Quotes about greatness
page 90

“I was very thirsty. Laying in the bathtub, looking up at the faucet, I thought of a great idea. So I turned the nozzle on full blast, and put my mouth up to it. It was like drinking from a firehose, but I was too drunk and dehydrated to notice that I was getting completely soaked, or that water was shooting out of my nose.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

My 21st Birthday http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/my_21st_birthday.phtml#612, The Tucker Max Stories

Idea, Drink, Water

“I consider a good reputation is a great part of the human happiness. Some people, if they are very, very rich can permit themselves certain negligence to their reputations.”

Aristotle Onassis (1906–1975) Greek shipping magnate

Quoted in Peter Evans, Ari: Life and Times of Aristotle Socrates Onassis, (1978) (p. 73 in the 1986 Summit Books edition)

Happiness, People, Parting

“My coaches and teammates really trusted me and gave me a chance to improve. They would come to me after a game I didn't score and say, 'Hey, don't worry about it. Next game you'll score.' The guys were great. It's an unbelievable team. It feels like home for me.”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

The Canadian Press (June 23, 2006) "Ovechkin captures Calder Trophy; Russian sniper picked over Cole Harbour's Crosby", The Chronicle Herald, p. C4.

Guy, Feeling, Home, Game

“I was studying agriculture, how to produce better chickens, better cattle, better horses — horses in those days — better fruit, better vegetables. This was in the early years of the Great Depression, and the thoughts crossed my mind that there wasn't a hell of a lot of use producing better crops and better livestock if you couldn't sell them, that the real problem of agriculture was not efficiency in production but the problem of whether you could make money after you produced the stuff. So I shifted from the technical side to, first, the study of agricultural economic issues and then on to economics itself.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Booknotes interview (1994)

Money, Hell, Problem, Study

“I knew metal working before I knew Calder [famous for his sculptures, made in sheet metal], and Calder is one of our great men and he is earlier by a few years than any of the rest of us [in American Abstract Expressionism ]. Calder had worked in Paris quite a bit in the early days, though he did go to school here in New York at the Art Student's League... After my first year in college I had worked on the assembly line in the Studebaker plants up in Indiana..”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

In an interview with w:David Sylvester (1960), edited for BBC broadcasting: first published in 'Living Arts', April 1964; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 10
1960s

Men, School, Art

“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (13 October 1886)
Letters, etc

Tree

“One of my brothers was nearly of my own age; and he it was whom I most loved, though I was very fond of them all, and they of me. He and I used to read Lives of Saints together. When I read of martyrdom undergone by the Saints for the love of God, it struck me that the vision of God was very cheaply purchased; and I had a great desire to die a martyr's death, — not out of any love of Him of which I was conscious, but that I might most quickly attain to the fruition of those great joys of which I read that they were reserved in Heaven; and I used to discuss with my brother how we could become martyrs. We settled to go together to the country of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, that we might be there beheaded; and our Lord, I believe, had given us courage enough, even at so tender an age, if we could have found the means to proceed; but our greatest difficulty seemed to be our father and mother.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. I "Childhood and early Impressions" ¶ 4

Love, Death, God, Age

“As parents, we can do a great deal to further this goal by helping our children develop alternative ways of knowing the world — verbally/analytically and visually/spatially. During the crucial early years, parents can help to shape a child's life in such a way that words do not completely mask other kinds of reality. My most urgent suggestions to parents are concerned with the use of words, or rather, not using words.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.239

Life, Children, World, Way

“We doubt not the destiny of our country — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"American Facts" in Life Without and Life Within (1860) edited by Arthur Buckminster Fuller, p. 108.

World, Way, Nature, Falseness

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould,. p. 195.
Decade unclear

People, Art, Error, Thinking

“What should have occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall? For almost 50 years, America had sacrificed its wealth and at times the lives of its young, to contain armed communism. Its brave pilots risked their lives by skimming the hills of Western Europe to the great annoyance of German picnickers whose liberty depended, in fact, on such sacrifice. Its submariners left behind comfort, family, and friends, to make full deterrents real. Its men and women in uniform stood at places of peril, willing to risk their lives for our liberty. The West did whatever it had to do to prevent the armed Bolsheviks from achieving tactical or strategic superiority. It sustained its will and its great burden of debt even when its artists, college students, professors, authors and filmmakers, turned against the alleged folly of such efforts. It obsessed on communism and anti-communism; it was haunted by its own and its enemy's bombs, missiles, and nuclear strategies. This was the burden it chose to bear. And then, in a seeming miracle, the fatal weaknesses of tyranny, central planning, and il-liberalism, at a moment of American will, were actualized in the collapse of European communism. Now we could assess and do a real accounting of what we had fought to preserve and to prevent.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Women, Men, Family, Communication

