Quotes about ground
page 16

“This I (still) believe:
Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside use only…”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Facebook post (2014) https://www.facebook.com/james.nicoll.927/posts/10152710405547985 2010s

Dogs, Dreams, Thinking, Teachers

“The assertion of the priority of contemporaneity, the celebration of the present, defines the politics of periodization. It is either a matter of our present, defined as the vanguard of historical progress, or it is the historical present of the objects of study, presumed to be fully grounded in that single, isolated moment of time. In either case, the classificatory impulse inherent in periodization tends to proscribe the more complex temporalities of tradition and anticipation.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 20.

Study, Time

“The history of mathematics may be instructive as well as agreeable; it may not only remind us of what we have, but may also teach us to increase our store. Says De Morgan, "The early history of the mind of men with regards to mathematics leads us to point out our own errors; and in this respect it is well to pay attention to the history of mathematics." It warns us against hasty conclusions; it points out the importance of a good notation upon the progress of the science; it discourages excessive specialization on the part of the investigator, by showing how apparently distinct branches have been found to possess unexpected connecting links; it saves the student from wasting time and energy upon problems which were, perhaps, solved long since; it discourages him from attacking an unsolved problem by the same method which has led other mathematicians to failure; it teaches that fortifications can be taken by other ways than by direct attack, that when repulsed from a direct assault it is well to reconnoitre and occupy the surrounding ground and to discover the secret paths by which the apparently unconquerable position can be taken.”

Florian Cajori book A History of Mathematics

Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), pp. 1-2; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/198/mode/2up, (1914) p. 90; Study and research in mathematics

Men, Secret, Way, Error

“A sillie swaine, passing over an arm of the sea with his seede corne in a sacke, by mischance at the landing, his sacke fell into the water, and so his corne being lefte there till the next low water, became somewhat brackish, yet such was the necessity of the man, as that he (notwithstanding hee was out of all hope to have any good successe thereby, yet not being able to buie any other) bestowed the same wheat upon his plowed groundes, by the advice of a gentleman of good worship from whence I received the report thereof, and in June when the harvest time came about, he reaped a rich crop of goodly wheat such as in that yeare not any of his neighbours had the like, and yet notwithstanding (for aught that ever I could yet learne) neither he nor any other of his countrimen would ever adventure to make any further use thereof, belike being perswaded, unless that the corne by chance fell into the sea, it would never fructifie.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

As cited in: Robert Kemp Philp (1859, p. 74)
The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594

Hope, Learning, Water, Chance

“The human brain became large by natural selection (who knows why, but presumably for good cause). Yet surely most “things” now done by our brains, and essential both to our cultures and to our very survival, are epiphenomena of the computing power of this machine, not genetically grounded Darwinian entities created specifically by natural selection for their current function.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

"Cardboard Darwinism", pp. 48–49
An Urchin in the Storm (1987)

Nature

“Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

"Ode on Solitude", st. 1 (c. 1700).

Happiness

“[the process of painting.. ].. is conceived of as an adventure, without preconceived ideas on the part of persons of intelligence, sensibility, and passion. Fidelity to what occurs between oneself and the canvas, no matter how unexpected, becomes central.... the major decisions in the process of painting are on the grounds of truth, not taste…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
1950s

Truth, Intelligence, Idea, Decision

“If I were five-and-twenty or thirty, instead of, unhappily, twice that number of years, I would take Adam Smith in hand—I would not go beyond him, I would have no politics in it—I would take Adam Smith in hand, and I would have a League for free trade in Land just as we had a League for free trade in Corn. You will find just the same authority in Adam Smith for the one as for the other; and if it were only taken up as it must be taken up to succeed, not as a political, revolutionary, Radical, Chartist notion, but taken up on politico-economic grounds, the agitation would be certain to succeed; and if you apply free trade in land and to labour too—that is, by getting rid of those abominable restrictions in your parish settlements, and the like—then, I say, the men who do that will have done for England probably more than we have been able to do by making free trade in corn.”

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

Speech at Rochdale (23 November 1864), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. 493.
1860s

Men

“To me the entire uselessness of such rules^as practical guides lies in the inherent vagueness of the word "reasonable," the absolute impossibility of finding a definite standard, to be expressed in language, for the fairness and the reason of mankind, even of Judges. The reason and fairness of one man is manifestly no rule for the reason and fairness of another, and it is an awkward, but as far as I see, an inevitable consequence of the rule, that in every case where the decision of a Judge is overruled, who does or does not stop a case on the ground that there is, or is not, reasonable evidence for reasonable |men, those who overrule him say, by implication, that in the case before them, the Judge who is overruled is out of the pale of reasonable men.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Dublin, &c. Rail. Co. v. Slattery (1878), L. R. 3 App. Ca. 1197.

