Quotes about greatness (10000 quotes, page 86)

“People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 348
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Money , People , Art , Nature

“Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 7, The Offshore Balancers, p. 252

“Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

As quoted in "Renowned activist and press freedom advocate Tawakul Karman to the Yemen Times: 'A day will come when all human rights violators pay for what they did to Yemen.'", in Yemen Times (3 November 2011)
2010s

Women , Way , Feeling , Problem

“By Jesus’s time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: “It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns,” this is taken to mean: “It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill.””

Robert Graves book King Jesus

Source: King Jesus (1946), Ch. 21.

Women , World , Family , Law

“It is nonsense, Mr. Burke, to suppose I can live. My sufferings are great but they will soon be over.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

citation needed
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)

Suffering

“I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

Medal of Peace acceptance

Love , People , Peace , Soul

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Beauty , Way , Nature , Problem

“An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Source: The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795–1822), Ch. VIII.

Life , Pleasure , Age

“Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)

Pain , War , People , Truth

“This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past.

Life , People , Way , Understanding

“Speaking purely for myself, I can say that it was my very acute feeling for the matière, for the substance of painting, which pushed me into thinking about the possibilities of the medium. I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually, though once a beginning had been made other discoveries follow. Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures. For I suddenly saw the extent to which colour is related to the substance... So my great delight was the 'material' character which I could give to my pictures by introducing these extraneous elements. In short, they provided me with a means of getting further away from idealism in 'representing' the things with which I was concerned.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1921 - 1945, p. 76 - quote of Braque from 'Cahiers d'art', 1954, ed. Dora Vallier

Feeling , Thinking , Painting

“One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Referring to Finnegans Wake in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver (24 November 1926)

Parting

“I rejoiced so greatly when I heard of your answer in the case of some who seemed to be filled with extravagant ambition
for the office of legate, and to hope for it with impudence, even more than I can say. And not only I but all who love your name rejoiced with exceeding great joy. Moreover, when I read your letter written in the cause of the Church of Rodez,
then was my mouth filled with laughter and my tongue with joy. Such things as these are worthy of your Apostleship, they honour the highest See, they are just what is becoming to the Bishop of the world. Whence, also, I bow my knees to the Author of your unique Primacy…
In truth, you have been raised to this chair for the fall and rising again of many.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Bernard to Pope Eugene III, letter 240:1, A.D. 1146, concerning the election of a certain unworthy bishop at the Church of Rodez (see letter 328). In The Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, John Mabillon, Samuel J. Eales, Volume 2, p. 705

Love , Truth , World , Hope

“On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing… enjoying the jungle's great joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.”

Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who!

Horton Hears a Who! (1954)

Joy

“He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Soul , Clothes

“940. The great would have none great, and the little all little.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“While it is true that the white race exhibits some qualities of superiority over any other, we are to remember that there are wide differences in the same Caucasian (Semitic and Aryan) family; and also we should remember that some of the qualities which have given this branch of the human family its preeminence in the world are not such as can be pointed to as in all respects admirable…
The secret of the greater intelligence and aptitude of the Caucasian undoubtedly in great measure is to be attributed to the commingling of blood amongst its various branches; and this was evidently forced in large measure by circumstances under divine control.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Zion's Watch Tower (July 15, 1902), pp. 215-216.

Secret , World , Family , Intelligence

“As to Bonaparte, you know what my apprehensions always were, and I can not help thinking they are in a great degree verified. For though he may, and I hope he will, trounce the Austrians…yet it is impossible to deny that he has lost, or at least risqued the losing of an opportunity. Every man has his weak side, and I have always thought Bonaparte's was the thinking Austria more inclined to peace and more to be depended upon than She is. I hope to God he will not suffer from his errour.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to R. Fitzpatrick (10 September 1800), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 168.
1800s

God , Peace , Hope , Thinking

“History, in [Nietzsche’s] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great men’s great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before me.”

