Quotes about handful (7291 quotes, page 26)

“Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain (chuckles heartily). There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song. That's actually one exciting thing about studying history, there did come a point towards the end of the 19th century where the British were just like, "this ain't worth it mate". There's a reason why in 1945 they gave us the keys to the world. They were like, "here, it's yours, take it, go, we're fine, no? India, go. Africa, go." Because they'd had enough. Because it's really hard, we can't even run ourselves. We literally have people storming our capital with signs saying, "government, keep your hands off my social security". If we can't handle that, do we really want to try and run, Africa? I think what we need is not so much world empire, I think we need closer cooperation, closer alliances.”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

People , World , Dreams , History

“By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Source: Conscience of a Conservative (2017), p. 8

Way , Problem , Change , Country

“I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Opening Lines
Something Happened (1974)

Sex , Night

“When you have honestly and penitently sought out Christ, and confessed your sins to Him, and put yourself wholly in His hands, then stay there. Follow Him. Keep close to Him and Him alone. In your store, in your shop, in your field, in your home, or wherever you are, be ever saying, "Now, Jesus, Lead me! Teach me Thy way! Hold fast to my hand!"”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 433.

Way , Home , Christ

“I'm in the Lord's hands,' he said humbly. 'I'm but a penny whistle for His breath to blow on.' This he said with such solemnity that the meaning of a fanatic was suddenly revealed to me. One or two distorted notions, a wild imagination, and fierce passions, and there you have the ingredients ready.”

John Buchan book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 3 "The Canongate Tollbooth"

Imagination , Passion

“Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!”

Charles Dickens book Hard Times

Bk. II, Ch. 4
Hard Times (1854)

Men , God , Family , Suffering

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men , Money , God , War

“The good taste we speak of, which is that of literature, is not limited to what we call the sciences, but extends itself imperceptibly to other arts, such as architecture, painting, sculpture, and music. 'Tis the same discerning faculty which introduces universally the same elegance, the same symmetry, and the same order in the disposition of the parts; which inclines us to a noble simplicity, to natural beauties, and a judicious choice of ornaments. On the other hand, the depravation of taste in arts has been always a mark and consequence of the depravation of taste in literature. … The good taste of literature reaches also to public customs, and the manner of living. An habit of consulting the best rules upon one subject, naturally leads to the doing it also upon others.”

Charles Rollin (1661–1741) French historian

The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres, Vol. I, The Third Edition (1742), Part II, Ch. 2: 'General Reflections upon what is called good Taste', pp. 45–46

Beauty , Art , Music , Literature

“I am a very careless person in some ways, I lose everything. But I never lost anything of this Course. People would would stop me in the subway and say, “Miss, you forgot your something or other, and hand it back to me.” Taxis would honk their horns, you know and say, “You left something in the back seat.” My secretary would say, “Are you sure this belongs in this case report, it doesn't sound right?” It was impossible to lose this Course, and I tried. But it… followed me around in an odd kind of way. People would send it back to me, anything. And I always got it back. We never lost anything, which is incredible.”

Helen Schucman (1909–1981) Clinical Psychologist

Helen Schucman (1976), in interview by David Hammond August 1976 in Belvedere, California. Republished in: " An interview with Helen Schucman http://merelyacim.wikispaces.com/An+interview+with+Helen+Schucman" at merelyacim.wikispaces.com. Accessed May 21, 2014.

People , Way , Personality

“And you mother still close to me,
you know that it is not enough to live an ordered and honest life.
You have been faithful for years to bring order into our house.
As soon as the dawn appeared in the night sky,
you rose towards the tasks awaiting you –
in the silence of a mental prayer.
Perhaps it is not enough even the overwhelming love,
to which you gave the sober expression of concrete acts.
The sacred wool, the steaming milk and the bed
composed with inimitable care by your hands.
Going back in time you recounted to your children their births,
and the birthdays have slowly vanished.
The beginning is now found from a thousand beginnings,
with the ancient, with the unknown, with Christ.
A present act includes them all,
opening after the events have passed.
And there is a severe duty for struggle,
something in our own life could be wrenched away by it.
The guards will soon appear,
and they will take me to my cell with the high window.
You will still be with me,
as mother and inexhaustible human presence.
Giving freely of your love, you still knew that your son is freedom.
You were a nearness, that always found something to do.
I have watched you unflinching under hardness and spite,
always moving, and acting,
holding back your inner rebellion you had pity on rage.
Now we are together to work and open all around.
In the loving gift to the world which ever crucifies us
is our fulfilment.
Seeing its limitations, still to treasure everything
is the gesture of infinite miracle,
and you were right: order comes from this principle,
the earthly goods, as our brothers the prophets tell us,
will be given unto us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love , Life , Children , World

“I have them completely in hand here, they dare not take a step without first consulting me.”

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

Letter to Herbert Hagen about the Jewish community in Vienna (1938), as quoted in Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth (2015).