Men, Decision

“The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs…. A bad bargain is always a ground for repentance.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book XVIII, sec. 26.
Naturalis Historia

Men, Evil

“To prevent his inventions getting abroad to foreigners, Mr. Arkwright purposely omitted to give so full and particular a description of his inventions, in the specification of his last patent, as he would otherwise have done, believing, from the concluding clause in the patent, that he need not so fully describe. His patent right being largely infringed, he was obliged to prosecute some infringers, although an association was formed to resist him; but on a trial in the King's Bench in July 1781 a verdict was given against him, on the ground that his specification was not as full and accurate as the law requires. Having established a business that already employs above 5,000 persons, and a capital of not less than 200,000 l.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

he hopes to be relieved by Parliament, from the consequences of an unintentional error.
The case, 1782

Law, Hope, Error, Business

“When we have thus become seeing, then we can contemplate, in joy, the eternal coming of our Bridegroom, which is the second point about which we are going to speak. Now, what is the coming of our Bridegroom which is eternal? It is a new birth an a new enlightenment without cease. For the ground out of which the brightness shines, and which is the brightness itself, is living and fruitful. And therefore, the revelation of the eternal light is renewed without cease in the hiddenness of the spirit.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Birth, Light, Joy

“I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was there guiding things. I was there bringing people there. But I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

While campaigning in Cincinnati, as quoted in The New York Times (11 August 2007)

People, Sense

“Please give me a second grace.
Please give me a second face.
I've fallen far down
The first time around.
Now I just sit on the ground in your way.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Fly
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Way, Time

“.. an original Jewish art can only come into existence when the Jews have own ground under their feet and live in freedom [Bainin asked him: 'is that not what Zionism wants to reach?'] Yes, Zionism is a noble thought, but who knows whether they will reach their goal? Herzl visited me [in The Hague, Oct. 1898], he is a noble man and believes in his idea. But who will know... Now it is our duty to fight against Antisemitism, to protest against the injustice and violence that is done to us.... what is the essence of Jewish art should be determined by writers and art critics: we painters must work and not philosophize.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..een oorspronkelijke joodse kunst [kan] alleen tot stand komen, wanneer de joden eigen grond onder de voeten hebben en een vrij leven leiden [Bainin vroeg hem dan: 'is dat niet wat het Zionisme wil?'] Ja, het nl:Zionisme is een edele gedachte, maar wie weet of ze hun doel bereiken? Herzl heeft mij bezocht [in Den Haag, Oct. 1898], hij is een nobel mens en gelooft in zijn idee. Maar wie weet.. .Nu is het onze plicht het antisemitisme te bestrijden, tegen het onrecht en het geweld dat ons wordt aangedaan te protesteren.. ..wat het wezen is van de joodse kunst moeten schrijvers en kunstcritici maar bepalen: wij schilders moeten werken en niet filosoferen.
Quote in an interview with interviewer Bainin, 27 April 1902; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 59
At the moment Jozef was working on his painting 'De joodse wetschrijver' or 'De Joodse Bruiloft'
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Art, Idea, Freedom, Fight

“The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

http://www.pagetutor.com/standard/chapter02_part1.html

Money

“There are a couple of skills you take away from Housewives. You learn to be quick on your feet, stand your ground. I’ve always been kind of unapologetic, but you grow into that or into your own skin. You have a choice: you can either grow into your skin or you can back out. It will test your strength and patience - it will definitely run the gamut so you can figure out a little bit more of what you’re made of.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Billboard https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8301673/erika-jayne-pretty-mess-interview (2018)

Learning, Patience

“I am not one to advocate the reducing of our navy in any degree below that proportion to the French navy which the exigencies of our service require; and, mind what I say, here is just what the French Government would admit as freely as you would. England has four times, at least, the amount of mercantile tonnage to protect at sea that France has, and that surely gives us a legitimate pretension to have a larger navy than France. Besides, this country is an island; we cannot communicate with any part of the world except by sea. France, on the other hand, has a frontier upon land, by which she can communicate with the whole world. We have, I think, unfortunately for ourselves, about a hundred times the amount of territory beyond the seas to protect, as colonies and dependencies, that France has. France has also twice or three times as large an army as England had. All these things give us a right to have a navy somewhat in the proportion to the French navy which we find to have existed if we look back over the past century. Nobody has disputed it. I would be the last person who would ever advocate any undue change in this proportion. On the contrary—I have said it in the House of Commons, and I repeat it to you—if the French Government showed a sinister design to increase their navy to an equality with ours; then, after every explanation to prevent such an absurd waste, I should vote 100 millions sterling rather than allow that navy to be increased to a level with ours—because I should say that any attempt of that sort without any legitimate grounds, would argue some sinister design upon this country.”