“…one day there came a great strike in the coalfields. It was one of the earlier strikes, and it became a national strike. We tried to carry on as long as we could, but of course it became more and more difficult to carry on, and gradually furnace after furnace was damped down; the chimneys erased to smoke, and about 1,000 men who had no interest in the dispute that was going on were thrown out of work through no fault of their own, at a time when there was no unemployment benefit. I confess that that event set me thinking very hard. It seemed to me at that time a monstrous injustice to these men, because I looked upon them as my own family, and it hit me very hard—I would not have mentioned this only it got into the Press two or three years ago—and I made an allowance to them, not a large one, but something, for six weeks to carry them along, because I felt that they were being so unfairly treated. But there was more in it really than that. There was no conscious unfair treatment, of these men by the miners. It simply was that we were gradually passing into a new state of industry, when the small firms and the small industries were being squeezed out. Business was all tending towards great amalgamations on the one side of employers and on the other side of the men…We have to see what wise statesmanship can do to steer the country through this time of evolution, until we can get to the next stage of our industrial civilisation.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925). 1925

Men, Family, Business, Thinking

“When someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O'Hara, leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), Ch. 2: A Couple of Deaths and Exits.

Truth, Thinking, Parting

“In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. …
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Pain, Happiness, Health, Pleasure

“Some one, I think it was Isaac Disraeli, said that he who did not make himself acquainted with the best thoughts of the greatest writers would one day be mortified to observe that his best thoughts are their indifferent ones, and it is from the great books that have stood the test of time that we shall get, not only the most lasting pleasure, but a standard by which to measure our own thoughts, the thoughts of others, and the excellence of the literature of our own day.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

Pleasure, Books, Literature, Thinking

“Dark underbelly to all of this. Sarajevo, where the [Olympic] Games were held in '84, is under threat. The UN and NATO have ordered the Serbs to have their big guns off the surrounding hills by midnight, February 20. All the love that is being manifested in these Games was once manifested in Sarajevo. The cameras pan across the great stadium — bombed out, an empty shell. […] Ten years ago, all that glory gleamed in the center of what is now a cemetery for the dead killed in a ferocious attack. What sense does it make?”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Bone: Dying into Life (2000), p. 94

Love, Game, Sense, Dead

“A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. It will always work, on those who can receive it, the same catharsis.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"Haggard Rides Again", in Time and Tide, Vol. XLI (3 September 1960)

“Favoritism, elitism, leader-worship, they crept back and cropped out everywhere. But she had never hoped to see them eradicated in her lifetime, in one generation; only Time works the great changes.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Day Before the Revolution” p. 265 (originally published in Galaxy, August 1974)
Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1974
Hugo nominee for Best Short Story in 1975
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Hope, Change, Time

“He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.”

Tom Wolfe book Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

"The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America"
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)

Night

“I was reading about and looking at Mantegna [Italian early-Renaissance painter]. I can sense how good he is for me. His enormous plasticity - it has such powerful substance. That is just what is lacking in my things. I could do something about that if I could add his substantiality to the greatness of form I'm struggling for. At present I see before my eyes very simple and barely articulated things. My second major stumbling is my lack of intimacy. Mackensen's [her former teacher] way of portraying the people here is not great enough for me, too genre like. Whoever could, ought to capture them in runic script..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1898; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 197
1898

People, Way, Sense, Teachers

“The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.”

Willa Cather book The Professor's House

Book I, Ch. 1
The Professor's thoughts on Lake Michigan
The Professor's House (1925)

Life, Sun

“Experience is nearly always commonplace; the present is not romantic in the way the past is, and ideals and great visions have a way of becoming shoddy and squalid in practical life. Literature reverses this process.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

Life, Way, Literature, Past

“In all their polemics, the anti-creationists invariably avoid discussing the actual scientific evidence for macro-evolution. If there were any such evidence, they could easily settle the whole conflict, merely by presenting the evidence! Instead they seem compelled to resort to bombast ridicule, defamation, intimidation, and distortion. Surely that great body of working scientists, largely uninvolved so far in the creation/evolution conflict will soon begin to see that a two-model approach to all scientific study is salutary and will persuade their more emotional brethren to open their minds to potential truth wherever it might be found.”