“Lastly, let each of us consider how far he is bound in duty to others, and in good faith pay what we owe. In the same way, let the people pay all due honour to their rulers, submit patiently to their authority, obey their laws and orders, and decline nothing which they can bear without sacrificing the favour of God. Let rulers, again, take due charge of their people, preserve the public peace, protect the good, curb the bad, and conduct themselves throughout as those who must render an account of their office to God, the Judge of all… Let the aged also, by their prudence and their experience, (in which they are far superior,) guide the feebleness of youth, not assailing them with harsh and clamorous invectives but tempering strictness with ease and affability. Let servants show themselves diligent and respectful in obeying their masters, and this not with eye-service, but from the heart, as the servants of God. Let masters also not be stern and disobliging to their servants, nor harass them with excessive asperity, nor treat them with insult, but rather let them acknowledge them as brethren and fellow-servants of our heavenly Master, whom, therefore, they are bound to treat with mutual love and kindness. Let every one, I say, thus consider what in his own place and order he owes to his neighbours, and pay what he owes. Moreover, we must always have a reference to the Lawgiver, and so remember that the law requiring us to promote and defend the interest and convenience of our fellow-men, applies equally to our minds and our hands.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book II Chapter 8. Spurgeon.org. Retrieved 2015-02-25.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Love , Men , God , People

“I've been educated in some pretty lively barrooms, like the Cedar Bar in New York. And I went to high school with Frank Stella and when he got out of college he went to New York and started painting… I was working with sculpture in a kind of dilatory way, and he said to come up and work in his tiny loft when he wasn't there. At the same time I sort of dabbled in a little bit of painting, and a kind of confusion. I was an eye, ear, nose, and throat person too… One day Frank Stella just said to me, 'Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands.' I asked, 'Can't I become a good painter?' Frank said, 'No, because you are a good sculptor now.' That's really my formal education…. the company of artists is the great education. We educate each other. I've learned from older, wiser people by the old Greek method of sitting down and drinking with them. And that's how I received my education.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27 - quote referring to his close art-friend, American Minimal Art artist Frank Stella

People , Education , School , Way

“He was caught up in a lie he half-believed,
Found her hiding high in the family tree.
Washed his hands, and put her 'cross his knee.
She said "daddy, you've been a mother to me."”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Ankle Deep
Lyrics, Highway Companion (2006)

Lie , Family , Tree

“… a single generation enamoured of foreign ways is almost enough in history to risk the whole continuity of civilization and learning. Ages of accumulation are entrusted to the frail bark of each passing epoch by the hand of the past, desiring to make over its treasures to the use of the future. It takes a certain stubbornness, a doggedness of loyalty, even a modicum of unreasonable conservatism maybe, to lose nothing in the long march of the ages; and, even when confronted with great empires, with a sudden extension of the idea of culture, or with the supreme temptation of a new religion, to hold fast what we have, adding to it only as much as we can healthfully and manfully carry.”

Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda

p. 2 https://archive.org/stream/mythsofthehindus00niveuoft#page/n21/mode/2up
Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (1913)

Age , Religion , Way , History

“What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past.”

Friedrich Engels book Principles of Communism

Principles of Communism (1847)

Way , Evil , Time , Past

“The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

An Evil Night (1886)

Fear

“Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church, … without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politicon,—so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman’s delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them—lays hands on the sacred!”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 44
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

People , Search , Idea , Question

“Too many crucial things about this country turn out to be highly recommended because they are 'invisible'. There is the 'hidden hand' of the free market, the 'unwritten' Constitution, the 'invisible earnings' of the financial service sector, the 'magic' of monarchy and the 'mystery' of the Church and its claim to the interpretation of revealed truth. When we do get as far as the visible or the palpable, too much of it is deemed secret. How right it is that senior ministers, having kissed hands with the monarch, are sworn to the cult of secrecy by 'The Privy Council Oath'. How right it is that our major foreign alliance - the 'special relationship' with the United States - is codified by no known treaty and regulated by no known Parliamentary instrument.”

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

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Truth , Secret , Kiss , Country

“Our anti-Mammonistic battle, which is ranged above the other two battle-fronts, is directed against the world-encompassing financial power, that is, against the permanent financial and economic bleeding and exploitation of our people through large loan capital. This battle however is, on the other hand, also a powerful intellectual struggle against the soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 57

Life , People , World , Soul

“The enemies will be asking reasonable questions, like Isn't politics the way matters are really decided, and isn't the rational systems approach simply one political device, to be used when politically expedient? Or isn't morality essentially inexpressible in terms of concepts and words, and doesn't this essentially ineffable quality of our lives lead us humans to decide the way we do? Or, isn't religious imagery really the basis of all our perspectives and concepts, including the perspective of the systems approach? And what is it that carries the values we humans cherish? It is not the ego or the mind, but, say our basic aesthetic feeling, which cannot be conceptualized. And finally, and most generally, why is a rational, holistic approach desirable for the human species, especially since it so often gets out of hand, missing the vital essence of the specific and individual, the here and now, encompassing "everything" to the exclusion of every thing?”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 69; As cited in: Book Review: The Systems Approach and its Enemies http://phd-take-2.wikispaces.com/The+Systems+Approach+and+its+Enemies

Way , Feeling , Question

“President Clinton has made a few feeble swipes at addressing this issue [school violence], but one can only gape at the unintentionally comic spectacle of this man chastising the gun-lobby and America's love of violent movies while he rains bombs on Yugoslavia, where at least twenty noncombatants have already died for every innocent student at Columbine High. It is like listening to a man with a crack-pipe in his hand lecture children about the evils of drugs.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Keynote Address, Vermont Library Conference, VEMA Annual Meeting, (26 May 1999)