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

Speech in Rochdale (26 June 1861), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 433-4.
1860s

World, Communication, Thinking, Change

“He is walking up an incline. There are tracks below him and the slow clatter of a freight, the hiss of an engine. At the top of a hill he stops to look back. He can see nothing but fog spaced with a file of blurred archlights. Then he walks on, taking pleasure in breathing, in the beat of his blood, in the tread of his feet on the pavement, between rows of otherworldly frame houses. Gradually the fog thins, a morning pearliness is seeping in from somewhere. Sunrise finds him walking along a cement road between dumping grounds full of smoking rubbishpiles. The sun shines redly through the mist on rusty donkey-engines, skeleton trucks, wishbones of Fords, shapeless masses of corroding metal. Jimmy walks fast to get out of the smell. He is hungry; his shoes are beginning to raise blisters on his big toes. At a cross-road where the warning light still winks and winks, is a gasoline station, opposite it the Lightning Bug lunchwagon. Carefully he spends his last quarter on breakfast. That leaves him three cents for good luck, or bad luck for that matter. A huge furniture truck, shiny and yellow, has drawn up outside.
"Say will you give me a lift?" he asks the redhaired man at the wheel.
"How fur ye goin?"
"I dunno.... Pretty far."”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 403-404

Bad luck, Pleasure, Shoe, Light

“The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority

Men, Truth

“In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.”

Samuel Madden (1686–1765) Irish writer

Recounted by Samuel Johnson.
Attributed

“The village of Sattara near Aurangabad was my hunting ground. Here on the top of a hill, stood a temple with an image of Khande Rai. By God's grace I demolished it, and forbade the temple dancers (muralis) to ply their shameful profession.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Satara (Maharashtra) Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, quoted in Sarkar, Jadu Nath, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. II, p. 94 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/page/n293 Quotes from late medieval histories

God

“I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics — to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past.
In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means.
I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal.”

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

1970s, First Watergate Speech (1973)

People, Past, Future, Falseness

“The lads are on top of the ground at the moment and they look as though they're looking forward to tomorrow.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

24-Aug-2007, Hull City OWS
As opposed to under the ground?

“The enemy fell back to their strong ground, and the day terminated with a cannonade and skirmishes. Both armies continued in their position all day yesterday, cannonading each other every now and then. Last night we effected a very good retreat, without the loss of men or stores.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men, Strong, Loss, Night

“Tho none ought to conclude that their day or season of grace is quite expired, yet they ought to deeply apprehend the danger, lest it should expire before their necessary work be done and their peace made. For tho it can be of no use for them to know the former, and therefore they have no means appointed them by which to know it, 'tis of great use to apprehend the latter; and they have sufficient ground for the apprehension.”

John Howe (1630–1705) English Puritan theologian

The Redeemer's Tears Wept Over Lost Souls (1684)

Peace, Season

“Sultam Mahmud, having entered into the idol temple, beheld an excessively long and broad room, in so much that fifty-six pillars had been made to support the roof. Somnat was an idol cut out of stone, whose height was five yards, of which three yards were visible, and two yards were concealed in the ground. Yaminu-d daula having broken that idol with his own hand, ordered that they should pack up pieces of the stone, take them to Ghaznin, and throw them on the threshold of the Jama Masjid.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Somnath (Gujarat) . Habibu’s-Siyar, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. IV : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 182-83
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Support

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

Money, People, World, Hope

“Paul… calls the process of shifting away from material matters and toward spiritual matters a “turning to the Lord” and “taking away of a veil.” In all the different tropes and terms for the theoria-meaning, Paul instructs us in a single form of teaching: it is not necessary always to remain in the letter, on the grounds that the immediately apparent meaning of the things said in many instances causes us harm in the pursuit of the life of virtue. But it is necessary to pass over to the incorporeal and spiritually intelligible reading with insight, with the result that the more corporeal meanings are converted to an intellectual sense and meaning, in the same way that the dust of the more fleshly significance of what is said is “shaken off.” This is why Paul says, “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” since oftentimes with biblical narrative, it will not provide us with examples of a good life if we stop short at the simple events.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

Commentary on the Song of Songs, As translated by Margaret M. Mitchell in Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010)