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

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 17

Men , History , Mountain , Teachers

““…Ally Adil Shah, at the persuasions of his minister, carried his arms against Bunkapoor. This place was the principal residence of Velapa Ray, who had been originally a principal attendant of Ramraj; after whose death he assumed independence… “…Velapa Ray, despairing of relief, at length sent offers for surrendering the fort to the King, on condition of being allowed to march away with his family and effects, which Ally Adil Shah thought proper to grant, and the place was evacuated accordingly. The King ordered a superb temple within it to be destroyed, and he himself laid the first stone of a mosque, which was built on the foundation, offering up prayers for his victory. Moostufa Khan acquired great credit for his conduct, and was honoured with a royal dress, and had many towns and districts of the conquered country conferred upon him in jageer…245”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn ‘Alî ‘Ãdil Shãh I of Bijapur (AD 1557-1579) Bankapur (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Death , Family , Victory , Despair

“The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

"Atlantis," from Keeper of Dreams (2008).

Hunger , Dreams , History , Fashion

“All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Journal entry (January 1819)

Business

“When I began singing 'Conga' athletes from all over the world busted out of formation to dance with me, [and] I thought: 'Wow, what a great choreography!.' I thought it was planned. But then the tower started shaking and I thought: 'Great, first the bus, then the boat, now the tower!”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment after the Olympic Closing Ceremonies in 1996
2007, 2008

World , Singing , Dance

“The great and present danger to American literature is the growing homogeneity of our writers, especially the younger generation. Often raised in several places in no specific cultural or religious community, educated with no deep connection to a region, history, or tradition, and now employed mostly in academia, the American writer is becoming as standardized as the American car--functional, streamlined, and increasingly interchangeable”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

27
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Education , Cars , History , Communication

“Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52

Knowledge , Science , Success

“Education has a great part to play in assuring the intellectual and moral basis not only for citizenship of the state but also for that world citizenship which is the imperative need of the time. For education to serve the purposes of democracy and world citizenship it should it should be in a real sense “liberal.””

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

During his scholarly lecture tours as a philosopher, in Ghana, quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

World , Education , Democracy , Sense

“The art of a great writer is seen in the perfect fitness of his expressions. He knows how to blend vividness with vagueness, knows where images are needed, and where by their vivacity they would be obstacles to the rapid appreciation of his thought.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Art , Perfection

“It (Pakistan) is not a failed state, but it is threatening to become one. A great concern is weighing on our minds. In Pakistan, with regret, I would say we don't know who is in control there. Whether it is the army or the president or the government”

P. Chidambaram (1945) Indian politician

Pakistan threatening to become failed state - India http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-38383620090306, Reuters, 2009-03-6.

“If any person, discouraged by these difficulties, should think to relieve himself by rejecting all religion, natural and revealed, he will find, if he reflect at all, that he has miserably deceived himself, and that he is involved in greater perplexity than ever; the scheme he has adopted not only filling his mind with great darkness and distress, but being contrary to some of the plainest appearances in nature, and therefore manifestly irrational and absurd.”

Joseph Priestley book Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion

Vol. I : Preface (1772)
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–1774)

Religion , Nature , Thinking , Appearance

“Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”

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

On the previous managers of Sun after Oracles take-over, in "Special Report: Can that guy in Ironman 2 whip IBM in real life?" Reuters (12 May 2010) http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B5YX20100512.

“When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia—which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

March 1, 2011.
Remarks at House Appropriations subcommittee to Rep. John Culberson, who was questioning him about voter intimidation by the Black Panthers. http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0311/Eric_Holder_Black_Panther_case_focus_demeans_my_people.html
2010s

People , Thinking

“If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should have long ago been out of the Service and never in the House of Peers.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

Statement (March 1805) [citation needed]
1800s

Time , Housing

“I would gladly say 'Heil Hitler!' and at once part company with him, realizing what a pitiable insult it is to such a great man to try to flatter him with such an imitation which he has always disdained. His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

National Socialism Now, pamphlet issued by the National Socialist League c. 1938.

