Quotes about handful
page 23

John Oliver photo
Herbert Hoover photo

“[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

Charles Darwin photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Pat Conroy photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“Of all the works of man I like best
Those which have been used.
The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges
The knives and forks whose wooden handles
Have been worn away by many hands: such forms
Seemed to me the noblest.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Of all the works of man" [Von allen Werken] (c. 1932) in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 192
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

John McCain photo
Wu Jingzi photo
George Washington Plunkitt photo

“If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend. Why shouldn’t I do the same in public life? p.6”

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

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 1, Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft

Christopher Gérard photo
John Calvin photo

“A newspaper is always a weapon in somebody's hands.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Page 220
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

John McCain photo

“You have at hand many examples of good character from whom you will have learned the lessons by which you can live your own lives. You are blessed. Make the most of it.”

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

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

James Anthony Froude photo
John Milton photo
Arshile Gorky photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo

“Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand; he goes one further and clinches his fist.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

On singer Frankie Laine
Curtains (1961)

Brian W. Aldiss photo

“The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Who Can Replace a Man?” p. 19 (originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, June 1958)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

John Flavel photo

“Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 255.

Christopher Hitchens photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Richard J. Daley photo

“I have conferred with the superintendent of police this morning and I gave him instructions that an order be issued by him immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.”

Richard J. Daley (1902–1976) American politician

[David Farber, Chicago '68, University of Chicago Press, 1994, ISBN 0226238016, pg 145(b)</small>, pg 249<small>(a)]
Stated one week following the April 1968 Chicago riots to the people of Chicago because of his dissatisfaction with the minimum use of force employed by Police Superintendent James B. Conlisk in dealing with rioters.

Charles Lyell photo
Buenaventura Durruti photo

“No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.”

Buenaventura Durruti (1896–1936) Spanish anarchist

As quoted in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain (1963) by Felix Morrow
Van Paassen interview (1936)
Variant: No government in the world fights fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself.

Dave Barry photo
John Wycliffe photo

“Already a third and more of England is in the hands of the Pope. There cannot be two temporal sovereigns in one country; either Edward is King or Urban is king. We make our choice. We accept Edward of England and refute Urban of Rome.”

John Wycliffe English theologian and early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church

Quoted in William Tyndale: If God Spare My Life — Martyrdom, Betrayal and the English Bible (2003) by Brian Moynahan, p. xvii

Richard Rodríguez photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Wake in our breast the living fires,
The holy faith that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our nation free;
To die for her is serving Thee.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Army Hymn; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Van Morrison photo
John Knox photo
Amartya Sen photo
Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore photo
Montesquieu photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
Julia Gillard photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Yolanda King photo

“We can throw up our hands in despair, we can write off the millions that are homeless, or we can choose to believe in a different way and we can do our share to bring that world into being.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

Excerpts from speech given at UCSC's 20th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation. (January 20, 2004) http://currents.ucsc.edu/03-04/01-26/king.html
2000s

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Eugen Drewermann photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

E 76
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

William Luther Pierce photo

“If we're going to consider failure to comply with UN directives a good reason for wrecking a country with cruise missiles, hey, I can think of a country in the Middle East which is in violation of a lot more UN directives than Iraq is. Israel has consistently thumbed its nose at UN directives, and no one in Washington has ever told Israel, "Comply or get hit." Let's understand one fundamental fact. This crusade against Iraq isn't about the United Nations or international security or stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It's about making the Middle East safe for Israel to continue bullying its neighbors and stealing from them. Every other explanation is lies and hypocrisy. And we really can expect a bigger dose of lies and hypocrisy than usual as the warmongers work to get this war against Iraq started. The media bosses will trot more generals and politicians in front of the TV cameras and have them bluster patriotically about how we're not going to let Saddam Hussein get away with it any longer, by god, and they'll show groups of military personnel cheering when they're told that they're being shipped out to the Persian Gulf to kick Saddam Hussein's behind and keep him from getting away with whatever it is he's getting away with, which mainly seems to be running his country the way he wants to instead of the way the United Nations tells him. They will work overtime at convincing the couch potatoes and the mindless yahoos who like to wave flags and shout patriotic slogans that destroying Iraq really is an act of American patriotism. And as long as the number of Americans killed in a Jewish war against Iraq remains small, the flag-waving yahoos and the bought politicians ought to be able to drown out any dissent from Americans like me who believe that we don't have any reasonable justification for waging such a war. And keeping casualties small ought to be easy, so long as it remains strictly a high-tech war, with us launching missiles against defenseless targets from many miles away. Of course, sometimes wars get out of hand, and unexpected things happen. If the Jews manage to get Iran involved in the war also -- and that's what they really want to do, what they really need to do -- then I think we stand a pretty good chance of seeing some major terrorist activity in the United States. I know that if I were Osama bin Laden, I'd have been spending my time getting ready for just such a development ever since Bill Clinton blew up that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. I'd be putting my teams into place in the United States, assembling materials, choosing targets, and waiting for the Jews to provide justification for me to begin killing Americans on a significant scale. Of course, whether Osama bin Laden is as resourceful and as capable as he's said to be remains to be seen. Personally, I have very little faith in the ability of these flea-bitten Muslims to get things done. But we'll see.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts.
1990s, 1990