Life, Way, Intelligence, Sense

“This second time round, she’d discovered that to be happy was not so much a self-sufficient, spontaneous emotion, such as you might feel in relation to a dream or a secret, but a way of reacting to the rest of the world; that to be happy this time, she must curb the natural human instinct to look up at the sky, with its all-encompassing definition, and gaze towards the immediate ground and horizon, with its lack of shape, or abode, or clear ending.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Real Time (2002)

Happiness, Secret, World, Dreams

“As I was a stranger to all the lower country, I thought it absolutely necessary for me to come for ward. A thorough knowledge of the country is not easily obtained; such a one, at least, as is necessary to fix upon the most eligible position for forming a camp. The security of the army, the ease and convenience of the troops, as well as to perform the du ties of my office with a degree of reputation, all conspired to make me wish to fix upon the properest ground for the purpose. This it was impossible for me to do, unless I came on before the troops. And I must confess I saw no objection, as your Excellency had wrote me nothing to the contrary, and what I wrote naturally led to such a measure.”

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

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Nature, Knowledge, Country

“New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

The Living City (1958)

World, Universe, Appearance

“I think you’ve got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.”

Judi Dench (1934) English film, stage and television actress

Judi Dench – Grand Dame of Cinema http://www.comingsoon.net/extras/news/12246-judi-dench-grand-dame-of-cinema (December 6, 2005)

Way, Business, Thinking

“People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

Life, People, Books, Reading

“The primordial forms of all sciences, taken back beyond the rise of writing, lie ultimately in the magic of prehistory. Just as modern man wants to indicate what consequences his actions will have, so also a man who grows up in the magical way of life seeks to find a ground for everything and to find consequences of his action. Magic as a more or less clearly formulated system of tenets shot through with emotional elements, can become independent only when magicians, acting as specialists, proclaim the consequences of certain customs, either esoterically,. e. g. at certain rituals, or exoterically as popular education. The magicians tell what cases are to count as 'equal', and when certain measures shall be used”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

if we think them ineffective, we call them ceremonies
Source: 1930s, "Empirical Sociology" (1931), p. 319

Life, Lie, Education, Way

“There was no ground for us beyond [the] Volga.”

Vasily Zaytsev (1915–1991) Soviet sniper

Quoted in "Notes of a Sniper: For us There is no Land Beyond the Volga" - Zaytsev,Vasily - Vladivostok:Moscow/2826 Press Inc.

“If there be ground for you to trust, as you do, in your own righteousness, then all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did from the fall of man to prepare the way for it, is in vain. Consider what greater folly could you have devised to charge upon God than this, that all those things were done so needlessly; when, instead of all this, He might only have called you forth, and committed the business to you, which you think you can do so easily.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 540.

God, Way, Business, Thinking

“Whereas traditional Christianity calls for the subordination of all other commitments to the commitment to God, Buddhism teaches us to give up all craving and attachment, just those aspects of the human psyche that ground economism.”

John B. Cobb (1925) American theologian

Eastern View of Economics http://web.archive.org/web/20150906075839/http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3607

God

“Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.”

George Santayana book The Sense of Beauty

Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270
The Sense of Beauty (1896)

Faith, Beauty, Soul, Nature

“I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam — a flat foreground of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade; cold, stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another with their frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted, because… their cargoes were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts. In the distance, beyond the waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line of brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs. From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

On Amsterdam, Ch. 14
The Mirror of the Sea (1906)

Children, People, Water, Appearance

“The year 1680 AD brought an equally “rich harvest” for Islam. Maasir-i-Alamgiri goes ahead: “On 6th January 1680 A. D. Prince Mohammad Azam and Khan Jahan Bahadur obtained permission to visit Udaipur. Ruhullah Khan and Yakkattaz Khan also proceeded thither to effect the destruction of the temples of the idolators. These edifices situated in the vicinity of the Rana’s palace were among the wonders of the age, and had been erected by the infidels to the ruin of their souls and the loss of their wealth… Pioneers destroyed the images. On 24th January the king visited the tank of Udayasagar. His Majesty ordered all three of the Hindu temples to be levelled with the ground….”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 7.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1680s

Age, Soul, Loss, Wealth

“Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth.”