Way , Parting

“[C]onsider, humbly, that had we been there, few of us would have been among the heroes who, at great risk to themselves, sheltered Jews and other victims or joined the forces opposing Hitler and the Nazis. Very few of us indeed.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2018, On Holocaust Remembrance Day (2018)

“Slackware was great in that it did the one thing I want my distro to do more than anything, and that's stay the hell out of my way… Gentoo basically stays the hell out of your way… and Portage goes a long way to basically do exactly what you'd have done on Slackware without having to do it manually… maybe I'm getting greedy in my old age, but I don't want to compile my packages anymore.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Michael Larabel, "An Interview with Ryan C. Gordon" http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=203&num=1 Phoronix (2003-09-08)

Age , Way , Hell

“Contact with like-minded painters – a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists – and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke – matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1960's

Idea , Parting , Dependency , Country

“All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.”

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

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

“Christianity, in order to defend itself, puts the brand of infamy on the brow of honesty. Christianity marks with a letter “C,” standing for “convict” every brain that is great enough to discover the frauds.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

Fraud

“Women, to be very attractive to all sorts of different people, must have great readiness of sympathy. Many have it naturally, and many work hard in acquiring a good imitation of it. In the first case it is against the nature of such persons to be monopolized for more than a very short time; in the second all their trouble would be thrown away if they allowed themselves to be monopolized. Once in their lives, indeed, they will be, and ought to be, and that monopoly lasts, or should last for ever; but instead of destroying in them that which was their great charm, it only deepens and widens it, and the sympathy which was before fitful, and, perhaps, wayward, flows on in a calm and healthy stream, blessing and cheering all who come within reach of its exhilarating and life-giving waters.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 27

Life , Women , People , Nature

“Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

People , Drink , Thinking , Tree

“In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Mornings in Florence, part III, section 49 (1875).

Women , Men , Children , Parent

“Servant: My lord! My lord, the Queen has just ridden into the bailey!
John: That cannot be! My mother is in Normandy.
Servant: No, my lord, she's in the great hall.
Eleanor: You both are wrong. I'm out in the stairwell.”

Sharon Kay Penman book Here Be Dragons

Here Be Dragons (1985), Book 1

“How do you find what's going to make everybody have this strange reaction in their bodies, this response that's sort of chemical and physical all at once—this noise and emotion that changes how you sit? A laugh is a weird sound, and when you get a couple thousand people making it at once, it's really strange. But when I can feel proud of myself for causing it, it's great.”

Billy Crystal (1948) American actor

Interview with Oprah Winfrey

People , Feeling , Change

“I, for one, remain unpersuaded that a crisis of major proportions has been identified, but at the same time I am open to the possibility that such a crisis has been glimpsed, though perhaps only subliminally, by Bell and his great predecessors: Einstein, Schrodinger, de Broglie, Bohm and Wigner. This is a roster which should give us all pause. To my understanding, however, this crisis has not yet been formulated with sufficient precision to facilitate the birth of a great offspring.”

Kurt Gottfried (1929) American physicist

Does quantum mechanics carry the seeds of its own destruction? (1991)

Birth , Understanding , Time

“In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de' Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped the shame which ought to cover her name… Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine, the two Balafrés, and the two Condés, against the queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking fire of the Calvinist press.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

En France, et dans la partie la plus grave de l'histoire moderne, aucune femme, si ce n'est Brunehault ou Frédégonde, n'a plus souffert des erreurs populaires que Catherine de Médicis; tandis que Marie de Médicis, dont toutes les actions on été préjudiciables à la France, échappe à la honte qui devrait couvrir son nom... Catherine de Médicis, au contraire, a sauvé la couronne de France; elle a maintenu l'authorité royale dans des des circonstances au milieur desquelles plus d'un grand prince aurait succombé.Ayant en tête des factieux et des ambitions comme celles des Guise et de la maison de Bourbon, des hommes commes les deux cardinaux de Lorraine et comme les deux Balafrés, les deux princes de Condé, la reine Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, le connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, les Coligny, Théodore de Bèze, il lui a fallu déployer les plus rares qualités, les plus précieux dons de l'homme d'État, sous le feu des railleries de la presse calviniste.
About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Introduction

Men , Error , History , Suffering

“The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)