Love , Children , School , Evil

“I started violently, as if some unseen hand had goosed me.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

“Too great this largess from thy hand I know
Yet ask that some few drops of it may light
And listened to thy voice, and in it found
The very Spring and Soul of Poetry”

George Gilfillan (1813–1878) Scottish writer

From Proem 3 Night: A Poem by George Filfillan, Jackson, Walford & Hodder 1867
Other Quotes

Soul , Spring , Light

“I am favoured with your obliging letter, and shall finish your picture in two or three days at farthest, and send to Colchester according to your order, with a frame. I thank you. Sir, for your kind intention of procuring me a few heads to paint when I come over, which I purpose doing as soon as some of those are finished which I have [now] in hand. I should be glad if you'd place your picture as far from the light as possible; observing to let the light fall from the left.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainborough's letter, 24 Feb. 1757 from Ipswich, to a correspondent in the neighbouring town of Colchester; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 20
1755 - 1769

Light , Painting

“If we assume that the person asking the question is serious, there is an underlying background of purposes and understanding (the 'horizon' as Gadamer calls it) into which the question fits. If a questioner were to ask "Can pigs have wings?" a respondent within the analytic tradition might have difficulty answering, because although the idea is outrageously farfetched, current work in genetic engineering does leave open the logical possibility of creating a beast with the desired characteristics. Admittedly, there might be some refuge in challenging the asker as to whether such a monstrosity would still properly be called a pig,11 thereby invalidating the question. But if the question were asked seriously, neither the logical possibility nor the precise meaning of "pig" would be the issue at hand. The questioner would be asking for some reason in some background of understanding and purpose, and the appropriate answer (just like the appropriate answer to "Is there water in the refrigerator?") would have to be relevant to that background.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (1986, with Fernando Flores), p. 105.
<sup>11</sup> See, for example Putnam's discussion of natural kinds in "Is semantics possible?" (1970).

Idea , Understanding , Question , Water

“Her mouth
Was roses gather'd from the south,
The warm south side of Paradise,
And breathed upon and handed down,
By angels on a stair of stars.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

IV, p. 28.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)

Angels , Star

“Learn art and virtue, and, when times demand,
(So says the saw), you have them to your hand.”

Giovanni Maria Cecchi (1518–1587) Italian poet, playwright, writer and notary

(Dice il proverbio) impara arte e virtù,
E se il bisogno vien cavala su.
Le Rappresentazioni di Tobia, Act 7., Scene IV.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 323.

Art , Learning , Time

“Arms trade. If there was a legitimate trade, they'd sell those things - guns and bombs - in a supermarket. It would be like a cosmetics demonstration, and you'd have a little bit of shopping music in the background. And so, here's our arms trade demonstrator. 'Hello, and welcome to our new "Twilight of the World" range - our stunning new collection for nuclear winter. Now, for those persistent racial problems, why not try our new ethnic cleanser, "Pogrom"? Apply vigorously to the affected area, and then wipe off the face of the earth. For persistent outbreaks, to eliminate those last spots of resistance, why not try our new "I Can't Believe It's Not a Kalashnikov"? Go on, leaders, treat yourself. Tell yourself "I want it, I need it, I'll have it". Now, for those particularly sensitive areas, why not try our new range, "U. N."? It's entirely cosmetic; it does nothing. Apply half-heartedly with our new hand-wringing cream. Now, people often come up to me and say "Can you save my face?" Well, I can. So for those secret little deals - those secret little Iraqi liaisons - why not try "Embargo", the mark of the middleman? Now, for a touch of mystery, why not visit the "Missing Body Shop"? Collect your free nail remover and watch your problems disappear. Now, you're probably sitting there thinking "Oh, I'm such a hideous old blood-soaked dictator of a thing; nobody will deal with me". How wrong you are! We are sole suppliers to the US government of "Turn-a-Blind-Eye Liner" - use always in conjunction with "Oil of Kuwaiti", a touch of "Massacre" and blusher. Oh, you won't need that. I'm Marlene from the House of Charnel. Thank you for your time and patience. And for that finishing touch - for those romantic evenings when you really want to take the enemy out - why not try our stunning new nerve gas, "Paralyse" by Calvin Klein.' (Linda Live 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

People , Secret , World , Music

“The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.”

R. Scott Bakker (1967) Canadian writer

TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES
The White Luck Warrior (2011)

Men , Freedom

“When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I've never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

Water

“I kept a diary during our White House years, and I have drawn upon it often in this book. I experience the world through my intuitions and feelings, and you’ll find out a lot about those in these pages.
My mother used to say, “Play the hand that’s dealt you,” and that is what I have always tried to do. And this, for better or worse, is how it seemed to me.”

Nancy Reagan book My Turn

Foreword
My Turn (1989)

Books , World , Feeling , Housing

“We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

God

“Until that point (where national unity prevails) is reached, the journey to it must be seen and appreciated for what it is: in a society such as ours where divisions exist both inter-ethnically and within communities the process of nation building of which the rule of law is an integral part requires a deft balancing of priorities in a fair and inclusive manner. This allows everyone to be a part of the challenges that we need to face together. The path to this point has been tortuous and at times strained because we have invariably compromised some of the detail of the rule of law by honouring the letter if not the spirit of the decisions handed down by the courts. However, it has also been a critical learning experience where we have had to combine political reality with legal principle. The result is an imperfect one but the rule of law is stronger for having weathered these sustained assaults on it.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Siwati Memorial Lecture, Honiara, Solomon Islands, 24 September 2004 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0409/S00253.htm.