Roger Zelazny book Jack of Shadows

Source: Jack of Shadows (1971), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

Star

“Why We See Things and Not the Holes Between Them. We can now attempt an answer to the question why we do so. Two of the factors of organization which we have so far discussed seem to me to be the most important causes of this effect. In the first place, the segregation and unification which occurs will separate areas of different degrees of internal articulation, and according to our law, the more highly articulated ones will become figures, the rest fusing together to form the ground. Look at any landscape photograph. You see the shape of the things, the mountains, and trees and buildings, but not of the sky.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 208-9

Law, Mountain, Question, Tree

“A lesson from this great novelist: The classical liberal tradition is what made us a free, peaceful and prosperous country. We should cherish it and proudly proclaim the moral high ground when defending this tradition against those who want to impose Big Government upon us.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

19 September 2016 https://torontosun.com/2016/09/19/bernier-libertarian-to-the-max/wcm/e28e7817-9e4f-4dc7-bb4b-1f038af241db About

Peace, Country

“Today the world has far more potential than in the past to understand the message of the Holy Prophet (s. w. a). The more human knowledge increases, the more likely it becomes that the message of Islam will gain ground. The more powerful people in different parts of the world use brutal tools in order to suppress human feelings and to bring them under their yoke, the more the ground will be prepared for identifying the light of Islam and the more thirsty human beings will become for Islam. Today we see the signs of this thirst for the message of Islam, which is the message of monotheism, the message of spirituality, the message of justice, the message of human dignity. Human beings are enthusiastic about the message of Islam.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

"Supreme Leader's Speech in a Meeting with Officials and Ambassadors of Islamic Countries" http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1871&Itemid=4, Khamenei.ir (October 25, 2000) 2000

People, World, Justice, Feeling

“Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 63.

Love, Life, Wisdom, God

“Those of us who are sympathetic to Kantian ethics usually are so because we regard it as an ethics of autonomy, based on respect for the human capacity to govern our own lives according to rational principles. Kantian ethical theory is grounded on the idea that the moral law is binding on me only because it is regarded as proceeding from my own will.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Law, Idea

“There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, and if they had their eyes open to see their true condition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins, and the smoking incense would atone for their sins, whereas, if such is not the case, they will stick to them and remain upon them in the spirit world … I do know that there are sins committed, of such a nature that if the people did understand the doctrine of salvation, they would tremble because of their situation. And furthermore, I know that there are transgressors, who, if they knew themselves, and the only condition upon which they can obtain forgiveness, would beg of their brethren to shed their blood, that the smoke thereof might ascend to God as an offering to appease the wrath that is kindled against them, and that the law might have its course. I will say further; I have had men come to me and offer their lives to atone for their sins. It is true that the blood of the Son of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, yet men can commit sins which it can never remit. As it was in ancient days, so it is in our day.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 4:53 (September. 21, 1856)
Brigham Young describes the doctrine of Blood Atonement
1850s

Men, God, People, World

“Passion isn't something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you're doing every day.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Author Marcus Buckingham, cited in: Michel Beaudry, " Sam Rees - making the Whistler leap http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler/sam-rees-making-the-whistler-leap/Content?oid=2519430," at piquenewsmagazine.com, November 28, 2013.

Dreams, Hope, Way, Passion

“Nancy and I were married in January 1918 at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, she being just eighteen, and I twenty-two. George Mallory acted as the best man. Nancy had read the marriage-service for the first time that morning, and been so disgusted that she all but refused to go through with the wedding, though I had arranged for the ceremony to be modified and reduced to the shortest possible form. Another caricature scene to look back on: myself striding up the red carpet, wearing field-boots, spurs and sword; Nancy meeting me in a blue-check silk wedding-dress, utterly furious; packed benches on either side of the church, full of relatives; aunts using handkerchiefs; the choir boys out of tune; Nancy savagely muttering the responses, myself shouting them in a parade-ground voice.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 25.

Marriage, Boy, Wedding, Time

“The famous sixteenth-century algebraist Jerome Cardan called negative roots fictitious, and the founder of modern symbolic algebra, François Viète, discarded negative roots entirely. Descartes, called them false on the ground that they represented numbers less than nothing and so were meaningless.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), p. 52.

Falseness

“.. I saw Gauguin; he told me his theories about art and assured me that the young [artists] would find salvation by replenishing themselves at remote and savage sources. I told him that this art did not belong to him, that he was a civilized man and hence it was his function to show us harmonious things. We parted, each unconvinced. Gauguin is certainly not without talent, but how difficult it is for him to find his own way! He is always poaching on someone's ground; now he is pillaging the savages of Oceania.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote about Paul Gauguin 23 Nov. 1893, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted by John Rewald, in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 221
1890's

Art, Way, Parting

“As best demonstrated by Nature in the case of the aerofoil maple-seed, today's propeller is a pressure-screw and therefore a braking screw, whose purpose is to allow the heavy maple-seed to fall parachute-like slowly towards the ground and to be carried away sideways by the wind in the process. No bird has such a whirling thing on its head, nor a fish on its tail. Only man made use of this natural brake-screw for forward propulsion. As the propeller rotates, so does the resistance rise by the square of the rotational velocity. This is also a sign that this supposed propulsive device is unnaturally constructed and therefore out of place.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 112, p. 52 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Nature, Bird, Fish

