Quotes about greatness
page 72

“With the blood of Christ to wash away the darkest guilt, and the Spirit of God to sanctify the vilest, and strengthen the weakest nature, I despair of none. Too late! It is never too late. Even old age, tottering to the grave beneath the weight of seventy years and a great load of guilt, may retrace its steps and begin life anew. Hope falls like a sunbeam on the hoary head. I have seen the morning rise cold and gloomy, and the sky grow thicker, and the rain fall faster as the hours wore on; yet, ere he set in night, the sun, bursting through heavy clouds, has broken out to illumine the landscape and shed a flood of glory on the dying day.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: The Way to Life: Sermons (1862), P. 273 (The Christian's Triumph).

Life, God, Age, Hope

“Our missionaries are going forth to different nations, and in Germany, Palestine, New Holland, the East Indies, and other places, the standard of truth has been erected: no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing, persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 4:540 (1 March 1842)
1840s

God, Truth, Rage, Country

“The attack should not have happened, of course. The rice farmer sergeant had been perfectly right; the Federation could not afford to risk its own great cites to punish the villagers of Venus. He was right—from his viewpoint.
A rice farmer has one logic; the men who live by and for power have another and entirely different logic. Their lives are built on tenuous assumptions, fragile as reputation; they could not afford to ignore a challenge to their power—the Federation could not afford not to punish the insolent colonists.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 10, “While I Was Musing the Fire Burned” (p. 113)

Men

“After Bjartur had become a person of great worth, even he was prone to admit on occasion that life had sometimes been pretty hard in Summerhouses in the old days, but one has to take a few knocks if one wants to get on, surely, and anyway we never ate other folk's bread. Other folk's bread is the most virulent form of poison that a free and independent man can take; other folk's bread is the only thing that can rob him of independence and the one true freedom.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

Life, Freedom, Personality

“I don't believe that the average fellow has anything like a true line on the value of wrist action in hitting anything—a baseball, a golf ball, a tennis ball or a polo ball. If you watch most of them, you will see they are trying to hit with their bodies, with their shoulders, with their arms—with almost everything except their wrists. I think it comes because most of them are overanxious, all tied up, too tense. They start by gripping too tightly. That kills off the hands and wrists. Their wrists get locked and then they have to swing their shoulders and bodies in. You'd be surprised how far a fellow can hit a ball, using only his wrists. I know I've been caught off guard or out of position on a sharp breaking curve, have had to slap at the ball, using only my wrists and have now and then watched it sail over the fence. The wrist is the mainspring—both wrists in baseball and golf. If you get them to work the rest is fairly easy. If you don't get them to work you are not going to do any good hitting. You can't get any speed in closing a door if the hinges are rusty and won't work. Hack Wilson must have great wrist action, for no short, stocky guy is going to hit that many home runs without a lot of it.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (August 22, 1930), p. 13

Guy, Home, Thinking, Speed

“I have already told you that what I want to speak about is the great discovery I have made lately - the discovery that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.”

Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People

Dr. Stockmann, Act IV
An Enemy of the People (1882)

Life, Communication

“No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, A Year To Remember, p. 4

Decision

“This excessive love for "the balance of power" is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 273-274.
1850s

Love

“Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 14 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch14.asp: Of Homicide. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Life, Law, Nature, Personality

“Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.”

Roger Penrose (1931) English mathematical physicist, recreational mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002) by Mario Livio, p. 201.

Understanding, Science

“There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 14 : Peculiar Conduct of a Personage

Truth, Wealth

“Answering the question "How do you explain growth of the part of Russians indifferent to politics?", Pavlovsky said: Throughout the last hundred years Russia several times all without exceptions lived with great political projects. Every time livestock of the nation steadily diminished after that, politized condition is always temporary for a person, not quite normal condition. Nowadays we are passing through period of silence, outer peace (most probably, not long) and reconciliation with quiet not rich existence without great risky perspectives. Pray to drag this time out for 4-8 years more.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Peace, Question, Silence, Time