Love , Men , World , Soul

“I'm in great shape considering I have hardware in my back. I work out constantly to keep my muscles limber and my abs strong so they can take the burnt of everything.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Latina Magazine (September, 2007)
2007, 2008

Strong

“For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

Life , Star , Evil , Dead

“Many of my male colleagues who have suffered imprisonment for their part in the democracy movement have spoken of the great debt of gratitude they owe their womenfolk, particularly to their wives who stood by them firmly, tender as mothers nursing their newly born, brave as lionesses defending their young. These magnificent human beings who have done so much to aid their men in the struggle for justice and peace -- how much more could they not achieve if given the opportunity to work in their own right for the good of their country and of the world.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Men , World , Peace , Justice

“With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.

Men , Thinking , Personality

“No wonder Muddlers initially think that becoming a vegetarian is like taking a vow of culinary abstinence mixed with voluntary poverty.
Of course, in time Muddlers discover that there is an incredibly delicious, colorful, and nutritious animal-free cuisine out there to be discovered, a menu of possibilities that includes foods from every nation and ethnicity in the world. It is the great new food we gain, not the customary old food we lose, that is the real surprise, something all of us have to discover for ourselves.”

Tom Regan book Empty Cages

Source: Empty Cages (2004), Ch. 6

World , Food , Color , Thinking

“Peace is not solely a matter of military or technical problems — it is primarily a problem of politics and people. And unless man can match his strides in weaponry and technology with equal strides in social and political development, our great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper control — and like the dinosaur vanish from the earth.”

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

1961, UN speech

People , Peace , Problem

“The decay of the late, great country of South Africa is beginning to become apparent. The name of the Transvaal has been officially changed to ‘Gauteng.’ (One of our friends has suggested that in view of this its inhabitants in the future should be referred to as Oranggautengs.) … And now there is a move afoot to wreck the Kruger National Park, one of the wonders of the world, on the notion that a good bit of its land was ‘taken from the blacks.’ This idea is somewhat akin to giving Yellowstone Park back to the Blackfeet.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Cooper in Jeff Cooper's Commentaries January 1995, Vol. 3, No. 3.

World , Idea , Change , Future

“In 1860, the South did not appeal to the right of revolution. They appealed to a right of secession, which they claim to be a Constitutional right under the Constitution itself. In 1776, the colonists did not claim that in breaking with Great Britain they were exercising a right granted by the British Constitution. They had conducted their struggle until that moment by appealing it through the British constitution. But when they decided on independence, they appealed instead to the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

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

God , Law , Exercises , Nature

“Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: "What a turn of events through God's dispensation!" All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of [the Battle of] Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang [in 1757]: Now thank we all our God!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Telegram to Hitler (19 June 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1261
1940s

God , Victory , Heart

“One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work. That is why there is an enormous surge in the number of unpaid staff, volunteers. The needs are not going to go away. Business is not going to take up the slack, and government cannot.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"New Priorities" Dancing Toward The Future, Context Institute http://www.context.org/, (1992)
1990s and later

Money , People , Education , Feeling

“This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.”

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

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

People , Law , Nature , Sense

“Sometimes I can tell the greatness of my mission with God by the resistance I am met with by the Devil.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 144

God

“We really look for a story first and scares second. I think that ultimately makes the scares more effective. Most people look for the scares first and build the story around it, but that’s something that I’ve been lucky enough to learn while working with these great directors who have spent their lives making these kind of movies. So that’s what we look for: is there great drama? And then we go from there.”

Jason Blum (1969) American film producer

Interview: Jason Blum http://dorkshelf.com/2013/02/20/interview-jason-blum/ (February 20, 2013)

People , Thinking , Learning

“After the war, Japan was occupied by the allied forces, and based on peace and democracy as values to be upheld, established the Constitution of Japan, undertook various reforms and built the foundation of Japan that we know today. I have profound gratitude for the efforts made by the Japanese people at the time who helped reconstruct and improve the country devastated by the war. I also feel that we must not forget the help extended to us in those days by Americans with an understanding of Japan and Japanese culture. Today, more than sixty years since the end of the war, we have seen that, in the face of major disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake [March 11, 2011], there are so many people in Japan who value the bonds between people, can deal with various situations calmly, and work hard towards reconstruction. I have found this most reassuring.”