“Today no one who wishes to clean even a minimal regard for reason or evidence can espouse racist ideology as it was in its heyday, a system as comprehensive as Marxism and to some clearly equally as satisfying. However, thanks to Jensen and Eysenck and Shockley, the racist can cling to the periphery of his ideology; for example, he can provide a reasoned defence of his position on certain issues such as immigration and foreign policy. I do not wish to minimize the ground he has lost: the retreat from world history to little more than immigration quotas is a great defeat for the racist and a great source of satisfaction for all of his opponents. I am quite convinced that the refutation of racism in the light of reason is almost complete (the effort to eradicate it as a social force is a different matter and may never be fully accomplished). However, the last stand of the racist is not without importance, something I will attempt to demonstrate by giving a racist ideologue his say.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

not referring to any of the above mentioned persons
Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), p. 8

World, History, Effort, Light

“The Japanese have a term called Ikigai. Ikigai is the Japanese translation of the French 'raison d’etre' or 'reason for being.' When Plato wrote about government, what Plato said was that the most preferred form of governor was what we know as the true statesman. -- The philosopher king who knows his place and his task. My purpose is to be a builder of new ideas and companies. I live to put new ideas together and advance the conversation. It is my Ikigai. I simply love to do it. There is nothing more exciting to me than helping new ideas spring up out of the ground.”

Robert Agresta (1983)

Public Release May, 2011, Politicker NJ

Love, Spring, Idea, Help

“I try to maintain a balance between having a vision of the world that many readers do not experience for themselves, trying to give them enough grounding in the world we are all familiar with, so they don't feel that they are completely lost in Faerie.”

Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer

Strange Horizons interview (2004)

World, Feeling

“…but suppose we were an influence (as we might be), an idea, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head, we might be a vapor, blowing where we listed. Our kingdoms lay in each man's mind, as we wanted nothing material to live on, so perhaps we offered nothing material to the killing. It seemed a regular soldier might be helpless without a target. He would own the ground he sat on, and what he could poke his rifle at.”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

The Evolution of A Revolt (1920)

Idea

“His drinke, the running streame, his cup, the bare
Of his palme cloasde, his bed, the hard cold ground:
To this poore life was Misery ybound.”

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536–1608) English politician and poet

Source: The Induction (1563), Line 264, p. 320

Life, Drink

“Eventually the decision was reached to accept the armed chopper as an essential part of the air mobility concept but not to allow the Army to use the Mohawk as an attack aircraft, confining it to a reconnaissance role. Both were wise decisions. But prior to these decisions there were some hot and emotional sessions of the JCS. One concerned the armed Huey, which as then being used successfully in Vietnam to support ARVN operations, but which was considered by the Air Force as illegal poaching on their roles and missions. This was in the midsummer of 1964. General LeMay suddenly took his cigar out of his mouth and, gesticulating wildly, challenged General Johnson to an aerial duel. He screamed, "Johnson, you fly one of those damned Huey's and I'll fly an F-105, and we'll see who survives. I'll shoot you down and scatter your peashooter all over the goddamn ground." I was eager to defend my chief, both verbally and physically (LeMay would have made two Johnsons in body weight, if not in mental poundage) but Johnson motioned to me to keep quiet and responded quietly: "I'm not a flier, but I will be happy to get qualified and take you on- we can agree on a time and place later. But let's not waste the valuable time of our colleagues on such a trivial matter."”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 27

Happiness, Support, Decision, Time

“Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.I: The Coming Of The Masses
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Happiness, Feeling, Appearance, Waiting

“Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price?… On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Paragraphs 3-4
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

People, Home, Water, Country

“Few are the beliefs, still fewer the superstitions of to-day. We pretend to account for everything, till we do not believe enough for that humility so essential to moral discipline. But the dark creed of the fatalist still holds its ground — there is that within us, which dares not deny what, in the still depths of the soul, we feel to have a mysterious predominance. To a certain degree we controul our own actions — we have the choice of right or wrong; but the consequences, the fearful consequences, lie not with us. Let any one look upon the most important epochs of his life; how little have they been of his own making — how one slight thing has led on to another, till the result has been the very reverse of our calculations. Our emotions, how little are they under our own controul! how often has the blanched lip, or the flushed cheek, betrayed what the will was strong to conceal! Of all our sensations, love is the one which has most the stamp of Fate. What a mere chance usually leads to our meeting the person destined to alter the whole current of our life. What a mystery even to ourselves the influence which they exercise over us. Why should we feel so differently towards them, to what we ever felt before? An attachment is an epoch in existence — it leads to casting off old ties, that, till then, had seemed our dearest; it begins new duties; often, in a woman especially, changes the whole character; and yet, whether in its beginning, its continuance or its end, love is as little within our power as the wind that passes, of which no man knows whither it goeth or whence it comes.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.14. The Bride of Lammermuir — LUCY ASHTON.
Literary Remains

Love, Life, Fate, Lie

“The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”

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

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

“And my tears, too, have stained this heirloomed ground,
When reading in these treatises some weird
Miracle, I turned a leaf and found
A white hair fallen from my father's beard.”