“Having alternative currencies is great, right, because, historically, government's had a monopoly on currency. … At the end of the day, why should only politicians—either directly or indirectly—control the currency? We can reduce transaction cost, provide an alternative, and—look, I don't know whether it'll be Bitcoin or not—but I think the concept of digital currencies is here to stay, and the fact that a politician would write to try to ban them in their infancy is just the wrong way to go about it. Let the market determine whether there's any value there or not. … If people are saying, "Look, we gotta ban Bitcoin because it's somewhat anonymous and anonymous transactions can occur," or "because it's possible for criminals to use it," all of those arguments can be used to say, "Just ban dollars."”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

… The government doesn't need to "treat" it [Bitcoin] at all. … The government policy should be completely agnostic about what unit of exchange is used.
Jared Polis, interviewed by Kennedy, Matt Welch, and Kmele Foster on The Independents, Fox Business (10 March 2014).

People, Way, Thinking

“Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 19

Success

“A fateful thing has been happening. The East is waking up from its slumber. The wisdom of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism is becoming available to the world. Already, it is having a transforming effect on the minds of the people, particularly in countries where there is freedom to seek and express. Dogmas are under a cloud; claims on behalf of Last Prophethood and Only Sonship, hitherto enforced through great intellectual conditioning, brow-beating, and the big stick, are becoming unacceptable. Religions of proxy are in retreat. More and more men and women now seek authentic experience. Borrowed creed will not do. Men and women are ceasing to be obedient believers and are becoming seekers. They no longer want to be anybody’s sheep, now that they know they can be their own shepherds. An external authority, even when it is called God in certain scriptures, threatening and promising alternately, is increasingly making less and less impression; people now realize that Godhead is their own true, secret status and they seek it in the depth of their own being. All this is in keeping with the wisdom of the East.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Introduction to Mohammed and the Rise of Islam by D.S. Margoliouth, Voice of India reprint, New Delhi, 1985, pp. xvii-xviii. 10Ibid., pp. xix-xx.

Wisdom, Women, Men, God

“I had the play safe. I saw a replay -- it was a point where Randall made a great stretch, made a great play. I have to go with what I had on the field.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Umpire Bill Miller
2003

“There remains the ordinary Communist solution. This has taken various forms; the simplest being a voluntary association of individuals based on the principle of common property, and in which every person works for the community according to fixed rules. There are many successful instances of this, on a small scale, in the United States, but we cannot suppose such a solution to be possible for society as a whole. It has only been tried with picked materials, whereas our object is rather to improve the great mass of the population. The Communism of recent European theorists, of whom the best known is Lassalle, presents a somewhat different aspect. It aims at the appropriation of all instruments of production by the State, which is to take charge of the whole national industry and direct it. But the practical difficulty of such a scheme is obviously overwhelming. The objections to a Communistic solution do not apply to Socialism in a more modified shape. Historically speaking, Socialism has already shown itself in England in the extension of State interference. It has produced the Factory Laws, and it is now beginning to advance further and interfere directly in the division of produce between the workmen and their employers”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 150

Law, Communication, Success, Personality

“Stalin is the perfect example of what I was talking about. To simply call him corrupt tells us nothing useful. What circumstances put him into power? What objective pressures, as well as subjective characteristics, led him to make the decisions he made? I'm currently reading Trotsky's writings from 1932 (scary how accurately he predicts the way WWII would play out), and analyzing the details of why Stalin did as he did is far more complex and useful than just, 'power corrupts.'
And it is even more true for the other great dictators of the 20th Century: I don’t think you can even say that Hitler and Mussolini were corrupt: they came to power in order to do the very things they did.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

"Truisms rot brains; absolute truisms rot brains absolutely" (9 August 2010) http://dreamcafe.com/words/2010/08/09/truisms-rot-brains-absolute-truisms-rot-brains-absolutely/ The Dream Café

Way, Thinking, Decision, Reading

“Wealth is a form of power in our society. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have too much wealth, ipso facto, you have too much power - therefore you have too much responsibility - and you're a kind of dictator.”

Will Self (1961) English writer and journalist

The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, October 1st, 2008.