Akihito (1933) Emperor of Japan

War , People , Peace , Feeling

“Boobs are the center of power. Boobs can make a 6-month old baby and a 65 year old man both act the same way. And I'm a big fan. Oh, man, I love 'em! And I ain't picky neither. I hate when I hear guys go "I don't like little boobs." I don't care! Big boobs, little boobs, saggy boobs, perky boobs. You could have boobs that look like nanners, I don't give a damn! They're the perfect toy! You squish them, mush them, POOF! They come right back out! You can't even break 'em! Oh, they're amazing. Boobs can make a long trip seem short, make a bad day seem great. [Points to member of the audience] Bud, let's say you had a bad day at work. Boss been chewing you out all day long. Little girl sitting next to you shows you her boobs, you're like, "This day was GREAT!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

Love , Hate , Way , Guy

“I quite like talking myself, but when Peter was in the room there wasn't much point, you just had to listen. He was unimaginably, overwhelmingly gifted. You had to imagine a cross between Dr. Johnson, Isaiah Berlin, Peter Sellers and don't forget Charlie Chaplin — because Peter was a great mime too. … He was inexhaustible. It was like talking to Europe, talking to history.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Peter Ustinov (BBC News, March 29, 2004)
Essays and reviews

Imagination , History , Forgetting

“So Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by Justice lopt and bound;
Nay, where the People would be great,
As necessary to the State,
As Hunger is to make 'em eat.
Bare Virtue can't make Nations live
In Splendor; they, that would revive
A Golden Age, must be as free,
For Acorns, as for Honesty.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

"The Moral", line 17, p. 24
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Hunger , People , Age , Justice

“It is difficult to pronounce on the opinion of the ministers of our Church as a body: one portion of them, by far the least informed, protests against anything which can advance the honour and the interests of science, because, in their limited and mistaken view, science is adverse to religion. This is not the place to argue that great question. It is sufficient to remark, that the best-informed and most enlightened men of all creeds and pursuits, agree that truth can never damage truth, and that every truth is allied indissolubly by chains more or less circuitous with all other truths; whilst error, at every step we make in its diffusion, becomes not only wider apart and more discordant from all truths, but has also the additional chance of destruction from all rival errors.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225

Men , Truth , Religion , Error

“There are certain great sentiments which simultaneously possess many minds and make what we call the spirit of the age. That spirit at the close of the last century was peculiarly humane. From the great Spanish Cardinal Ximenes, who refused the proposal of the Bishop Las Casas to enslave the Indians; from Milton, who sang, 'But man over man He made not Lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free', from John Selden, who said, 'Before all, Liberty', from Algernon Sidney, who died for it, from Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Richard Baxter, the Dissenter, with his great contemporary, George Fox, whose protest has been faithfully maintained by the Quakers; from Southern, Montesquieu, Hutcheson, Savage, Shenstone, Sterne, Warburton, Voltaire, Rosseau, down to Cowper and Clarkson in 1783 — by the mouths of all these and innumerable others Religion, Scepticism, Literature, and Wit had persistently protested against the sin of slavery. As early as 1705 Lord Holt had declared there was no such thing as a slave by the law of England. At the close of the century, four years before our Declaration, Lord Mansfield, though yearning to please the planters, was yet compelled to utter the reluctant 'Amen' to the words of his predecessor. Shall we believe Lord Mansfield, who lived in the time and spoke for it, when he declared that wherever English law extended — and it extended to these colonies — there was no man whatsoever so poor and outcast but had rights sacred as the king's; or shall we believe a judge eighty-four years afterwards, who says that at that time Africans were regarded as people 'who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

I am not a lawyer, but, for the sake of the liberty of my countrymen, I trust the law of the Supreme Court of the United States is better than its knowledge of history.
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People , Age , Religion , Law