A. M. Klein (1909–1972) writer, journalist, lawyer

Heirloom (1982).

Tear, Reading

“I want to be free, independent. Free of all coercion. Free of any need to rely on other people. I have no credit cards, nor do I want any. I toss the cash on the table. I leave others in peace and I want to be left in peace. I spend my nights sleeping on the ground in the forest. I embrace trees as I have done all my life. I smell their bark and kiss it. I lay my face on the moss and breathe in the spicy aroma of fruitfulness as if I were lying on a woman's belly.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 305

Life, People, Peace, Lying

“I learned from Nol that nowadays you [ Willem Witsen ] are especially engaged upon enlargements [of photos]. I would like to ask you if you perhaps have a piece of moorland (foreground) for me, I would be very grateful to you. Because I am working on a painting with a large foreground. You may have seen it, with that artillery in it. It must be a simple sloping ground. Without much frills of sand - etc. nothing but heather..”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vernam van Nol dat ge u tegenwoordig speciaal bezig houdt met vergrootingen [van foto's]. Ik zou je wel willen vragen als je soms een stuk heidegrond (voorgrond). voor me had, zou ik je zeer dankbaar zijn. Ik ben naml. aan een schilderij bezig met groote voorgrond. je hebt het misschien wel gezien, met die artillerie er op. Het moet een eenvoudig opglooiende grond [zijn]. Zonder veel tierelantijntjes van zand – etc niets anders dan heide..
In a letter of Breitner to Willem Witsen, undated, c. 1893-99; in the collection Royal Dutch Library, the Hague; as cited in master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 48
The two artists exchanged sometimes photos, using them as elements for their paintings
1890 - 1900

Photo, Learning, Painting

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which labourers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labour before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Out of the Dark (1913), To a Woman-Suffragist

Life, Women, Men, Children

“In the yearly days those nouvo riches were too busy. As they finally got their moneys grabbed, they started to look round and discovered emptiness, vacuum inside… It so happened that the whole new generation grew up with this feeling of emptiness. When, say, falling in love, such a person simply doesn’t know - how to experience an emotion. And then this question of Life’s reason arises. People don’t think about it until one day something happens. Then all of a sudden they find that their life is not particularly interesting. First they get bored, then get frightened. Because its frightening for one, after having got everything - houses, cars, stocks and funds, - to discover they haven’t a ground to stand on.”

Nina Shatskaya (1966) Russian singer

Ogonyok interview. Нина Шацкая, Огонек, 2011-01-01 http://www.ogoniok.com/4977/25/,

Love, Life, Money, People

“One can justify solar-hydrogen simply on grounds of economic resource viability without any green agenda.”

Derek Abbott (1960) Physicist, engineer

On energy supply and solar power

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People, Disease, School, Way

“In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Mainstream"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Idea

“I was sent to Treblinka, Minsk, Lemberg and Auschwitz. When I see the images before my eyes, it all comes back to me … Corpses, corpses, corpses. Shot, gassed, decaying corpses. They seemed to pop out of the ground when a grave was opened. It was a delirium of blood. It was an inferno, a hell, and I felt I was going insane.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Die Welt memoirs (1999)

Hell

“Paul Ryan combines a profound sense of responsibility for what we owe the next generation with an unbounded optimism in America's future and an understanding of all the wonderful things the American people can do. Paul also combines firm principles with a practical concern for getting things done. He has never been content to simply curse the darkness; he would rather light candles. And throughout his legislative career he's shown the ability to work with members of both parties to find common ground on some of the hardest issues confronting the American people.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-11
http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/08/11/video-and-transcript-romney-making-his-vp-announcement/
Video and Transcript: Romney Making His VP Announcement
Mitt Romney Central
2012

People, Optimism, Understanding, Sense

“My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of the century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its form, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its form, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 33-34
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Idea, Freedom, Parting

“Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging low with sullen roar.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 73

Water

“Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

Animals

“I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

nbcnews.com http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/naive-gravely-mistaken-analysts-rebut-snowden-claims-n117101 2014