Law , Communication , Reality , Decision

“The US is a difficult partner, but an indispensable one. Everyone who have had to do with US politicians and diplomats knows they aren't easy to deal with. That is because of their immense sense of power. But an alliance with the US is absolutely necessary because of our relations with, on the one hand, Germany and France, and, on the other, Russia.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

Rzeczpospolita interview (March 2005)

Sense

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 25

Children , People , Feeling , Question

“What takes place within the structure of the leaf, then, with the aid of the wonderful green workmen, is this: A certain number of molecules of water, brought to the leaf from root and stem, are taken in hand and compounded with a certain number of molecules of carbon extracted from the air that has been brought into the leaf laboratory through its mouths or stomata from the outside atmosphere.
When the compound has been effected, we still have the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen that composed the water molecules and the atoms of carbon, but they are so marvelously put together that they no longer constitute the liquid water or the gas in which the carbon was imported. They now constitute an altogether new substance which is termed sugar.
Thus only three elements are dealt with and these very familiar ones. It would seem as if almost any chemist should be able to manage a simple combination like that. But… no human chemist knows how to manage it. There are forces to be invoked in effecting that combination of which no chemist has any knowledge.
Only the chlorophyll grains in the plant leaf have learned the secret, and up to the present they have kept their secret well.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

Secret , Knowledge , Learning , Water

“[About airports with advanced equipment] You know, you can have fun with that if you do it like I do. I take two Viagra and demand a pat down. "What's that in your pants, Mr. White?" "I have no idea. You're gonna need to pat that down… Pat it back up again… Give it a couple twists. See if it's connected to anything… You might wanna go wash your hands."”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

A Little Unprofessional

Idea

“After your high-handed improvement(?) of 'Neo-plasticism' any co-operation is quite impossible for me... For the rest sans rancune - Piet Mondriaan.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian in a letter to Van Doesburg, 4 Dec. 1927; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 27
Mondrian's answer to Theo van Doesburg's retrospective article in 'De Stijl' magazine in 1929, where he wrote: 'By the lively and most articulate evolution the principles, developed mainly by P. Mondriaan in 'De Stijl' could not any longer be considered as generally characteristic of the opinion of the group.'
1920's

“The same reasoning that applies to the individual person applies to the individual state. A very broad twilight zone exists in which it is difficult to distinguish where state right ends and federal right begins. Deprived of the privilege of its day in court, each state would be compelled to submit to the exactions of the Congress or resort to resistance by force. On the other hand, the legislatures of states, and sometimes the people, through the initiative and referendum, may pass laws which are very injurious to the minority residents of that state, by attempting to take away the privilege which they hold under the Federal Constitution. Except for the courts, such a minority would have no remedy for wrong done them. Their ultimate refuge is the Supreme Court of the United States.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People , Law , Personality

“For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 61
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Nature , Learning

“In his work a means of escape has been found from outmoded romanticism on the one hand and from a barren objectivity on the other.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Neville Cardus in the Manchester Guardian, 1935; reprinted in his The Delights of Music (1966) p. 56.
Criticism

“It is surely unnecessary to dwell on the interest and importance of a study which instructs us that every pebble we tread upon bears the impress of the Almighty's hand, and affords evidence of Creative wisdom; that every grain of sand, every particle of dust scattered by the wind, may be composed of the aggregated skeletons of beings, so minute as to elude our unassisted vision, but which possessed an organization as marvellous as our own;—a science discoveries have realized the wildest imaginings of the poet,—whose realities far surpass in grandeur and sublimity the most imposing fictions of romance;—a science whose empire is the earth, the ocean, the atmosphere, the heavens;—whose speculations embrace all elements, all space, all time;—objects the most minute, objects the most colossal;—carrying its researches into the smallest atom which the microscope can render accessible to our visual organs,—and comprehending all the phenomena in the boundless Universe, which the powers of the telescope can reveal.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Wisdom , Imagination , Reality , Study

“On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Die Zeit, 24 Nov 1989
Interviews

People

“I'm pop-corn
I'm a hell storm
Yeah, I'm in the hands of faith
I’m so bad words
Now what you heard?”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Dark White Girl
Resurrection (2014)

Faith , Hell

“We had Italy in our hands. We would never have wanted to attack, but we were like a sentinel, carefully ensuring that the Communist party should never emerge.”

