Quotes about half
page 25

Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Edward Bellamy photo
JaVale McGee photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
José Mourinho photo

“A player from Man City showed half of his ass for two seconds and it was a big nightmare. But this is a real nightmare.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Comparing Petr Cech's nasty injury with Joey Barton's bottom-baring antics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm
Chelsea FC

Louis Riel photo

“As to religion what is my belief? What is my insanity about that? My insanity, Your Honors, Gentlemen of the Jury, is that I wish to leave Rome aside inasmuch as it is the cause of division between the Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views because, in Batoche, to the Half-breeds that followed me I used the word Carte blanche.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

If I have any influence in the New World it is to help in that way and even if it takes two hundred years to become practical, then after my death that will bring out practical results, and then my children will shake hands with the Protestants of the New World in a friendly manner. I do not wish those evils which exist in Europe to be continued as much as I can influence it, among the Half-breeds. I do not wish that to be repeated in America, that work is not the work of some days or some years it is the work of hundreds of years.
Address to Grand Jury (1885)

Jim Ross photo

“AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, HE IS BROKEN IN HALF!”

Jim Ross (1952) American professional wrestling commentator, professional wrestling referee, and restaurateur

most famously uttered during the Undertaker vs Mankind match at King of the Ring 1998
Commentary Quotes

Dmitri Shostakovich photo
Shingai Shoniwa photo
Art Spiegelman photo

“What Franz Kafka was to the first half of the 20th century, Philip K. Dick is to the second half.”

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

As quoted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick : Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (1995) edited by Lawrence Sutin, p. x.

Chetan Bhagat photo
Tucker Max photo

“I have about half a second to make a crucial decision: I can either sprint and hope I make it there before I shit in my boxers, or I can stick my thumb up into my ass and shuffle the 60 yards to lavatory freedom.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Austin Road Trip http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/the_austin_road_trip.phtml#281,
The Tucker Max Stories

Doug Stanhope photo

“You were born free, you got fucked out of half of it and you wave a flag celebrating it.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

Deadbeat Hero (2004)

Octavio Paz photo
Ali Khamenei photo
William Booth photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Clint Eastwood photo

“Lazy, and would cost you a morning. I never started a day with Clint Eastwood in the first scene, because you knew he was gonna be late, at least a half hour or an hour.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Rawhide director Thomas Carr on Eastwood
McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. p. 111. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0006383548.

Jane Austen photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Ernest Rutherford photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?"”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.
Part 2: "The Virus of Faith"
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Rudyard Kipling photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Colin Powell photo

“I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Quoted by Lawrence Wilkerson in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2006/01/19/breaking-ranks-span-classbankheadlarry-wilkerson-attacked-the-iraq-war-in-the-process-he-lost-the-friendship-of-colin-powellspan/d1f359c6-93a0-41c1-beee-2284d6284d47/ Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)
2000s

Matt Dillahunty photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Bill Belichick photo

“That’s the worst we’ve played in the kicking game in a year and a half.”

Bill Belichick (1952) American football coach

Postgame press conference following 29-26 overtime win over San Diego Chargers October 14, 2001, describing two missed kicks and a fumbled punt.

Dylan Moran photo
William Wordsworth photo
William Wordsworth photo
William Wordsworth photo
Howard H. Aiken photo

“Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country.”

Howard H. Aiken (1900–1973) pioneer in computing, original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer

1952. Quoted in I. Bernard Cohen: Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. 1999. MIT Press. p. 292. And I. Bernard Cohen: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20.3 pp. 27–33. (1998)

Dotsie Bausch photo
Eagle Woman photo

“Shame on you, cowards to come here, five thousand of you, to slaughter a half-dozen white men. And you come here for what reason? You have been killing their cattle right along, day after day, and not one of them has said anything to you about the loss - and then when you shoot one of your own people, you come here to kill a white man for it ... You are not brave to come here to kill a half-dozen white men!”

Eagle Woman (1820–1888) American peace activist (born 1820, near Big Bend of the Missouri River [in what is now South Dakota], U.S.…

Speech to the same crowd of 5,000, as recounted by a different source, quoted in [Gray, John S., 1986, The Story of Mrs. Picotte-Galpin, a Sioux Heroine: Eagle Woman Becomes a Trader and Counsels for Peace, 1868-1888, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4518988, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 36, 3, 2–21, 0026-9891]

Alastair Reynolds photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo

“Coming into San Diego we saw a beautiful golden ship in the sunset, but brighter than the sunset. I had ten-power binoculars with me, and was able to study it for half a minute from the halted car. It slowly faded out, the way they do... We have been given their simple philosophy. It runs parallel with the original teachings of Jesus.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Quoted by Agnes Bernelle in All the Planets are Inhabited! https://web.archive.org/web/20120616003031/http://www.egyouth.fsnet.co.uk/atpai/agnes.htm Weekend Mail, (26 August 1954)

Jan Mankes photo

“..drivers, docker and skippers.. ..at the canal the whole day they are loading peat and every horse stands still for half an hour [his time for sketching].”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) ..voerlui, sjouwerslui en schippers.. ..aan het kanaal wordt permanent turf geladen en elk paard staat een half uur stil [tijd voor schetsen].