Wealth

“Their [the political leaders'] skill consists in a quick perception of the people's wishes as to the road which they desire to travel. This ascertained, the leader places himself at the head of the moving column, and shouts loudly for the people to advance on his lead, which he assures them is direct, suitable, and pleasant. …They will diverge no inch to please him, but he must crook and turn as their wayward fancy may indicate. He must bear all their censure, too, when the path taken leads into a quagmire; and, notwithstanding the mud and bruises, of which he obtains a double portion, he must maintain by argument that no other road could have been taken consistently with the prosperity, honour, and security of a great, wise, free, and virtuous people.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

People, Travel

“Jobs: Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
Playboy: Are you saying that the people who made the PCjr don’t have that kind of pride in the product?
Jobs: If they did, they wouldn’t have turned out the PCjr.”

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

Steve Jobs, Playboy interview http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-steve-jobs, Feb 1985 1980s

People, Beauty, Way, Thinking

“Skidelsky tells us, Keynes was also practical, absorbed in questions of economic policy, argumentative, benevolent and intolerant, often rude, and had an intellectual arrogance that would allow positions previously held with great passion to be calmly abandoned. Well, that is exactly what the Cambridge faculty was like in the 1960s. Not only did the ghost of Keynes dominate the content of economics education at Cambridge, it also dominated the style. That style could be sustained with substance only by the extraordinarily gifted. So it is not surprising that the Cambridge faculty, although still very "Keynesian," looks much more conventional these days.”

John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell (1945) British economist

"Citizen Keynes", 1994

Education, Question, Passion

“I'm looking for the teacher who is simple enough to be great, and great enough to be simple.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich suche den Lehrer, der einfach genug ist, um groß zu sein und groß genug, um einfach zu sein.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Teachers

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life, People, Books, School

“Personally, in my home life it's the same, but professionally it's different. I'm not having to fight or push as much to get in to be seen for TV shows or for films. The calls are coming in. Also the fans are great. I love them and I am one myself.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

On how Doctor Who fame changed his life, in Attitude (2005)

Love, Life, Home, Fight

“Persistence isn’t very glamorous. If genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the 1 percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other 99 percent.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Hughey, Aaron W. (book reviewer), "Book review: ‘Quiet’ suggests introverts are undervalued by society," The Daily News (Kentucky; BGDailyNews.com), July 15, 2012.

Love

“Incidentally, I don't say it [the US electoral system] is a charade; there are differences in the parties—I don’t think they're great differences, but they're real, and small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan concerning the 2016 US Presidential Election, (Jan 30, 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btJfkPBLULg Quotes 2010s, 2016

Thinking

“I’m very interested in the ‘Culture of Interpretation.’ I’m convinced that each great artist has his own personal style, but it is his artistic responsibility in developing this style to respond other interpretations, either prior or at the same time. I’m convinced that Rubinstein would have presented us another Chopin if Cortot had not existed. Cortot presented very romantic Chopin interpretations - really masterly, outstanding, but confused. Rubinstein’s immediate answer was a very classical Chopin. He was really the first to point out the classical line and structure in his oeuvre.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Time, Personality

“People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

As quoted in "Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer", by Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist (28 February 2003) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3451#.VHpLJzGsWPY.

People, Girl, Thinking

“When I hit reset every 24 hours, in my mind I'm in competition with myself and whatever I did the day before, to keep topping how I did it… that's how I measure if I'm any greater in my action steps towards my greatness.”

Cha Cha (rapper) (1980) American rapper, radio personality and actress

Personal quotes

“The potential infinite means nothing other than an undetermined, variable quantity, always remaining finite, which has to assume values that either become smaller than any finite limit no matter how small, or greater than any finite limit no matter how great.”

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

"Mitteilungen" (1887-8)

“I do not see that it is possible, nor can I discover that it would be right, for me now to withdraw from the cause in which I have so long taken so deep an interest. The work is great, and vast are the results depending upon it, and unhappily our laborers are not abundant…But conscious of the increasing hazard we run owing to the long continuance of monopolies, and beholding the appalling sufferings of multitudes of my fellow-creatures, and satisfied that all benevolence and charity and the teaching of religion and of schools fall short of much of their full effect owing to the degraded and impoverished condition of the people—I should feel myself guilty, as possessing abundance and leaving others to hunger, nakedness and immorality and deepest ignorance and crime, if I were to retire into domestic quiet and leave the struggle to be carried on entirely by others.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to his mother-in-law Mrs. Priestman (November 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 102-103.
1840s

Hunger, People, School, Religion

“Your hurt is so great that it shouldn’t hurt you.”
Tu dolor es tan grande que no debiera dolerte.