Licio Gelli (1919–2015) Italian financier, liaison with Nazi Germany, P2 grandmaster, involved in many scandals

[Politi, James, Licio Gelli, fascist and masonic chief, https://www.ft.com/content/7d3fdd08-a418-11e5-8218-6b8ff73aae15, 16 August 2018, Financial Times, December 17, 2015]

“Diverting attention from the way in which certain beliefs, desires, attitudes, or values are the result of particular power relations, then, can be a sophisticated way of contributing to the maintenance of an ideology, and one that will be relatively immune to normal forms of empirical refutation. If I claim (falsely) that all human societies, or all human societies at a certain level of economic development, have a free market in health services, that is a claim that can be demonstrated to be false. On the other hand, if I focus your attention in a very intense way on the various different tariffs and pricing schema that doctors or hospitals or drug companies impose for their products and services, and if I become morally outraged by “excessive” costs some drug companies charge, discussing at great length the relative rates of profit in different sectors of the economy, and pressing the moral claims of patients, it is not at all obvious that anything I say may be straightforwardly “false”; after all, who knows what “excessive” means? However, by proceeding in this way I might well focus your attention on narrow issues of “just” pricing, turning it away from more pressing issues about the acceptance in some societies of the very existence of a free market for drugs and medical services. One can even argue that the more outraged I become about the excessive price, the more I obscure the underlying issue. One way, then, in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 54.

Health , Way , Falseness

“I always remember my disappointment the next morning when I found that my hand was still on because I thought, well, if I lost my hand I'm all right, I shall live, they can't send me out without a hand again. I was 20 then, it's not altogether a right thought for a young man to hope that he's been maimed for life.”

Arnold Ridley (1896–1984) Playwright, actor

After suffering severe wounds at the Battle of the Somme
Biography on Spartacus

Life , Hope , Disappointment

“The Jews have shown real genius in profiting by politics. This capitalistic people, which was brought into existence by the unscrupulous exploitation of men, has understood how to get the leadership of the Fourth Estate into its own hands; and by acting both on the Right and on the Left it has its apostles in both camps. On the Right the Jew does his best to encourage all the evils there are to such an extent that the man of the people, poor devil, will be exasperated as much as possible— greed of money, unscrupulousness, hard- heartedness, abominable snobbishness. More and more Jews have wormed their way into our upper-class families; and the consequence has been that the ruling class has been alienated from its own people.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

As quoted in A History of National Socialism, Konrad Heiden, Methuen & Company, LTD, London: UK, 1934, p. 58. Speech in April, 1922
1920s

Men , Money , People , Family

“There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is stripped off.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Autobiography (1890) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AutoB.html
1890s

World , Suffering

“[There is an] unbridgeable chasm in the world. On one side are such criminal gangs, sanctified by the term government, and the United Nations they dominate, enforcing by their guns mass slavery, mass death, mass violence, mass impoverishment, and mass famine. On the other side are democratic countries where people are free, secure, and need not fear mass impoverishment, murder at the hands of government agents, and killing famines.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 12

Death , People , World , Fear

“Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated too highly. Certainly all the evils of the government were therein brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now not merely notorious but, so to speak, judicially established, that among the governing lords of Rome everything was treated as venal--the treaty of peace and the right of intercession, the rampart of the camp and the life of the soldier; the African had said no more than the simple truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself. But the whole external and internal government of this period bore the same stamp of miserable baseness. In our case the accidental fact, that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better accounts than the other contemporary military and political events, shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and every intrepid patriot had long been in a position to support by facts. The circumstance, however, that they were now furnished with some fresh, still stronger and still more irrefutable, proofs of the baseness of the restored senatorial government--a baseness only surpassed by its incapacity--might have been of importance, had there been an opposition and a public opinion with which the government would have found it necessary to come to terms. But this war had in fact exposed the corruption of the government no less than it had revealed the utter nullity of the opposition. It was not possible to govern worse than the restoration governed in the years 637-645; it was not possible to stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the Roman senate in 645: had there been in Rome a real opposition, that is to say, a party which wished and urged a fundamental alteration of the constitution, it must necessarily have now made at least an attempt to overturn the restored senate. No such attempt took place; the political question was converted into a personal one, the generals were changed, and one or two useless and unimportant people were banished. It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the rotten curule chairs. In this respect the coming forward of Marius was significant, just because it was in itself so utterly unwarranted. If the burgesses had stormed the senate-house after the defeat of Albinus, it would have been a natural, not to say a proper course; but after the turn which Metellus had given to the Numidian war, nothing more could be said of mismanagement, and still less of danger to the commonwealth, at least in this respect; and yet the first ambitious officer who turned up succeeded in doing that with which the older Africanus had once threatened the government,(16) and procured for himself one of the principal military commands against the distinctly- expressed will of the governing body. Public opinion, unavailing in the hands of the so-called popular party, became an irresistible weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome. We do not mean to say”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 3, pg 163, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 3

Life , War , People , Truth

“On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.”

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

68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, March 25, 1968, less than 2 weeks before his death. Source: Martin Luther King's pro-Israel legacy by Allen B. West on February 15, 2014 at AllenBWest.com. http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/martin-luther-kings-pro-israel-legacy/, See also 2014-06-09 Youtube video Dr. King's pro-Israel Legacy (in 5 minutes) by IBSI - Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd7pIB0CP0
1960s