Henry M. Morris (1918–2006) American young earth creationist and Christian apologist

" The Anti-Creationist http://www.icr.org/article/179/" (1981)

Truth, Study

“In a fashion, at least in your time, science has as much as religion to fear from the free intellect as religion does. And (with irony) any strong combination of intellectual and intuitional abilities is not tailor-made to bring you great friends from either category. Science has, unfortunately, bound up the minds of its own most original thinkers, for they dare not stray from certain scientific principles.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 146

Fear, Religion, Fashion, Strong

“It is remarkable that this generalization of plane geometry to surface geometry is identical with that generalization of geometry which originated from the analysis of the axiom of parallels. …the construction of non-Euclidean geometries could have been equally well based upon the elimination of other axioms. It was perhaps due to an intuitive feeling for theoretical fruitfulness that the criticism always centered around the axiom of parallels. For in this way the axiomatic basis was created for that extension of geometry in which the metric appears as an independent variable. Once the significance of the metric as the characteristic feature of the plane has been recognized from the viewpoint of Gauss' plane theory, it is easy to point out, conversely, its connection with the axiom of parallels. The property of the straight line as being the shortest connection between two points can be transferred to curved surfaces, and leads to the concept of straightest line; on the surface of the sphere the great circles play the role of the shortest line of connection… analogous to that of the straight line on the plane. Yet while the great circles as "straight lines" share the most important property with those of the plane, they are distinct from the latter with respect to the axiom of the parallels: all great circles of the sphere intersect and therefore there are no parallels among these "straight lines". …If this idea is carried through, and all axioms are formulated on the understanding that by "straight lines" are meant the great circles of the sphere and by "plane" is meant the surface of the sphere, it turns out that this system of elements satisfies the system of axioms within two dimensions which is nearly identical in all of it statements with the axiomatic system of Euclidean geometry; the only exception is the formulation of the axiom of the parallels.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The geometry of the spherical surface can be viewed as the realization of a two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry: the denial of the axiom of the parallels singles out that generalization of geometry which occurs in the transition from the plane to the curve surface.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Way, Feeling, Idea, Understanding

“The Albanian people will throw themselves in to the flames for their true friends, and the Soviet Union is such a friend of the Albanian people. And these are not empty words. I am expressing here the sentiments of our people and of our Party, and let no one ever think that we love the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for the sake of some one's beautiful eyes or to please some individual, but because without the Soviet Union there would be no free life in the world today, fascism and capitalist terror would reign supreme. This is why we love and will always be loyal to the Soviet Union and to the Party of the great Lenin.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

Love, Life, People, World

“What a foolish thing it is to be governed by a desire for fame and profit and to fret away one's whole life without a moment of peace. Great wealth is no guarantee of security. Wealth, in fact, tends to attract calamities and disaster.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

38
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Life, Peace, Wealth

“I was engaged in what I believe to be the most thrilling industry in the world — aviation. My heart still leaps when I see a tiny two-seater plane soaring gracefully through the sky. Our great airlines awe me. Yet I know they were not produced in a day or a decade.”

William A. Patterson (1899–1980) President of United Airlines from 1934 until 1966

Unsourced

World, Heart

“Science has fairly turned us out of our comfortable little anthropomorphic notion of things into the great out-of-doors of the universe. We must and will get used to the chill, yea, to the cosmic chill, if need be. Our religious instincts will be all the hardier for it.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Time and Change, p. 2 (1912)

Universe, Science

“No prophet ever encountered God without withdrawing into solitude and silence. Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist encountered God in the great silence of the desert. Today, too, monks seek God in solitude and silence. I am speaking, not just about geographical solitude or movement, but about an interior state. It is not enough to be quiet, either. It is necessary to become silence. For, even before the desert, the solitude and the silence, God is already in man. The true desert is within us, in our soul. Strengthened with this knowledge, we can understand how silence is indispensable if we are to find God. The Father waits for his children in their own hearts.”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017)

