p. 281
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Religion , History , Evil , Time

“A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation, and encourages perseverance. In so doing, it transforms great talent into exceptional accomplishment.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Gary Hamel quoted in: Richard L. Daft (2014), The Leadership Experience, p. 409

Perseverance

“For the student of visionary art the interesting fact is that an image comes first and takes up residence in the mind long before the artist has any notion why it is there or what it means. Whether visions come from some great reservoir of symbolic images which are eternally there (and if one examines the recurrence of images in history this proposition is not quite as crazy as it sounds) or whether they are due to buried memories, their obsessive power over an artist's mind, and their clear, compulsive emergence in his work depends on a mental condition that can come and go. When, for some reason, they no longer present themselves to the mind's eye, alive or clamoring to be born, the visionary artist has a hard time — dark days. This is particularly true if he has lost the habit of feeding his mind on the observation of nature.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 6: Blake

Art , History , Nature , Memory

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom , People , Books , Age

“If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Dangerous Minds: Criminal profiling made easy., Malcolm Gladwell, 2007-11-12, The New Yorker, 2008-01-01 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell,

“No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if they still lie still in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing.”

Samuel Beckett book Imagination Dead Imagine

Imagination Dead Imagine (1965)

Life , Lie , Question

“Audiences and critics acknowledge that a play or concerto gains force in great rendition. A good play may overcome bad staging. A great concerto may survive a poor soloist. But it is naturally assumed that a more accomplished performance intensifies the impact of the work. The play's text or concerto's score does not change, but the right actors and musicians help realize its full potential. Among contemporary literary critics, however, one never encounters this notion in regard to books and printing. To recognize the sensual contributions of the physical elements of a book is somehow assumed to demean the spiritual purity of the text. To notice the book itself smacks of philistinism, and to make distinctions based on paper, binding, and typography brings accusations of elitism or decadence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Designing Literature: Creative Collaboration" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecreative.htm (1992)
Essays

Books , Nature , Change , Help

Quotes about greatness page 54

Quotes about greatness
page 54