Hunger , World , Disease , Peace

“Here is an empire in which is the only relic of the oldest civilization of the world—one which, 2,700 years ago, according to some authorities, had a system of primary education—which had its system of logic before the time of Aristotle, and its code of morals before that of Socrates. Here is a country which has had its uninterrupted traditions and histories for so long a period—that supplied silks and other articles of luxury to the Romans 2,000 years ago! They are the very soul of commerce in the East, and one of the wealthiest nations in the world. They are the most industrious people in Asia, having acquired the name of the ants of the East…You find them not as barbarians at home, where they cultivate all the arts and sciences, and where they have carried all, except one, to a point of perfection but little below our own—but that one is war. You have there a people who have carried agriculture to a state of horticulture, and whose great cities rival in population those of the Western world. Now, there must be something in such a people deserving of respect. If in speaking of them we stigmatize them as barbarians, and threaten them with force because we say they are inaccessible to reason, it must be because we do not understand them; because their ways are not our ways, nor our ways theirs. Now, is not so venerable an empire as that deserving of some sympathy—at least of some justice—at the hands of conservative England?”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1857/feb/26/resolutions-moved-debate-adjourned in the House of Commons (26 February 1857) on China.
1850s

War , People , World , Education

“The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

Quoted in Daniel Altman, "Managing Globalization: Q & A with Joseph Stiglitz" http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p=177, The International Herald Tribune (2006-10-11).

“As we have seen, the explicit part of the circular issued by the West Bengal government in 1989 in effect was that there must be no negative reference to Islamic rule in India. Although these were the very things which contemporary Islamic writers had celebrated, there must be no reference to the destruction of the temples by Muslim rulers, to the forcible conversion of Hindus, to the numerous other disabilities which were placed on the Hindu population. Along with the circular, the passages which had to be removed were listed and substitute passages were specified. The passages which were ordered to be deleted contained, if anything, a gross understatement of the facts. On the other hand, passages which were sought to be inserted contained total falsehoods: that by paying jizyah Hindus could lead ‘normal lives’ under an Islamic ruler like Alauddin Khalji! A closer study of the textbooks which are today being used under the authority of the West Bengal government shows a much more comprehensive, a much deeper design than that of merely erasing the cruelties of Islamic rule.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Study , Parting

“We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Children’s Song"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

World

“In a time of moral and intellectual anarchy, he handed on the great tradition of faith in the mind and spirit of man.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dean Acheson, former clerk to Justice Brandeis, after Brandeis’s death in 1941.

Faith , Time

“The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away. Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had he anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: "Oof!"”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

his testament for posterity. Ooof!
Ch 23
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

Death , Fear , Time

“Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 5:23–24 (9 June 1842)
1840s

Love , People , Feeling , Personality

“I will take the liberty of saying that we missed the chance we had in the 1990s. The question was posed: what kind of country should we have? A strong country, or a worthy one where people can live decently? We chose the former – a strong country. Once again we are living in an era of power. Russians are fighting Ukrainians. Their brothers. My father is Belarusian, my mother, Ukrainian. That's the way it is for many people. Russian planes are bombing Syria … A time full of hope has been replaced by a time of fear. The era has turned around and headed back in time. The time we live in now is second-hand … Sometimes I am not sure that I've finished writing the history of the "Red" man.”

Svetlana Alexievich (1948) Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer

Nobel Lecture (2015)

People , Fear , Hope , Way

“The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Lie

“I remember I was once booed off the stage on day one of a festival at Nagpur within half an hour and the same audiences were eating off my hands the next within the first seven or eight minutes. Everyone has their bad day, if I didn’t I’d be God.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I've never wanted to fit in Abbaji's shoes: Ustad Zakir Hussain

God

“This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, State of the Union Address — The Four Freedoms (1941)

Women , Men , God , Faith

“And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—
"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

And the Greatest of These is War.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

War , Smile

“Money and muscle, that’s what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won’t do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won’t enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (c. June 1928)
Letters

Money , World

“At that time my heart was all broke
I looked like ashes and smelled like smoke.
And I turned away from my loving kind
Try to leave my body and live in my mind.
But it's much too much emotion
To hold it in your hand.
They've got waves out on the ocean
They're gonna wear away the land.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Line 'Em Up"
Song lyrics, Hourglass (1997)

Love , Time , Heart

“The transformation of numerous intermediaries into a handful of monopolists represents one of the fundamental processes in the transformation of capitalism into capitalist imperialism.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Two

“We have the proof on hand, that instead of the laws being honored, they have been violated in every instance of persecution against this people; instead of the laws being made honorable, they have been trampled under the feet of lawyers, judges, sheriffs, governors, legislators, and nearly all the officers of the government; such persons are the most guilty of breaking the laws. To diverge a little, in regard to those who have persecuted this people and driven them to the mountains, I intend to meet them on their own grounds. It was asked this morning how we could obtain redress for our wrongs; I will tell you how it could be done, we could take the same law they have taken, viz., mobocracy, and if any miserable scoundrels come here, cut their throats. (All the people said, Amen.) This would be meting out that treatment to wicked men, which they had measured to innocent persons. We could meet them on their own ground, when they will not honor the law, but will kill the Prophets and destroy the innocent.”

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

Journal of Discourses 2:311 (July 8, 1855)
1850s

Men , People , Law , Mountain

“As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

III, 13
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book III

Understanding

“I want to write poetry, I'm bored, disgusted by my habits
If I stop thinking and put my hands down perhaps I will have much to say
I'm scurrying to the attic like a solitary bug
Before you become old and ugly, I must kiss you on the nose”

Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer

"How Awful When Poetry Ages As It Is Read"
I've Learned Some Things (2008)

Kiss , Thinking

“Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers."”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Religion , Science

“Think about it- the King James Bible took religion out of the hands of the high priests and put it in to the hands of the people. An entire generation became literate just to be able to read the King James version of the Bible.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part IV, Intellectual Property, The Augmenter, p. 122.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

People , Religion , Thinking , Reading

“I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council—a Labour council—hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services. The people will not abide posturing.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Source: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth (1 October 1985).