God, Children, Soul, Understanding

“In modern times, the clearest example of history in the ancient, great cycle mode, is found in the work of another German socialist philosopher: Oswald Spengler. Modeling civilizations on the life-cycles of organic beings, he plotted their rise and inevitable decay through predictable phases. For the West, firmly locked into the downside of the wave, relentless, accelerating degeneration can be confidently anticipated. Spengler’s withering pessimism seems not to have detracted significantly from the cultural comfort derived from his archetypal historical scheme.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Eternal Return, and After" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718030428/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/269/eternal-return-and-after (2011)

Life, Confidence, History, Time

“At the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father's many talks to us, and through my studies. Father encouraged us to set our sights high and accomplish great things. He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity. My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted and thus saw no room for God's involvement in nature or history; in the process, they re-interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even God as products of human imagination. Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph. D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.”

Jonathan Wells (1942) American intelligent design advocate

Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/DARWIN.htm

Life, God, World, Imagination

“Your Highnesses have an Other World here, by which our holy faith can be so greatly advanced and from which such great wealth can be drawn.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Letter to the Sovereigns (1498)

World, Faith, Wealth

“Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

Money, Success

“We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Nous n'avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n'en avons pas de grands.
Maxim 327.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“She broke in with a question that staggered him.
"Does your idea mean that the next world is a sort of great reservoir of truth, and that what is true in us just pours into it like raindrops?"
"Well!" said he, alarmed and puzzled: "the figure is not perfectly correct, but the idea is a little of that kind."
"After all I wonder whether that may not be what Niagara has been telling me!" said Esther, and she spoke with an outburst of energy that made Strong's blood run cold.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Esther Dudley and George Strong in Ch. IX
Esther: A Novel (1884)

Truth, World, Idea, Question

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Gods and Greens" (1989)
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

Democracy

“The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.”

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

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 371
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Wisdom, Behavior, Support

“I believe the Great Pyramid was built to be the Bible in stone. The Egyptians did not build it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

“Invariably will you find perseverance exemplified as the radical principle in every truly great character. It facilitates, perfects, and consolidates the execution of the plan conceived, and renders profitable its results when attained. By continuing to advance steadily in the same way, light constantly increases, obstacles disappear, efficient habits are confirmed, experience is acquired, the use of the best means is reduced to easy action, and success becomes more sure.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 450.

Way, Light, Success, Perfection

“Renoir is a great success on the Salon; I think he is 'launched'. All the better! It's a very hard life, being poor.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to Mr. Murer, 27th May 1879, as quoted in Renoir – his life and work Francois Fosca, Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 129
1870's

Life, Thinking, Success

“Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity… President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care and made it a great power.”

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

2010s, 2016, April, Foreign Policy Speech (27 April 2016)

Love, Democracy

“The Raja of Malwa had 5,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry and would have been defeated only after great slaughter. The inhabitants of Kaithal were given such severe punishment (1254) that "they might not forget the lesson for the rest of their lives". In 1256 Ulugh Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Saimur, and "so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described". Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and many of its valiant fighting men were killed. In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) "numberless Hindus perished. In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sword in Hariyana." When Balban became the sultan "large sections of the male population were massacred in Katehar and, according to Barani, in villages and jungles heaps of human corpses were left rotting". During the expedition to Bengal, "on either side of the principal bazar (of Lakhnauti), in a street two miles in length, a row of stakes was set up and the adherents of Tughril were impaled upon them"….. During campaigns and wars, the disorganized flight of the panic-stricken people must have killed large numbers through exposure, starvation and epidemic. Nor should the ravages of famines on populations be ignored. Drought, pestilence, and famines in the medieval times find repeated mention in contemporary chronicles.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 7

Women, Men, War, Children

“We still have a great amount of work to do in social development, including resolving one of the biggest challenges we face in this area, namely, reducing the gap between high-income earners and people, citizens of our country, who are still living on very modest means indeed. But we cannot, of course, adopt the solution used 80 years ago and simply confiscate the riches of some to redistribute among others. We will use completely different means to resolve this problem, namely, we will ensure good economic growth.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/01/1309_type82915_117609.shtml 2006- 2010

People, Problem, Country

“Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

Fritz Leiber book Poor Superman

Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1951, under the title "Appointment in Tomorrow".
Short Fiction, Poor Superman (1951)

Life

“I quoted F. S. Oliver's words: `politics is the noblest career that any man can choose. Stout must be the hearts of those who take so great a risk and who dedicate themselves--souls as well as bodies--to the service of their country.”