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

Hurt

“Light and air, that's art! I can never give enough light in my paintings, especially in the skies. The air in a painting, that is really a thing! It is the main thing! Air and light are the great magicians. It is the sky which prescribes the painting. Painters never look enough at the sky. We must get it from above. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Licht en lucht, dat is de kunst! Ik kan in m'n schilderijen, vooral in de luchten, nooit licht genoeg brengen.. .De lucht op een schilderij, dat is een ding! Een hoofdzaak! Lucht en licht zijn de groote toovenaars. De lucht bepaalt het schilderij. Schilders kunnen nooit genoeg naar de lucht kijken. Wij moeten het van boven hebben.
Quote of J. H. Weissenbruch; as cited in J.H. Weissenbruch 1824-1903, ed. E. Jacobs, H. Janssen & M. van Heteren; exposition-catalog, Museum Jan Cunen / Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Zwolle 1999, pp. 227-233

Art, Light, Painting

“Our century of war, militarism, and political terror has produced great — and successful — advocates of true peace, among whom Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the paramount examples. The considerable success that they achieved testifies to the presence, in the midst of violence, of an authentic and powerful desire for peace and, more important, of the proven will to make the necessary sacrifices.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War

War, Peace, Success

“In private one can well be a cat that walks by itself, and without roots in any specific soil: but in the great battle for the Kingdom of God it seems to me one ought to belong to some brotherhood.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Source: Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

God, Cats

“Remarriage is or is not approved in shastra; I have no authority to speak on this subject. But I surely cannot go on without saying this much, that remarriage has helped a great deal in stopping crime in Fiji.”

Totaram Sanadhya (1876–1947) Fijian writer

My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands (English translation by J.D. Kelly & U.K. Singh, Fiji Museum, 1991).

Help

“The great thing about the heart is that it has no master, despite what reason may think.”

Neil Strauss book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (2005)

Thinking, Heart

“Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to his brother, (January 23, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future.”

Abigail Scott Duniway (1834–1915) American suffragist, writer, journalist, pioneer

Abigail Scott Duniway, quoted in Westward the Women https://books.google.com/books?id=Xy50CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=%22+young+women+of+today,+free+to+study,+to+speak,+to+write%22&source=bl&ots=9gDARyV3TU&sig=qp7E9Zg0u1yJCbJVQ-pqBeu49JE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_zKKCp5zZAhUEyGMKHTdVCcQQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=%22%20young%20women%20of%20today%2C%20free%20to%20study%2C%20to%20speak%2C%20to%20write%22&f=false and by the Hatfield School of Govennment's Center for Women's Leadership https://www.pdx.edu/womens-leadership/abigail-scott-duniway-speaker-series

Women, Truth, Study, Freedom

“There is another story, that we tried to impose upon him [Arafat] cantons, Bantustans. Total lie. We talked about 80%+ of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip. How can it become non-contiguous? And if you have some reservation against this or that curl of the border, at some corner, come to the table, negotiate it, and demand that this will be removed. I can go with you more and more, and I cannot afford spending more time on it, but basically, all these were stories that were invented in order to explain to his own people, and maybe to try to convince honest people in the free world how come that such an opportunity had been missed. Of course, I had my own demands, to protect Israel, to ensure our security, to make sure that we know where do we head. I said loud and clear: we have to put an end to this asymmetric process where we are supposed to give tangible assets, and the Palestinians have just to give vague promises about the nature of future relationship. I said I'm ready to go very far, but I want to know, now, that there is a partner, which is ready and capable to make tough decisions, and painful decisions. I was a great supporter of the peace of the brave, but never a supporter of peace of ostriches, where you put your head in the sand, let whatever happen, happen, and then wake up and say, OK, that's what happened. We cannot afford this approach. That's the reality.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

Pain, People, Lie, World

“The truly beautiful, the great and sublime, when it overpowers us with astonishment and admiration, still does not surprise us as a thing foreign, never heard of, never seen; but, on the other hand, our own inmost nature in such moments becomes clear to us, our deepest remembrances are awakened, our dearest feelings made alive.”

Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) German poet, translator, editor, novelist, and critic

Das wahrhaft Schöne, Große und Erhabene, so wie es uns in Erstaunen und Verwunderung setzt, überrascht uns doch nicht als etwas Fremdes, Unerhörtes und Niegesehenes, sondern unser eigenstes Wesen wird uns in solchen Augenblicken klar, unsre tiefsten Erinnerungen werden erweckt, und unsre nächsten Empfindungen lebendig gemacht. "Der Pokal", from Phantasus (1812-16) http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/gutenberg-de/1996/gutenb/tieck/pokal/pokal2.htm; translation from Thomas Carlyle German Romance: Specimens of its Chief Authors, (London: Tait, 1827), vol. 2, p. 163.

Beauty, Feeling, Nature

“Say, I don’t wish I was a poet, for if I was, I guess I’d be livin’ in a garret on no dollars a week instead of runnin’ a great contractin’ and transportation business which is doin’ pretty well, thank you; but, honest, now, the notion takes me sometimes to yell poetry of the red-hot-hail-glorious-land kind when I think of New York City as a state by itself. p. 67”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 16, Plunkitt’s Fondest Dream

Business, Thinking

“I have been attracted to Freemasonry of my own freewill and accord, because it is an International Brotherhood with worldwide interests and its spirit appears as comprehensive and embracing as the globe itself. This brotherhood represents an idealism in which national and racial boundaries find no place. Freemasonry places the fact of God, the Great Architect of the Universe, the Creator of all things in the forefront of its teaching. It recognizes no specific religion, but emphasizes the Universality of all religious faiths. From the limited experience, I have had of my formal admission to the Fraternity this evening, I see that there is a religious spirit underlying the whole symbolic teaching of Masonry. It seems to me that apart from the rituals and symbols peculiar to it, the object of Masonry is generally to make the world a better, brighter and happier place to live in. These are some of the more important and characteristic features of the institution, which have had the greatest appeal to me and that is how I find myself to be one with you from now onwards.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In his address to the members of the Masonic Fraternity on the occasion of his joining as member of the Masonic Lodge. Article # 14 Initiate responds to his Toast R.W.Bro. Jaya Chamaraja Wadeyar http://masonicpaedia.org/showarticle.asp?id=14

God, World, Faith, Religion

“We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Milton (1825)

Age

“I love animals deeply… They are my friends. Animals have a great sense of community, friendship, not to mention strong family bonds, paternal and maternal instincts. Especially in America, the farming and slaughtering of tens of millions of animals in cruel and barbaric ways is offensive and unfathomable. Many animals are sick and diseased when led to slaughter, giving the ultimate sacrifice for our hungry pleasures. They have been separated and disconnected from their family members, and grieve the great loss of those close to them.”

Kristoff St. John (1966–2019) American actor

"Why I'm Vegan", on his official Facebook page (31 August 2014) https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154508997590487&id=78458960486.

Love, Friendship, Pleasure, Disease

“It is not simply that a clear understanding is acquired of the movements of the great bodies which we regard as the system of the world, but it is that we are introduced to a perception of laws governing the motion of all matter, from the finest particle of dust to the largest planet or sun, with a degree of uniformity and constancy, which otherwise we could hardly have conceived. Astronomy is pre-eminently the science of order.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

World, Law, Understanding, Science

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

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

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“The top of the Great Pyramid [….. ] there's no capstone on the pyramid. Till the year 2000 celebrations when George Bush [Snr. ] and some of these guys put a phony one up there. See, they think they are going to have a new world order, and they probably are.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Evolution: the Foundation for Communism, Nazism, Socialism, and the New World Order (2003)

World, Guy, Thinking

“There were various kinds of direct action in the nineteen-sixties: the Civil Rights movement, in which minorities realized that nobody would do anything for them, that they had to do things for themselves; the women's movement, in which women realized they themselves had to do something about their rights; the environmental movement; and other social movements. The point is that people could not get what they wanted through the system — they had to get it directly. It is no wonder that what began as an idealistic concern for those who were deprived of their rights led to a great deal of selfishness by those who were not deprived. And here lies the affinity between the radicalism of the nineteen-sixties and the conservatism of the nineteen-eighties. Both grew from the same soil: They are different responses to the same problem.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)