People

“The minister, who would be most like the Master, must go and, like Him, lay the warm, kindly hand on the leper, the diseased, the wretched. He must touch the blind eyes with something from himself. The tears must be in his own eyes over the dead who are to be raised to spiritual life. Jesus is our great exemplar.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 413.

Life , Disease , Tear , Dead

“Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill, I would guillotine it. My collages came undone, they became blistered. I then introduced death and decay in my compositions. I reacted by avoiding any precision from one day to another. Instead of cutting the paper, I would tear it with my hands.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 431

Death , Search , Tear , Childhood

“There comes a night when all too late
The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand,
The eager thought behind closed portals stand,
And the last wishes to the mute lips press
Buried ere death in silent helplessness.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Death , Night

“So at last the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who founded it left within a year because they'd captured it. Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

Monckton climate change video goes viral http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/monckton-climate-change-video-goes-viral/ wattsupwiththat.com, November 16, 2009.

World

“With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The Fourth Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Cars , Water

“I tried my hand at a novel around college romance, but soon figured out I was no good at it.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

In the news

“Pascal scornfully said that simple workmen had been able to convince of error those great men that are called 'philosophers'. It was, then, these unlearned men… who were most ready to believe 'what they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands'.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

Religion and the rise of modern science, 1972

Men , Error

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”

Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet

Part 1, LXXIV
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

Fools

“[T]he thought of creation itself dictates the presence of an excessive will to receive in the souls, to fit the immense pleasure that the Creator thought to bestow upon them. For the great delight and the great desire to receive must go hand in hand.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Introduction to the Book of Zohar, in Introduction to the Book of Zohar: Volume Two, Michael Laitman, ed., Laitman Kabbalah Publishers, 2005, p. 119.
Introduction to the Book of Zohar

Pleasure , Soul

“Restructuring is a favorite tactic of antisocials who have reached a senior position in an organization. The chaos that results is an ideal smokescreen for dysfunctional leadership. Failure at the top goes unnoticed, while the process of restructuring creates the illusion of a strong, creative hand on the helm.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

Source: The Leader on the Couch, 2011, p. 22

Failure , Strong

“I have seen a man in London, who I believe is now living, ring twelve bells at one time; two of them were placed upon his head, he held two in each hand, one was affixed to each of his knees, and two upon each foot; all of which he managed with great adroitness, and performed a vast variety of tunes.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 293
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bell ringing

Time

“To My Lord Nevill, in haste,

My Lord Nevill, I recommend me to you as heartily as I can; and as ever ye love me and your own weal and security, and this realm, that ye come to me with that ye may take, defensibly arrayed, in all the haste that is possible, and that ye give credence to Richard Ratcliffe, this bearer, whom I now do send to you, instructed with all my mind and intent.

And, my Lord, do me now good service, as ye have always before done, and I trust now so to remember you as shall be the making of you and yours. And God send you good fortunes.

Written at London, 11th day of June, with the hand of your heartily loving cousin and master,

R. Gloucester.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Letter sent at the same time as the one above, to a family retainer, reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Love , God

“I am not prepared to hand over to any other person, though wise and learned, or to any institution however ancient or sure of its position, my inalienable right to search for ever-growing and ever-expanding truth. I believe the craving for security in belief is one which arises from within ourselves, and can only be met adequately from resources which are within ourselves. It seems to me that it is far more important for a soul in evolution to believe a few things because it has struggled, thought and suffered to discover and possess them, than it is for it to have a comfortable and orderly faith which it has adopted from any source outside itself.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.58 (Dr. Raynor Johnson: A Religious Outlook for Modern Man. 1962. Hodder and Stoughton. ppp. 122-23)

Truth , Faith , Soul , Search

“I often find poems hand written in old abandoned notebooks.”

Dermot Healy (1947–2014) Irish writer

Penguin Group (2013) A Conversation with Dermot Healy http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/long_time_no_see.html, Penguin US, accessed May 5, 2013

“The [sexual harassment] situation has gotten so out of hand that, in 1993, in one of the first British cases, a plumber was fired for continuing to use the traditional term "ballcock" for the toilet flotation unit, instead of the new politically correct term, sanitized of sexual suggestiveness. This is insane. We are back to the Victorian era, when table legs had to be draped lest they put the thought of ladies' legs into someone's dirty mind.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 50

“Anyone who dismisses out of hand evidence that U. S. intelligence agencies still do some of the things that they now brag about having done not too long ago is not a skeptic, but a fool.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

Huffington Post, "Wikileaks Blows Whistle; Most Miss the Point" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/wikileaks-blows-whistle-o_b_525066.html, 7 April 2010.