Richard Feynman photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

9 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)

John Fante photo
El Lissitsky photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo

“The lovers, appearing happy,
walk, holding hands.
Though it appears everything is perfect,
only they know the truth.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Appears
Lyrics, Loveppears

Alexander Maclaren photo
Harry Turtledove photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
Jodie Marsh photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ramakrishna photo
Paul R. Ehrlich photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.”

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

Part I, p. 9.
The Autobiography (1818)

H. G. Wells photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Dan Rather photo
K. L. Saigal photo
Friedrich Stadler photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Jean Piaget photo

“If a baby really has no awareness of himself and is totally thing-directed and at the same time all his states of mind are projected onto things, our second paradox makes sense: on the one hand, thought in babies can be viewed as pure accommodation or exploratory movements, but on the other this very same thought is only one, long, completely autistic waking dream.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), "The Egocentrism of the Child and the Solipsism of the Baby", as translated by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche

Vita Sackville-West photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Vitruvius photo
Edgar Degas photo

“[make drawings of] series of instruments and players; their shapes, twisting of the hands, arms and neck of the violinist; for example, puffing out and hollowing of the cheeks of bassoonists, oboists, etc..”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from Degas' Notebook (undated); as quoted in Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition, Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 1975, pp. 81-82
quotes, undated

Willem de Kooning photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo
Ian Hacking photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Fernand Léger photo

“It is an outrage towards the masses.... It's wanting to treat them as though they're incapable of raising themselves up to this new realism [promoted by Léger and Le Corbusier ] which is that of their area, which they've made with their hands... To want to say to these men 'the modern is not for you it's an art for the rich bourgeoisie..”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

attack on the notion of Social Realism art
Quote, c. 1949, in: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 58
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1940's

Hayao Miyazaki photo

“Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

on the topic of CGI animation (2005) The Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/14/japan.awardsandprizes
On Animation

Warren Farrell photo
Prem Rawat photo

“Listen to satsang. It is a very good thing. God created day and night. After that He created excellent things to eat, and then he landed us in this world. Isn't this human body beautiful? There is a nose to breathe with. Tell me, could we have survived without it? See what a good job of seeing these eyes do. Look how beautiful are the hands and the feet. If no seva is done, then these hands are of no use. These two ears have been given, if we don’t listen to satsang with them, aren’t they useless? If you do not go to satsang walking with these feet, they are also worthless. God has created all the parts of this body quite well, but if we don't use them properly, it is our fault, not the Creator's. The river flowing over there is the Ganga, but it is not flowing for its own use. It is we who drink its water, wash our clothes in it, and irrigate our fields with it. By bathing in it only the dirt of this body is washed, but by bathing in the Ganga of satsang, all the evils are removed. What I am telling you is also written in the Gita. But Gita cannot make you understand. Only the satguru can make you understand the satnam (true name), so do practice Knowledge. Look at Lord Shiva sitting with eyes closed [pointing towards a fountain with a statue of Shiva]. He always stays in the contemplation of Guru Maharaj. Whenever I see him he doesn’t do any other work. I don’t know whether he doesn’t like doing any other work or what. Therefore, you too should also practice Knowledge like this.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Prem Nagar, Hardwar August 21,1962 (translated from Hindi). Birthday Celebrations, as published in "Hansadesh" magazine, Issue 1, Mahesh Kare, January 1963. (First published address.)
1960s

“I can count on one of my hands, how many competent people are working in the [Hungarian] media today. But the situation is also woeful in the areas of theatre, film production and fine arts. The whole Hungarian culture is in a deep crisis, the putrescence reigning this country – in a cultural, economic, political, moral and mentalecological sense – consumes everything.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Egy kezemen meg tudom számolni, hány alkalmas ember dolgozik ma a médiában. De siralmas a helyzet a színház, a filmgyártás és a képzőművészet területén is. Az egész magyar kultúra mélységes válságban van, a rothadás, ami uralja az országot – kulturálisan, gazdaságilag, politikailag, etikailag és mentálökológiailag – mindent elemésztő.
Idegen test az RTL Klubon - Puzsér Róbert-interjú, hvg.hu, 2012. március 20.
Quotes from him, Interviews

Johnny Weir photo

“There are some things I keep sacred. My middle name. Who I sleep with. And what kind of hand moisturizer I use.”

Johnny Weir (1984) figure skater

"Figure Skating Rivalry Pits Athleticism Against Artistry," 2008