“But what this deed should be was kept secret from me.
And in this I saw that He willeth not that we dread to know the things that He sheweth: He sheweth them because He would have us know them; by which knowing He would have us love Him and have pleasure and endlessly enjoy in Him. For the great love that He hath to us He sheweth us all that is worshipful and profitable for the time.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Love , Pleasure , Secret , Time

“We had had the help during the past 20 months…of a number of Dominion statesmen. Our touch with those who guided the destinies of the Commonwealth was very close and constant. That was very right and necessary, because we were all engaged in the same great venture, we were all defending a common heritage—the cause of freedom and democracy. The links which united us with the free peoples of the Commonwealth proved their strength, and as we stood together in war so we should stand together in peace to create a new and better world.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the 65th anniversary luncheon of the United Wards' Club in the Connaught Rooms, London (23 February 1942), quoted in The Times (24 February 1942), p. 2.
War Cabinet

War , People , World , Peace

“…next to the winning of the war the most vital matter was the building of peace on firm foundations. … The young generation of Germans had been deliberately perverted and trained in savagery. With German thoroughness the very malleable youth of Germany had been moulded into the shape of their leaders. It would be a long time before they could be civilized. It was madness to expect that suddenly S. S. men and Hitler Youth would turn into good, peaceful citizens and democrats. The German and Japanese nations had for years been directed to false aims and ideals. A great moral and mental revolution would be required before they would be fit to be trusted. Both these nations must be disarmed and deprived of the power to start new wars, and there must be an organization to ensure peace and with power to enforce it.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Caxton Hall, London (12 December 1944), quoted in The Times (13 December 1944), p. 2.
War Cabinet

Men , War , Youth , Peace

“Since the great French Revolution all colour has been gradually dying out of the male costume, until we have got reduced to our present gamut of brown, black and neutral tint; which, combined with the chimney-pot hat and the swallow-tailed coat, form a costume by no means particularly adapted to refresh the eye seeking for form or colour.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 8

“Many people will tell you of his wonderful qualities and his many accomplishments, but what makes him special to me, the truth many people don't want you to remember, is that Dr. king was a great activist, fighting for radical social change with radical methods.
While other people talked about change, Dr. King used direct action to challenge the system. He welcomed it, and used it wisely.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)

People , Truth , Change , Fight

“Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Speech on Social Purity (Spring 1875)

Life , Women , Men , Marriage

“Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

In "Crimes against nature" in Rolling Stone magazine (11 December 2003).

Democracy , Understanding , Country

“.. I did a great deal of work [in 1903, Normandy]. And I understood how to transfer nature into colors appropriate to the odor of my soul. I painted a large number of landscapes there, bushes and Breton heads from my window. The pictures were glowing with color. And my inner self was contended.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky, c. 1903; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 114
1900 - 1935

Color , Soul , Nature , Painting

“He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will see the defect when the weavingof a life-time is unrolled. Neglect of one duty often renders us unfit for another. God "is a rewarder," and one great principle on which He dispenses His rewards is this — through our faithfulness in one thing He bestows grace upon us to be faithful in another.”

Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 201.

Life , God , Faith , Time

“Materialism is our great enemy. It is the chief "ism" we have to combat and conquer. It is the mother of all the "isms". Without the conquest of materialism, our nations will decay from within while we prepare to defend ourselves against attacks from without.”

Frank Buchman (1878–1961) Evangelical theologist

Remaking the world, The Speeches of Frank N.D. Buchman, Blandford Presss 1947, revised 1958, p. 126
Quotes on the war of ideas

“Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act I
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

God , Law , Thinking , Country

“Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.
She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.”

John Barnes book Mother of Storms

Source: Mother of Storms (1994), p. 298

Hope , Thinking , Evil , Selfishness

“So many young, beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life, I won't call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that's a great name. I will call them from now on losers because that's what they are. They're losers. And we'll have more of them. But they're losers—just remember that.”