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

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), On Politics and Propaganda, p. 181

Quotes, Soul, Heart, Country

“If the authority of the National-Socialist Reich is to be upheld, then it is unacceptable that representatives of the Reich should be obliged to meet Jews when they enter or leave the house, and are in this way liable to infection with epidemics. I therefore intend to clear the city of Cracow, the seat of the Governor-General of the General Government, of Jews, as far as at all possible, by November 1, 1940. There will be a major operation to move the Jews, on the grounds that it is absolutely intolerable that thousands upon thousands of Jews should go slinking around and occupy apartments in the city which the Führer has granted the great honor of becoming the seat of a high Reich Authority…”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

April 12, 1940, from "Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews" - Page 197 - by Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, Abraham Margaliot, Lea Ben Dor, Steven T. Katz - 1999

Way, Housing

“I tend to think young people get it. Young people, you see them, their lives revolve around their cell phone. They realize if I want to know about their life, I collect data from their phone…Do we want to live in a world where the government knows everything about us? Do we want to live in a world where the government has us under constant surveillance? They’ll say we’re not looking at it. We’re just keeping it in case we want to look at it. The danger is too great to let government collect your information. And I think there is a valid question whether or not simply the collecting of your information is something that goes against the Constitution.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2015-05-20
Full Transcript: Rand Paul’s Filibuster of the PATRIOT Act, Hour 2
Breitbart
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/20/full-transcript-rand-pauls-filibuster-of-the-patriot-act-hour-2/
2015-06-13
2010s

Life, People, World, Question

“Only now [1943] I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions... In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

note from his postcard, late May 1943; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 240
1940's

Color, Drawing, Painting

“Mindfulness, though so highly praised and capable of such great achievements, is not at all a “mystical” state, beyond the ken and reach of the average person. It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 24

Personality

“We last met in an hour of shock and suffering. In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

People, World, Suffering, Training

“I am a big Beatles fan. And, you know, unbeknownst to anyone, I used to be one. But I have no problems of putting titles and lines from other songs in my songs, because they're great lines and great titles. And some of them I even thought of. You know, I think this is the third time I've used "It Don't Come Easy." I used that on "Time Takes Time," I think, as well. So it's just a great line that, you know, expresses so much. So I just put it in again.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Ringo Rama promotional interview with Jody Denberg (July 2003) http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/jodyringorama.html

Problem, Thinking, Time

“He wrote with great care, and with a sharpness, vivacity, and variety of epithet that give immediate and continuing pleasure, but he was not in any serious sense a novelist or even a writer of fiction. His emotionally injured self is the sole character of his fictions, with everybody else seen through the haze of his paranoia, like figures in a fun-fair mirror.”

Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) British writer, photographer and historian

Julian Symons, in the Times Literary Supplement, January 3, 1975.
Criticism

Pleasure, Sense

“The great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind.”

Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944) American writer

Source: Modes and Morals (1920), Ch. 1

Life, Happiness, Health, Pleasure

“I don't really see a conflict between the church and the movies, the sacred and the profane…there are major differences, but I could also see great similarities…Both are places for people to come together and share.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

Scorsese: A Personal Journey through American Movies.

People

“Why illustrate a great piece of writing whose very advocacy and evocation and efficacy lies within its very existence as writing?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text

“I was in Rotterdam, but the exhibition there was horrible. Le Fauconnier has nothing to tell anymore. He has a dirty color now and has become a real academic. Mondrian is completely frozen, no poetry at all anymore. It's terrible that these people can not reach further with great ideals. To my taste Alma paints far too much naturalistic. A big difference, these three, compared to [Franz] Marc, Kandinsky, Filla etc..”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:)Ich war in Rotterdam, aber da war eine schreckliche Ausstellung. Le Fauconnier ist nichts mehr. Er hat jetzt eine schmutzige Farbe uns ist ein richtiger Akademiker. Mondrian ist ganz erstarrt, gar kein Poesie mehr. Es ist doch schrecklich, dass die Leute nicht weiter kommen mit grossen Idealen. Alma ist für meinen Geschmack viel zu viel Naturalist. Ein grösser Unterschied, die drei und [Franz] Marc, Kandinsky, Filla etc..
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 9 Feb. 1915; as cited by Arend H. Huussen Jr. in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 13
1910's