Women, People, Problem, Selfishness

“The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 128

Beauty, Sense

“I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great."”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

There's a qualitative difference.
Speech in San Francisco: Democracy Matters (1 October 2004)

People, Success

“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes; because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember: Others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Speech to the assembled White House staff before his final departure (9 August 1974)
1970s

Hate, Sadness, Disappointment, Mountain

“In Poland, many doctors would not undertake euthanasia due to religious beliefs. The Dutch are more pragmatic, and death is not a great taboo for them, but part of the natural turn of things.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Death, Nature, Parting

“But the voice of anatomy, like the voice of all nature, never reaches the mental ear of the Great Commoner. It is the novel province of anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the structure, the origin and the history of man.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

Evolution and Religion in Education : Polemics of the Fundamentalist (1926), p. 138

Truth, History, Nature

“A hallowed grave in dying, with the grave an altar:
I adore the sovereign lord, the great,
That I be not sad, Christ grant me.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

Sadness, Christ

“The clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote. However, this suits people a hell of a lot better than setting out at age 6 to become a great ballet dancer and achieving their goal 20 years later after every tendon and muscle and joint has been asked to perform just a little bit more than nature ever intended over and over and over again. To most people, this is insanity. But in reality, it's art, and it's the art in what we do that makes us human.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

read the fine manual, please http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Pain, People, Age, Art

“You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

God, Hate, Country

“I'm sure it's gotta be a great job 'cause rock stars are known for their punctuality and politeness, so…”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

YouTube.com
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r2CeQsvIzY&feature=related

Star

“A nation that fails to take pride in its past achievements or to take inspiration therefrom, can never build up the present or plan for the future. A weak nation can never attain greatness.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Past, Future

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Life, People, World, Way

“Well I wot that heaven and earth and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause why it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little.”

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

The First Revelation, Chapter 8

Soul

“Today’s HUD head Henry Cisneros, whom Kemp praised and endorsed in Senate confirmation hearings in 1993, has used this program to great effect in Baltimore and Dallas, threatening to wreck whole suburbs with an immigration of crime and poverty.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Jack Kemp, American Socialist" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, September 1996, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1996sep-00001,

“I know that I am an important factor in the development of art and shall forever remain so. I say this with great emphasis, so that one can not say, at a later date: 'The poor fellow had no inkling of how important he was'. No I am no fool, nor am I timid. I know full well that the time will come for me and all other important personalities of the abstract movement, when we will influence an entire generation. However, I fear that I shall not experience this.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1930s
Source: 'I and my purpose', in the journal 'Merz', no. 21, (1931)

Fear, Fools, Art, Time

“The Pennsylvania legislature, who, on a proposition to make the belief in God a necessary qualification for office, rejected it by a great majority, although assuredly there was not a single atheist in their body. And you remember to have heard, that when the act for religious freedom was before the Virginia Assembly, a motion to insert the name of Jesus Christ before the phrase, "the author of our holy religion," which stood in the bill, was rejected, although that was the creed of a great majority of them.”

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

Letter to Albert Gallatin (16 June 1817). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, p. 73 1810s

God, Religion, Freedom, Christ

“What we do upon a great occasion will probably depend upon what we already are; what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline, under the grace of Christ or the absence of it.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 1.

Christ, Dependency

“Great care has gone into the construction of the shadow which declares itself to be Richard Nixon.”

Murray Kempton (1917–1997) American journalist

“Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

6 December 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Strong, Time

“Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)

Animals

“This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; CCCCXII
Lacon (1820)

Men, Universe, Time

“It was impossible to keep up the great movement of inner and outer freedom initiated by Jesus. The proclamation “You are free through the Holy Spirit,” and Paul’s statement, “Everything is lawful,” were fine for a small, elite group in which everyone knew everyone else. But when it was a matter of thousands of new converts whose depth of faith could not be known, how could they be told that they were completely free to choose their way of life and decide their own conduct? They had to be incorporated and put under the authority of a head of each group, and the more numerous they became, the more sacred and complex this authority had to be. … The glorious freedom that is in Christ could not be tolerated. It was replaced by clear and strict commandments.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 36-37

Life, Faith, Law, Way

“These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.”