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

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/trump-manchester-losers/527745/
2010s, 2017, May

Life , People , Beauty , Thinking

“What kids see on the internet is mostly pornography and that is dangerous. The internet is being used as a platform for misinformation, selling spurious drugs and for terrorist activities. It is a great medium but being misused to bring about disaffection among people.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On the internet, as quoted in Kids mostly watch porn on internet, says Sibal http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kids-mostly-watch-porn-on-internet-says-Sibal/articleshow/16344454.cms, The Times of India (11 September 2012)

People

“It is evident that this, among many other of the purposes of my father's scheme of education, could not have been accomplished if he had not carefully kept me from having any great amount of intercourse with other boys. He was earnestly bent upon my escaping not only the ordinary corrupting influence which boys exercise over boys, but the contagion of vulgar modes of thought and feeling; and for this he was willing that I should pay the price of inferiority in the accomplishments which schoolboys in all countries chiefly cultivate. The deficiencies in my education were principally in the things which boys learn from being turned out to shift for themselves, and from being brought together in large numbers.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/35/mode/1up p. 35

Education , Exercises , Learning , Country

“It is great comedy to hear the secular, pro-gay left, so hostile to states’ rights in virtually every instance, suddenly discover the tyranny of centralized government. The newly minted protectors of local rule find themselves demanding: “Why should Washington dictate marriage standards for Massachusetts and California? Let the people of those states decide for themselves.” This is precisely the argument conservatives and libertarians have been making for decades! Why should Washington dictate education, abortion, environment, and labor rules to the states? The American people hold widely diverse views on virtually all political matters, and the Founders wanted the various state governments to most accurately reflect those views. This is the significance of the 10th Amendment, which the left in particular has abused for decades.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility , Marriage , People , Education

“I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything.”

E. L. Konigsburg (1930–2013) American writer and illustrator

Mrs. Frankweiler in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967)

Feeling , Thinking , Learning , Time

“We have pushed taxation of wealth to a point in Great Britain where in many cases the yield would be greater if the rate were less. The idea that prosperity can be wooed by chasing millionaires is one of the most common and most foolish of modern popular delusions.”

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

Soapbox Messiahs, Collier's, 20 June 1936
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol IV, Churchill at Large, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 335. ISBN 0903988453
The 1930s

Idea , Wealth

“Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another's air with another's breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Advice to his children (1699)

Time , Dependency

“Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i. e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon... It has a great deal in common with my own motifs, which I make turn on various axes too. Nowadays I have such a powerful sense of relationship, of affinity, that when I am listening to Bach I frequently get inspired and feel an overwhelming instinct for his insistent rhythm, a cadence seeking something of the infinite. In the Fugue everything is based on a single motif, often consisting of just a few notes. In my work, too, everything revolves around a single closed contour..”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van M.C. Escher, in het Nederlands): 'Nu wou ik je nog wat zeggen over het verband met muziek, en wel in hoofdzaak met die van Bach, d.w.z. de Fuga, of eenvoudiger canon.. .Het heeft heel veel van mijn motieven, die ik ook om verschillende assen laat draaien. Ik heb dat gevoel van relatie, verwantschap, tegenwoordig zoo sterk, dat ik tijdens het luisteren naar Bach, dikwijls geïnspireerd word en een sterke drang naar zijn dwingende ritme voel, een cadans die iets van de eindeloosheid zoekt. In de Fuga is alles gebaseerd op een enkel motief, dikwijls maar van enkele noten. Bij mij draait ook alles om een enkele gesloten contour..
Quote from Escher’s letter, 1940 to his friend Hein 's-Gravezande; as cited (and translated!) on the website of museum 'Escher in the Palace', The Hague: dutch original text https://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/escher-vandaag and english translation https://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/escher-today/?lang=en
1940's

Music , Feeling , Sense

“Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.”

George Eliot book Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Part 1
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

Books , World , Knowledge

“History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”

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

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)

Truth , History , Teachers , Forgetting

“I told them that my grandfather had died in the Great Crash of 1929 — a stockbroker jumped out of a window and crushed him and his pushcart down below.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

On meeting with a group assembled by David Rockefeller, New York Times (14 September 1986)

“Writers don’t so much write about their own lives as create them, Barthes said; it’s an oddly modern idea. Bengalis, similarly, had to make their own history. They did it in houses, tenements, and in neighbourhoods connected by stifling alleys that are no wider than a small room … And this is why I feel, even now, that the most revealing places in Calcutta are not the museums or the great monuments … but the houses and lanes in which people live.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Calcutta: Two Years in The City (2013)

People , Feeling , History , Idea

“Football is a machismo sport, which is great, but everything can't be machismo. On the field and at practice, yes, you can be machismo, but when it comes to diet, you need to have compassion for your body. … My food is my medication now. … I get a lot of success talking to older guys because they're like 30 years old and have children. I tell them, 'You might want to change the way that you eat because you want to be around longer and see your family and your daughter graduate.”