Quote, c. 1910, in Jan Mankes - kunstbeschouwingen van Albert Plasschaert & Just Havelaar; publisher J.A.A.M. van Es, Wassenaar, 1927; as cited by Susan van den Berg, in 'Tableau Fine Arts Magazine', 29e Jaargang, nummer 1, Feb/March 2007, p. 76

Jan is describing the activities at the canal the Schoterlandsche Compagnonsvaart (in De Knijpe); this was the daily view from the living-room of his parental home when Jan was 20 years.
1909 - 1914

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be "me."”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.

II
2010s, 2011, Mortality (2012)

Jason Statham photo
William Bartram photo

“Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[Van Doren, Mark, The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 118–119, 1928, New York, Macy-Masius, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=124]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Alfre Woodard photo

“…When we see a film, half of what we see is what we bring to it…”

Alfre Woodard (1952) American film, stage, and television actress

On how audiences receive a film (such as the film 12 Years a Slave in which Woodard starred in) in “In Praise of the One-Scene Performance: An Interview with Alfre Woodard” https://www.popmatters.com/176250-in-praise-of-the-one-scene-performance-an-interview-with-alfre-wooda-2495711026.html in Pop Matters (2013 Nov 7)

Gottlob Frege photo

“A philosopher who has no connection to geometry is only half a philosopher, and a mathematician who has no philosophical vein is only half a mathematician.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Original: (de) Ein Philosoph, der keine Beziehung zur Geometrie hat, ist nur ein halber Philosoph, und ein Mathematiker, der keine philosophische Ader hat, ist nur ein halber Mathematiker.

Gottlob Frege: Erkenntnisquellen der Mathematik und der mathematischen Naturwissenschaften, 1924/1925, submitted to Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen; posthumously published in: Frege, Gottlob: Nachgelassene Schriften und Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel. Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990, p. 293

Morgan Parker (writer) photo

“When we're born, our experience is half the time spent undoing these ideas that were placed onto our body since birth and then building a personal identity on top of that.”

Morgan Parker (writer) American poet

On the Black experience in “'Magical Negro' Carries The Weight Of History” https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693587521/magical-negro-carries-the-weight-of-history in NPR (2019 Feb 11)

Louisa May Alcott photo

“I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body...because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

From an interview with poet and critic Louise Chandler Moulton, 1883.
Source: [Alberghene, Janice, Clark, Beverly, Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays, 2013, 1999, 9781138798977, Routledge]

Yvonne De Carlo photo

“Baby, I've never been drunk in public and I never run around with men half my age. The dames I started out with are all batty today. They had their looks and nothing more and now they think they're finished.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Ibn Hazm photo

“You came to me just before
the Christians rang their bells.
The half-moon was rising
looking like an old man's eyebrow
or a delicate instep.
And although it was still night
when you came a rainbow
gleamed on the horizon,
showing as many colours
as a peacock's tail.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Gómez, translated by Cola Franzen from the Spanish versions of Emilio García (1989) https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=IEHb0lmTvS8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Poemas+ar%C3%A1bigoandaluces&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Poetry

J. Posadas photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Coventry Patmore photo

“What seems to us for us is true.
The planet has no proper light,
And yet when Venus is in view,
No primal star is half so bright.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book II, Canto I, V Perspective.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Dorothy Thompson photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Thomas Jackson photo
Isabel Lucas photo

“Really, honestly, the hours in network television are insane, it’s like sixteen hours a day, fifteen hours a day. Sometimes six days a week. And it’s been like three and a half months of doing that. That’s why I get very protective of my weekends because I have so much dialog to learn and have very little time to sleep and be a normal human.”

Isabel Lucas (1985) Australian actress

Isabel Lucas talks ‘The Osiris Child’ and being no stranger to special effects. https://scifimonkeys.com/2017/11/14/isabel-lucas-talks-the-osiris-child-and-being-no-stranger-to-special-effects-interview/ (November 14, 2017)

Lee Hyeon-seo photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey photo

“Half the time, I live under [the guise of] my characters, so if I start to create an ‘official character’ for myself, it would be exhausting.”

Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey (1986) Franco-Spanish actress

Growing Up With Chanel: The Stylish Ascent of Franco-Spanish Actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey https://www.vogue.com/article/astrid-berges-frisbey-it-girl-actress (July 14, 2014)

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo

“My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won: the bravery of my troops hitherto saved me from the greater evil; but to win such a battle as this of Waterloo, at the expens of so many gallant friends, could only be termed a heavy misfortune but for the result to the public.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

Letter from the field of Waterloo (June 1815), as quoted in Decisive Battles of the World (1899) by Edward Shepherd Creasy. Quoted too in Memorable Battles in English History: Where Fought, why Fought, and Their Results; with the Military Lives of the Commanders by William Henry Davenport Adams; Editor Griffith and Farran, 1863. p. 400.

“This year, I've had about half a dozen legislators tell me women really don't belong in the legislature, and they just can't vote for a bill with a woman's name on it.”

Beverly White (1928–2021) American politician

As quoted in The Daily Utah Chronicle https://archive.ph/ukNVj (December 5, 1979)

John Steinbeck photo

“Most people live in a half-dream all their lives and call it reality.”

Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis (25 July 1959)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)

Terence McKenna photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“It's a bad habit, I know, but I believe that you shouldn't do anything in life until you're ready. Half of life's heartaches come from decisions that were made in a hurry. One should make haste slowly.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

On her lack of punctuality, as quoted in "Tardy but Talented" https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22039844/the-courier-journal/ by James Bacon (AP), The Louisville Courier-Journal (July 17, 1960), p. 84

Carlo Rovelli photo
Eric Hobsbawm photo

“'Europe' had been on the defensive for a millennium. Now, for half a millennium, it conquered the world. Both observations make it impossible to sever European history from world history.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Chap. 17 : The Curious History of Europe
On History (1997)

Angela Davis photo
Menotti Lerro photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The House of the Dead https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1 (1915), as translated by Constance Garnett, p. 16
General

Hafez photo

“What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!”

Hafez (1326–1389) Persian poet

In A Century of Ghazels, or. a Hundred Odes, Selected and Translated from the Diwan of Hafiz (1875), p. 77; quoted with a slight change in Love: A Book of Quotations (2012), ed. Ann Braybrooks, p. 71

Rusty Schweickart photo

“What it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognise that your identity is with that whole thing.”

Rusty Schweickart (1935) American astronaut

Source: Quoted in "The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution" by Frank White

Lawrence Wilkerson photo

“For almost half a century, U.S. policy with respect to Cuba has failed—miserably.”

Lawrence Wilkerson (1945) Chief of Staff to Colin Powell

Source: U.S. Cuba Policy: Ending 50 Years of Failure, Prepared Testimony to the Committee on Finance United States Senate  (11 December 2007)

William Laud photo

“Never were there more gross absurdities, nor half so many in so short a time, committed in any public meeting; and for a National Assembly never did the Church of Christ see the like.”

William Laud (1573–1645) Archbishop of Canterbury

Source: Letter to the Marquis of Hamilton (3 December 1638), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI—Part II. Letters—Notes on Bellarmine (1857), p. 547

Ben Aaronovitch photo

“It’s always better to tell a half-truth than a half-lie.”

Source: Moon Over Soho (2011), Chapter 13, “Autumn Leaves” (p. 277)

Isaac Asimov photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.”

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

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511, ISBN 1586489577

Laurence Tribe photo
Vera Stanley Alder photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Fannie Hurst photo

“A woman still has to be twice as good as a man in order to get half as far.”

Fannie Hurst (1889–1968) novelist

Source: From speech at the National Conference of Women sponsored by “The New York Times.” https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/01/07/twice-good/#return-note-437251-1 Beth Blair. Women Will Have New World Status, Miami Daily News, April 27 1943, page 11A, Column 5.

Eminem photo

“Half of humanity doesn’t know what it wants or how to find out. The other half knows what it wants, hasn’t got it, and is going crazy trying to convince itself that it already has it.”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

Source: Short fiction, The Martian and the Moron (1949), p. 37

Peter F. Drucker photo
Swami Sivananda photo

“A common thief with a gun in his hand isn’t half as dangerous as an engineer with a stick of dynamite.”

Source: Black Easter (1968), Chapter 12 (p. 110)

“I began drawing when I was one and a half years old. I never stopped.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Vetulani.nl (The website of Tomasz Vetulani) https://web.archive.org/web/20220505120930/https://www.vetulani.nl/, archived from the original https://www.vetulani.nl/ (accessed on May 5th, 2022)

Dave Leduc photo

“In life you don’t ‘half-ass’ things. So I thought; I want to fight, why not do the most brutal sport in the world?”

Dave Leduc (1991) Canadian Lethwei fighter (born 1991)

Leduc talking about Lethwei in A royal portrait: Dave Leduc https://thebodylockmma.com/lethwei/a-royal-portrait-dave-leduc-king-of-lethwei/ (July 30, 2019)
On Lethwei