People, Color, Painting

“I think that people imagine protocol and etiquette as some kind of great dragon that hovers behind the pageantries of the palace to pounce on you and eat you up if you aren't behaving as you should. But in fact etiquette is saying how to do when you meet people, saying good night to your parents before going to bed, opening a door to a woman, getting up if an older person wants to sit down on the bus and it's all full, that is etiquette, or protocol, if you wish. At the everyday level, all the time, all of us. It's a way of knowing what you've got to do so that you have your mind free to do other things and think of other things.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Television documentary 'Queen Margrethe of Denmark', BBC & Jørgen Bonfils, 31:30, 28 April 1974.
Protocol

People, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“The cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva and the present inhabitants of the country are descendants of this great culture.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

On Hindutva, as quoted in " Cultural identity of all Indians is Hindutva, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat says http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Cultural-identity-of-all-Indians-is-Hindutva-RSS-chief-Mohan-Bhagwat-says/articleshow/40019241.cms", The Times of India (10 August 2014) 2011-2014

Country

“On the 7th azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying-places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection of which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmir. For two or three days I shot waterfowl on that tank, and returned to Ajmir. Old and new temples which, in the language of the infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles, had built a Deohara of great magnificence, on which 100,000 rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in the shape of a pig's head, and the rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank. After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Ajmer, Pushkar (Rajasthan) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. I, pp. 254-55.

Men, Religion, Fools, Intelligence

“Young painters are amazingly involved in their own research and are coming into their own personal perceptions. There is great hope for the future of art here. We will be the most vital art expression in the world.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

World, Hope, Art, Future

“I think classical music is a great, beautiful art as long as people recognize it. But first we need to calm down and listen to it with heart. In this technologically advanced time, too many things are drawing peoples' attention. Sometimes we need to slow down, look back and feel the beauty of art and life.”

Lang Lang (1982) Chinese pianist

huffingtonpost.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/lang-lang_n_1912686.html.

Life, People, Beauty, Art

“Today the value of everything has increased. Men sell their sperm and women their ova for a great deal of money, but ironically, in many countries, a child can be purchased for prostitution or forced labor for a pathetic sum of 10 to 20 dollars.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Speech Against Human Trafficking and Slavery at the Vatican (2014)

Women, Men, Money, Country

“Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs—we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

Andrew Grove, " Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-07-01/andy-grove-how-america-can-create-jobs", Bloomberg News, July 1, 2010 New millennium

Home, Business, Country

“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Bird, Wolf, Sun

“What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.
My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis we have these contests, and engage in spirited disagreement over the shape and course of our government.
We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, and promote the general welfare. But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other.
We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always. Let us argue our differences. But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them.
Our adversaries are weaker than us in arms and men, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity.
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We're Americans.
We're Americans, and we'll never surrender.
They will.”

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

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, Men, War, Fear

“The great problems of the world - social, political, economic and theological - do not concern me in the slightest…If all the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow and if half of Russia were to starve to death the day after, it would not matter to me in the least. What concerns me alone is myself and the interests of a few close friends.”

George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) American drama critic and magazine editor

Living Authors, H. W. Wilson (1932)

Death, World, Problem

“If we are a great national institution, if we care about the legacy left to us by those who have served before us, if we care about the legacy we leave to those who, in turn will protect and secure Australia, then it is up to us to make a difference. If you’re not up to it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Message regarding unacceptable behaviour (2013)

Life, Sister

“I have been fortunate to play some fantastic roles in musicals and I find it difficult to say which is my favourite. It's generally whichever I am playing at the time. However playing Eva Peron in Evita will always be particularly special to me. Being chosen to originate the role in the premiere of a much sought after and what became a ground-breaking, award-winning musical which launched my career was a great challenge and it gave me the opportunity to play more great roles in the future.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

As quoted in "Angie Davidson Interviews Elaine Paige" by Angie Davidson in lupus.org.uk (2005)

Music, Time, Future

“The greatest reason for Japan's participation in the Triple Alliance lies in the fact that the three signatory powers, at this time of great change in the world situation, have the same position, the same interest, and entertain the same political views. China is not Japan's real enemy in the present incident. In reality Japan is fighting Britain and America. The first thing we are now required to do is to carry out our southward advance.”