David Carter (1987) Player of American Football

"NFL veganism? David Carter, Griff Whalen have broken the mold" http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000711369/article/nfl-veganism-david-carter-griff-whalen-have-broken-the-mold, interview with NFL.com (28 September 2016).

Children , Family , Food , Way

“I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Praed, Act IV
1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)

“Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

King Aegistheus, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Soul , Thinking , Change , Time

“I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge Empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of Government.”

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. 274-275.
1850s

War , People , Beauty , Feeling

“My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity—of the wonder of innumerable forms of life—has always thrilled me beyond anything else.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

Personal correspondence, quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, "Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!", Dinosaur in a Haystack (Harmony, 1995), p. 245

Love , Life , History , Nature

“M. Poincaré has been a great, a very great president…Posterity…will ratify this judgment, and its admiration will increase with the revelation of documents in which the clear-sighted patriotism, the tenacity, the patience, the courageous confidence of the outgoing president are affirmed. It is known what he said…and he was an incomparable orator. It is hardly suspected how much good he did and how much evil he prevented, without ever departing from constitutional correctness.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Louis Barthou in L'Excelsior (18 February 1920), quoted in Gordon Wright, Raymond Poincaré and the French Presidency (New York: Octagon Books, 1967), p. 240, n. 36.
About

Confidence , Courage , Evil , Patience

“It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

"The Colour of Life" in The Colour of Life and Other Essays on Things Seen and Heard (London: John Lane, 1896), p. 4.

Nature , Time

“Around the middle of February, I called on Goering one evening in Karinhall. I had discovered from studying the military map that he had concentrated his parachute division around his hunting estate. For a long time he had been made the scapegoat for all the failures of the Luftwaffe. At the situation conferences Hitler habitually denounced him in the most violent and insulting language before the assembled officers. He must have been even nastier in the scenes he had with Goering privately. Often, waiting in the anteroom, I could hear Hitler shouting at him. That evening in Karinhall, I established a certain intimacy with Goering for the first and only time. Goering had an excellent Rotschild-Lafite served at the fireplace and ordered the servant not to disturb us. Candidly, I described my disappointment with Hitler. Just as candidly, Goering replied that he well understood me and that he often felt much the same. However, he said, it was easier for me, since I had joined Hitler a great deal later and could free myself from him all the sooner. He, Goering, had much closer ties with Hitler; many years of common experiences and struggles had bound them together- and he could no longer break loose.”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 426

Disappointment , Failure , Study , Time

“to death's abode
Prone lies the path, and facile is the road.
To all who seek them open day and night,
Pluto's black gates with broad access invite.
But to recall the foot, retrace the way
Up the dark steep, and re-assert the day—
This is the labor, this the mighty feat,
Achieved by few, the greatest of the great.”

Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet

Book VI, lines 185–192
The Æneis (1817)

Death , Way , Night

“We notice the movement of automobiles and other beings in the street, but we do not notice that the turning of the earth. We believe that automobiles go at a great speed on a fixed ground; yet the speed of the earth's rotation at the equator is 40,000 km every 24 hours.
As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearance, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures. It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility for beauty.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Quote of Calder (8 March 1932), in text 'That which moves - On mobile sculptures', unpubl. MS https://web.archive.org/web/20110222045901/http://calder.org:80/historicaltexts/text/5.html, 1932, Calder Foundation Archives, New York
1930s - 1950s

Law , Beauty , Art , Appearance

“While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.”

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

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

Quotes about greatness page 86

Quotes about greatness
page 86