People, Way

“That such comparisons with non-arithmetic notions have furnished the immediate occasion for the extension of the number-concept may, in a general way, be granted (though this was certainly not the case in the introduction of complex numbers); but this surely is no sufficient ground for introducing these foreign notions into arithmetic, the science of numbers.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Way, Science

“It is by self-reliance, humanly speaking, by the independence which has been the motive and impelling force of our race, that the Scots have thriven in India and in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and even in England, where at different times they were banned. As things are we in Scotland do not take much or even ask much from the State, but the State invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, "Sound you may be; we bid you be a cripple. Do you see? Be blind. Do you hear? Be deaf. Do you walk? Be not venturesome; here is a crutch for one arm. When you get accustomed to it you will soon want another, the sooner the better." The strongest man, if encouraged, may soon accustom himself to the methods of an invalid; he may train himself to totter or to be fed with a spoon. The ancient sculptors represent Hercules leaning on his club; our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated and resting under his arms. (Laughter.) The lesson of our Scottish teaching was "Level up"; the cry of modern civilization is "Level down; let the Government have a finger in every pie," probing, propping, disturbing. ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) Every day the area for initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined, every day the public infringes, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the State. Perhaps the current cannot now be stemmed; agitation or protest may be alike unavailing; the world rolls on, it may be part of its destiny, a necessary phase in its long evolution, a stage in its blind, toilsome progress to an invisible goal. I neither affirm nor deny. All in the long run is doubtless for the best; but, speaking as a Scotsman to Scotsmen, I plead for our historical character, for the maintenance of those sterling national qualities which have meant so much to Scotland in the past.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers.
Speech to Glasgow University (12 June 1908), reported in The Times (13 June 1908), p. 12.

World, Motivation, Laughter, Time

“Muslim historians, in India and abroad, have written hundreds of accounts in which the progress of Islamic armies across the cradle of Hindu culture is narrated, stage by stage and period by period. A pronounced feature of these Muslim histories is a description-in smaller or greater detail but always with considerable pride-of how the Hindus were slaughtered en masse or converted by force, how hundreds of thousands of Hindu men and women and children were captured as booty and sold into slavery, how Hindu temples and monasteries were razed to the ground or burnt down, and how images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses were destroyed or desecrated. Commandments of Allah (Quran) and precedents set by the Prophet (Sunnah) are frequently cited by the authors in support of what the swordsmen and demolition squads of Islam did with extraordinary zeal, not only in the midst of war but also, and more thoroughly, after Islamic rule had been firmly established.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Women, Men, God, War

“I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream;
You've got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem.
This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways.
So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Sleep to Dream
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Dreams, Way, Hell, Sleep

“With the hubris common to physicists, I have always felt that I have known what good science is — it is theory cast in terms of mechanisms that describe how parts of the universe behave. With sometimes immense historical delay, these mechanisms always move towards being grounded in the larger mechanistic view of the universe. Theories always propose a view of how the universe is. They can never be effectively argued to be true, but only be brought before the bar of empirical evidence. All the modern concern for contextualism, hermeneutics and the social determination of meaning has its point, but is a mere footnote to the massive evidence for this view of science. The overwhelming success within this framework of modern biology over the last half century has provided another major confirmation, if one is needed. Someday we will get another striking confirmation from cognitive science. Though it can be argued that we are well on our way, we still have an immense distance to go. Arguments are no match for the evidence that cognitive science does not control its subject the way physics, chemistry and now biology do.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Draft of an introduction to the Mind Matters Symposium http://diva.library.cmu.edu/Newell/mindmatters.html, 26 May 1992, Carnegie Mellon University Archives http://diva.library.cmu.edu/Newell/biography.html

Way, Universe, Science, Success

“Hi I'm Bunny the Lifeguard and if any of these alligators try to ruin our swimming, I'm gonna wrestle 'em to the ground and probably have my way with them.”

Chris Pontius (1974) American actor

Jackass: The Movie

Way

“I'm sorry, remind me again, what is the point of encouraging little girls to dream big if any career puts them in the path of boob honkers? There's not a workplace on land or sea or even at the bottom of a big, deep hole in the ground where we're actually keeping women safe. Right now I'm actually picturing some guy saying, oh, what am I supposed to do, stop asking women out at work because it makes them uncomfortable? Yes.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfpGdk3HgQ, February 22, 2016; as quoted in "Samantha Bee On 'Full Frontal,' Feminism And The Freedom Of Her 40s" https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=473371862, NPR, April 7, 2016

Women, Dreams, Guy, Girl