Sylvia Plath book Crossing the Water

"Blackberrying" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/berry.html Crossing the Water (1971)

Light

“The great object of government is to restrict, control and punish man ‘in the pursuit of happiness.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 180

Happiness

“I find that I have great faith in human nature. I believe that people are good. I believe they are to be trusted. So far as I know, no one has ever betrayed my faith, in any way. If they ever have, I've been spared the knowledge of it.
If I couldn't have faith in human nature, I wouldn't want to live. It is the one thing that could destroy for me the joy of living.
I've come to believe that life, under almost any conditions, is worth while.
I found that out when I had my accident some years ago, and was in the hospital.
I thought, for a couple of weeks, that I would be blind for life. I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life, People, Faith, Way

“My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship

God, Age, Sex

“Isn't it great that I evoke a reaction from people? Whether it is good or bad is secondary. The thing is that I like being myself. I find it very tiresome to put up a fake smile, say the right things, and be diplomatic. It's just not in my personality to be like that.”

Mallika Sherawat (1976) Indian actress

Cine Bliitz magazine,(July 2005)

People, Smile, Personality

“The thirteen Colonies were not unaware of the difficulties which these problems presented. We shall find a great deal of wisdom in the method by which they dealt with them. When they were finally separated from Great Britain, the allegiance of their citizens was not to the Nation, for there was none. It was to the States. For the conduct of the war there had been a voluntary confederacy loosely constructed and practically impotent. Continuing after peace was made, when the common peril which had been its chief motive no longer existed, it grew weaker and weaker. Each of the States could have insisted on an entirely separate and independent existence, having full authority over both their internal and external affairs, sovereign in every way. But such sovereignty would have been a vain and empty thing. It would have been unsupported by adequate resources either of property or population, without a real national spirit; ready to fall prey to foreign intrigue or foreign conquest. That kind of sovereignty meant but little. It had no substance in it. The people and their leaders naturally sought for a larger, more inspiring ideal. They realized that while to be a citizen of a State meant something, it meant a great deal more if that State were a part of a national union. The establishment of a Federal Constitution giving power and authority to create a real National Government did not in the end mean a detriment, but rather an increment to the sovereignty of the several States. Under the Constitution there was brought into being a new relationship, which did not detract from but added to the power and the position of each State. It is true that they surrendered the privilege of performing certain acts for themselves, like the regulation of commerce and the maintenance of foreign relations, but in becoming a part of the Union they received more than they gave.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Wisdom, War, People, Peace

“Your Excellency may rest assured, that I have done every thing in my power to cultivate and promote a good understanding, both with the Count and the Marquis, and flatter myself that I am upon very good terms with them both. The Marquis's great thirst for glory, and national attachment, often run him into errors. However, he did every thing to prevail on the Admiral to cooperate with us, that man could do. People censure the Admiral with great freedom, and many are imprudent enough to reproach the nation through the Admiral.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

People, Error, Understanding, Freedom

“It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 11

Study, Loss

“In consequence of this arrangement I began to construct the forty-foot telescope about the latter end of 1785. The woodwork of the stand and machines for giving the required motions to the instrument were immediately put in hand. In the whole of the apparatus none but common workmen were employed, for I made drawings of every part of it, by which it was easy to execute the work, as I constantly inspected and directed every person's labor; though sometimes there were not less than forty different workmen employed at the same time. While the stand of the telescope was preparing, I also began the construction of the great mirror, of which I inspected the casting, grinding, and polishing, and the work was in this manner carried on with no other interruption than that occasioned by the removal of all the apparatus and materials from where I then lived, to my present situation at Slough.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works"

Time, Parting, Drawing, Personality

“Thank God! some lights never go out. Death cannot quench them. They shine forever. Luther's great lantern, " The just shall live by faith," still gleams from Wartburg Castle. John Bunyan's lamp twinkles yet through the gratings of Bedford jail.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 351.