Toshio Shiratori (1887–1949) Japanese politician

Quoted in "World order in historical perspective" - Page 308 - by Hans Kohn - 1942.

World, Reality, Change, Time

“In the years when I was trying to get my work shown and accepted and so forth, I went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and that was my formal art school. You can learn a hell of a lot about sculpture, working in a railroad. The thing about getting a job outside of art is the fact that you can finds out whole areas of materials. I don't mean new ones. I mean old ones like scrap iron. A railroad is essentially a big collection of scrap iron, and that’s why it's great. You get out and beyond the art confine.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27

School, Art, Hell, Learning

“The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Men, God, Youth, Daughters

“[The corporation is an invaluable auxiliary to the conduct of foreign affairs by the Government, and] has become an international as well as a national instrument. It is a mighty institution which thus far has not become, and has manifested no great desire to become, an independent political force. In international life it is an experiment in non-national organization, pledged only to discharge certain economic functions.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

163 ; as cited in Prashker (1954)
The 20th century capitalist revolution. 1954

Life

“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

James Monroe (1758–1831) American politician, 5th President of the United States (in office from 1817 to 1825)

The Monroe Doctrine (2 December 1823)

Peace, Light, Parting, Dependency

“I came out of the room full of admiration for Modi. Somebody from the media asked me later, 'Why did you meet a chief minister from Gujarat?' I asked him, 'Why not? Kerala has had five chief ministers—K. Karunakaran, A. K. Antony, E. K. Nayanar, V. Achuthanadan[, ] and Oommen Chandy—since the case broke out, but not even one chief minister had the courtesy to talk to me.' But somebody from Gujarat showed an interest in meeting me and hearing my story. I felt great about it. If he had any political motive in meeting me, he would have done so in the public glare. But instead, he met me quietly at 9:30 pm, and he issued no press statement about the meeting.”

S. Nambi Narayanan (1941) scientist

Interview with S. Nambi Narayanan, 2014

Motivation

“Think about all the rules and regulations American businesses have to deal with. How can we compete with nations that don’t impose those excessive burdens? Does anyone think that the United States could ever have become a great power with all the rules, regulations, and taxation that exist today?”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

Business, Thinking

“Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 14
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IX

Learning

“The first documentary I saw as a child was Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) broadcast one Sunday afternoon. Nanook enchanted me by his courage to smile in a frozen wasteland, and by the simple fact that he wore a fur coat rather than a military uniform: this gentle hunter wasn’t a conqueror. Later, I understood how great Flaherty was: he told a timeless story without using commentary or pedagogues, and he didn’t interview Nanook like a celebrity or an aggressive talk-show host. He remained off-screen, observing and listening to create that exceptional complicity we feel in this documentary that eschews didacticism. The emotion of life found its counterpart in the emotion of art - a rare and precious achievement in a genre that is often limited to the emotion of the informational narrative.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On documentary influences, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Life, Smile, Art, Feeling

“So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John.”

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

2010s, 2017, July Source: Tweet by @realDonaldTrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889798407228989441 (25 July 2017)

“A healthy forest, untouched by forestry technology, is made up of a strange mixture of vegetation. Alongside well-defined areas of noble trees, conditions of apparent chaos can be found, which can best be described as irregular confusion. People who are not aware of the importance of the balance in Nature, of which the forest is a part, want to clear areas of everything they do not consider to be useful. A great deal of sensitive concern and observation is necessary to begin to understand why Nature depends on an apparently chaotic disorder.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger wrote in 1930
Living Water

People, Understanding, Nature, Tree

“Life is a chain of small sorrows that lead to a great joy.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 35
The Other Wife (2003)

Life, Joy

“The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
More powerful than all dust.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind

Sun, Heart

“Teller’s irascible behavior forced him out of the mainstream but not out of the lab, thanks to Oppenheimer who didn’t think we should be without geniuses, even those whose enormous egos caused serious friction. As bright and innovative as Teller was, his overall performance during the war left a lot to be desired. He was not content to be part of a team effort (like yours truly) and preferred to work off to the side on new and different and sometime pretty far-out ideas (like yours truly). This caused considerable resentment. After all there was a war going on and most people thought future nuclear weapon concepts should be worked on sometime in the future, after we had finished our primary assignment. Edward’s behavior was like a colonel on a planning staff during a military campaign who tells his commanding general that he’d like to plan for the next war. That would be the end of the colonel, who would be demoted and shipped off to some base in the Aleutian Islands.
[5]Oppenheimer, however, realized that guys like Teller, despite their shortcomings, were necessary to have around; one never knows when a guy like that can be worth his weight in gold, which to the best of my recollection never happened with Teller. So an arrangement was worked out where Teller and a handful of like-minded theoretical physicists, willing to put up with his domineering ways, formed a small group dedicated to doing what they pleased, realizing their efforts stood precious little chance of impacting on the project.
[5]The one idea dearest to Teller’s heart was the H-bomb. He and a couple of his cronies applied themselves to devising various schemes on designing such a weapon. All of them turned out to be impractical and most of them unworkable. Which never slowed him down in the slightest for reasons we’ll never know nor will he. I’ve known Edward for a very long time and although I’ve never known him well, one thing about him became clear to me from the very beginning: he was a creature possessed. By what? Again, who knows? Many, if not most, who have read about his life and what he has done, plus those who have known him directly and observed him close at hand and at great length, would say by Satan (which has been said all over the world about me). I wouldn’t go along with that and although I have seen Teller give some of the most impassioned statements morally defending his positions, some of which I have found deeply moving and thoroughly convincing, I would not say that the God I’ve been told exists has had a tight hold on him. If Edward has been possessed by anyone it’s been himself. I’d say the same for myself, and I’ve given you some reasons why, but hardly all of them. I don’t know all of them and would be ashamed to tell you if I did.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Life, God, War, People

“For as long as I can remember,' I said, continuing to speak to the figure standing in the archway, 'I have had an intense and highly aesthetic perception of what I call the icy bleakness of things. At the same time I have felt a great loneliness in this perception. This conjunction of feelings seems paradoxical, since such a perception, such a view of things, would seem to preclude the emotion of loneliness, or any sense of a killing sadness, as I think of it. All such heartbreaking sentiment, as usually considered, would seem to be on its knees before artworks such as yours, which so powerfully express what I have called the icy bleakness of things, submerging or devastating all sentiment in an atmosphere potent with desolate truths, permeated throughout with a visionary stagnation and lifelessness. Yet I must observe that the effect, as I now consider it, has been just the opposite. If it was your intent to evoke the icy bleakness of things with your dream monologues, then you have totally failed on both an artistic and an extra-artistic level. You have failed your art, you have failed yourself, and you have also failed me. If your artworks had really evoked the bleakness of things, then I would not have felt this need to know who you are, this killing sadness that there was actually someone who experienced the same sensations and mental states that I did and who could share them with me in the form of tape-recorded dream monologues. Who are you that I should feel this need to go to work hours before the sun comes up, that I should feel this was something I had to do and that you were someone that I had to know? This behavior violates every principle by which I have lived for as long as I can remember. Who are you to cause me to violate these long-lived principles?”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Bungalow House

Truth, Sadness, Dreams, Art

“This great squire—he was a very rich, influential man—sent for me to go down to his house when my work was over, in order to canvass me. I went down, and after some talk he said to me, "Do your Liberals find you employment?" "What has that to do with my vote?" I said. "I sell you my labour, but not my conscience; that's not for sale."”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), p. 58

Housing

“The biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the Medes and the Persians. Has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 355

World, Time

“We lost thousands of lives, thousands in Iraq. We have wounded soldiers, who I love, I love — they're great — all over the place, thousands and thousands of wounded soldiers. And we have nothing. We can't even go there. We have nothing. And every time we give Iraq equipment, the first time a bullet goes off in the air, they leave it.”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Love, Time

“There are no great men, there are only great challenges, which ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.”

William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (1882–1959) United States admiral

Quoted in the Congressional Record, 11 December 1971 http://books.google.com/books?id=ltuwtwQcKHwC&q=%22There+are+no+great+men+there+are%22+%22only+great+challenges+which+ordinary+men+like+you+and+me+are++forced+by+circumstances+to+meet%22&pg=PA46480#v=onepage.

Men