Fools , Intelligence

“I mean seriously. If the book had a solid pub date, don't you think I'd mention it? Do you think I'd sit here at home, rubbing my hands together and chortling: "Yes! If I withhold this information another week, I'm sure to get another 100 e-mails asking me about the book!"
Yup. That's exactly what I'd do. Because obviously I am some sort of alien life form that lives on snarky fanmail and bitchy blog comments. Since I became stranded on your strange world years ago, they have been my only means of sustenance.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

A sign of things to come… (18 February 2010) http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2010/02/signs-of-things-to-come/comment-page-3/
Official site

Life , Books , World , Home

“When all desire at last and all regret
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
And teach the unforgetful to forget?”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The House of Life

Newborn Death.
The House of Life (1870—1881)

Death , Pain , Forgetting

“The moral is obvious: it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. If there are armaments on one side there must be armaments on other sides. While one nation arms, other nations cannot tempt it to aggression by remaining defenceless…The increase of armaments, that is intended in each nation to produce consciousness of strength, and a sense of security, does not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts, till each government feels it would be criminal and a betrayal of its own country not to take every precaution, while every government regards every precaution of every other government as evidence of hostile intent…The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them - it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the past in the interest of future peace, the warning to be handed on to those who come after us.”

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

Vol. 1, pp. 91-92.
Twenty-five Years (1925)

Hostility , War , Fear , Peace

“I write this sitting in my hand-built adobe-style home looking out on the Bitterroot Valley… It's a place where the "Old" West and the "New" confront one another daily in often bazarre ways. …I'm sort of a New Westerner myself. Because of relatively recent inventions like solar panels, satellites, cell phones, composting toilets, and four-wheel drive vehicles, I'm able to live where no one has since the Salish had the valley. …perhaps it all just seems new because the prism through which we're accustomed to view the history of the region has only recently been polished sufficiently to gain the deep view.”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (2003)

Way , Home , History

“Your Knowledge has Qualified You to make those Reflections on the following Relations, which few can Think, and tis not fit that all should See. How far the Platonic Notions of Demons which were, it may be, much more espoused by those primitive Christians and Scholars that we call The Fathers, than they see countenanced in the ensuing Narratives, are to be allowed by a serious man, your Scriptural Divinity, join'd with Your most Rational Philosphy, will help You to Judge at an uncommon rate. Had I on the Occasion before me handled the Doctrin of Demons, or launced forth into Speculations about magical Mysteries, I might have made some Ostentation, that I have read something and thought a little in my time; but it would neither have been Convenient for me, nor Profitable for those plain Folkes, whose Edification I have all along aimed at. I have therefore here but briefly touch't every thing with an American Pen; a Pen which your Desert likewise has further Entitled You to the utmost Expressions of Respect and Honor from. Though I have no Commission, yet I am sure I shall meet with no Crimination, if I here publickly wish You all manner of Happiness, in the Name of the great Multitudes whom you have laid under everlasting Obligations. Wherefore in the name of the many hundred Sick people, whom your charitable and skilful Hands have most freely dispens'd your no less generous than secret Medicines to; and in the name of Your whole Countrey, which hath long had cause to believe that you will succeed Your Honourable Father and Grandfather in successful Endeavours for our Welfare; I say, In their Name, I now do wish you all the Prosperity of them that love Jerusalem. And whereas it hath been sometimes observed, That the Genius of an Author is commonly Discovered in the Dedicatory Epistle, I shall be content if this Dedicatory Epistle of mine, have now discovered me to be,
(Sir) Your sincere and very humble Servant,
C. Mather.”

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) American religious minister and scientific writer

Love , People , Secret , Knowledge

“When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, The 'Leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 93 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
Appel's quote is referring to his sculpture 'Monument for Walt Whitman', dedicated to the American poet

Books , World , Way , Feeling

“1963 is when prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the American school system. Anybody remember that? Madalyn Murray O’Hair? Her son, by the way, became a preacher. His mom used him to get prayer taken out. But in 1963, sexually transmitted diseases began to climb. This is for kids 10 to 14 years of age. 1963 is when divorce rates began to go up. By the way, premarital sex and divorce go hand and hand. If you don’t trust 'em before you’re married, you won’t trust 'em after you’re married. 1963 is when violent crimes began to increase. There’s been nearly a 1000% increase in violent crimes. 1963 is when unwed birthrates began to incline. 100% increase for girls 10 to 14. By the way, pregnancies have increased 553%. SAT scores have dropped off incredibly since 1963. 1963 is when we saw an incredible rise of married couples living together in adultery. Teen suicide rate has gone crazy.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Age , Disease , School , Sex

“Jenna stumbled backward, her eyes on the woman who slammed the door behind her with one foot while both hands held a gun. A big gun. Pointed right at Jenna.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 108

“It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 14 (pp. 120–121)

Life , Youth , Age , Learning

“We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)
Context: I know that science and technology are not just cornucopias pouring good deeds out into the world. Scientists not only conceived nuclear weapons; they also took political leaders by the lapels, arguing that their nation — whichever it happened to be — had to have one first. … There’s a reason people are nervous about science and technology.
And so the image of the mad scientist haunts our world—from Dr. Faust to Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strangelove to the white-coated loonies of Saturday morning children’s television. (All this doesn’t inspire budding scientists.) But there’s no way back. We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged. Rather, its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility — more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive.

War , World , History , Communication

Quotes about handful page 26

Quotes about handful
page 26