Death, God, Faith, Light

“A seed is small in size. But it carries in its womb leaves, flowers, fruits, nay even the whole tree. The human brain is very much like a seed. It may not have a great shape and size. But it traps within itself endless possibilities. It is a fountainhead of thoughts and promises that can be fulfilled.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Source: Soul Curry for You and Me: An Empowering Philosophy that Can Enrich Your Life, P. 113.

Flowers, Tree

“It is not too much to say that when the Great War broke out our Generals had the most important lessons of their art to learn. Before they began they had much to unlearn. Their brains were cluttered with useless lumber, packed in every niche and corner.”

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

War Memoirs (1938)
War Memoirs

War, Art, Learning

“First contact with occult, magical and enchanting forces. One of his best friends, a very intelligent and affectionate pink cockatoo, died in the night of 5 January. It was a terrible shock for Max when he found the dead bird in the morning, at the same moment as his father told him of the birth of his sister, Loni. The boy's consternation was so great that he fainted. In his imagination, he linked the two events and made the baby responsible for extinguishing the bird's life. A series of psychological crises and depressions followed. A dangerous amalgamation of birds and human beings became firmly established in his mind and later found expression in his paintings and drawings.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies', Max Ernst; as cited in 'Room 7, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to a childhood experience in 1906, when Max Ernst was c. 15 years old
posthumous

Life, Imagination, Intelligence, Boy

“How great his theft, who robs himself!”

Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) British writer

"Pleasure"
Visions in Verse

“Some Muslims imagine that being against Christians' celebrations during Christmas that take place once a year is a great way of striving on the path of God. Instead of being false heroes on that day, they should preach religion all through the year and talk about Islam and preach the miracles of the Qur’an.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

30 December 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

God, Religion, Way, Imagination

“Mr. Pritchard was a businessman, president of a medium-sized corporation. He was never alone. His business was conducted by groups of men like himself who joined together in clubs so that no foreign element or idea could enter. His religious life was again his lodge and his church, both of which were screened and protected. One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players. Wherever he went he was not one man but a unit in a corporation, a unit in a club, in a lodge, in a church, in a political party. His thoughts and ideas were never subjected to criticism since he willingly associated only with people like himself. He read a newspaper written by and for his group. The books that came into his house were chosen by a committee which deleted material that might irritate him. He hated foreign countries and foreigners because it was difficult to find his counterpart in them. He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it. At occasional stags where naked girls danced on the tables and sat in great glasses of wine, Mr. Pritchard howled with laughter and drank the wine, but five hundred Mr. Pritchards were there with him.”

John Steinbeck book The Wayward Bus

Source: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 3

Life, Men, Hate, People

“Kids don't hesitate to ask questions. And it's a great honor to have the kids say, "Your books have made me trust you."”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)

Books, Question

“Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. the idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 1.

Imagination, History, Idea, Nature

“The President should place the onus completely on the Iranian regime. There is a new Sheriff in town now who will not get rolled. America will not get rolled. The JCPOA is all about Making Tehran Great Again at the expense of all else. If the Iranians need a few days to digest the new reality and step up to the plate, that is ok, but if they don’t, it is time to ramp back up our leverage immediately and I am confident that our allies will recognize that they want to remain our great, willing partners in this effort.”

Lee Zeldin (1980) New York state senator

President Trump Should Not Recertify Iran Nuclear Deal http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/09/exclusive-rep-lee-zeldin-president-trump-should-not-recertify-iran-nuclear-deal/ (October 9, 2017)

Confidence, Reality, Effort, Time

“I made the decision that I couldn't not run. I had to run. This country is in great danger. It's in great difficulty. It's being taken the wrong way by a leadership team that has no real vision for the country other than trying to posture and pose and aim for winning the next election. I think Americans deserve a more visionary, a more selfless and a more dedicated leadership than that.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

CNN Interview (10 December 2003) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0312/10/ltm.12.html

Way, Thinking, Decision, Country

“I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March.”

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

Letter to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph (7 February 1809) on the termination of the American embargo.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

War, People

“A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.”
Magnus gubernator et scisso navigat velo.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXX: On conquering the conqueror, Line 3.

“In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: ‘The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!”

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

As quoted in Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, Konrad Heiden, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1969, p. 147, first published 1944. Part of Hitler’s quote also cited in Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, A Harvest Book, 1985, footnote, p. 7
1920s

Fight