Quotes about happening
page 51

“… in such a matter he would never have been guided by his first thoughts (which would probably have been right) nor even by his twenty-first (which would have at least been explicable). Beyond doubt he would have prolonged deliberation till his hundred-and-first; and they would be infallibly and invincibly wrong. This is what always happens to the deliberations of a simple man who thinks he is a subtle one.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

Thinking

“Isn't he a huge business success that knows what he's talking about? No he isn't. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And what ever happened to? A business genius he is not.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Women, Men, Business, Success

“I think the party owes their membership an explanation. And furthermore, I think that the party owes Mr. Scheer an explanation … his potential credibility is damaged because of this. They should explain to him how this happened and how it will never happen again. He should be insisting upon a more thorough review of what happened.”

Jay Hill

6 June 2017 quoted by Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/top-bernier-adviser-calls-tory-leadership-vote-a-fiasco/article35211726/ regarding Andrew Scheer

Thinking

“Art happens all the time, everywhere. All we have to do is to keep our minds open.”

Jacek Tylicki (1951) American artist

Jacek Tylicki, in "Les Krantz," The New York Art Review, 1988.

Art, Time

“"I just remember he was dominating, a scoring machine, unstoppable," Walt Frazier, the Knicks' Hall of Famer, said. "The guy looked indestructible. He was such a physical specimen, I never thought something like this would happen to him at 63. "His legacy is comical. When you read about his records, it makes you laugh. He has records that are just remarkable. I don't care if he was 10 feet tall, the things that he did.”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

[Wise, Mike, Giants of Game Mourning Loss of Biggest Giant of All, The New York Times, 1999-10-13]
Scoring

Guy, Reading

“At all levels the drug trade operates without without schedule. Nobody delivers on time except by accident. The addict runs on junk time. His body is his clock, and junk runs through it like an hour-glass. Time has meaning for him only with reference to his need. Then he make his abrupt intrusion into the time of others, and, like all Outsiders, all Petitioners, he must wait, unless he happens to mesh with non-junk time.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Hauser and O'Brien
Naked Lunch (1959)

Time, Waiting

“The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Music in the Modern World (1948) by Rollo Hugh Myers, p. 99
Variant translation: The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous might happen.
As quoted in Debussy (1989) by Paul Holmes, p. 10

Hope

“That freedom can never be attained by a nation without suffering and sacrifice has been amply borne out by the recent tragic happenings in this subcontinent. We are in the midst of unparalleled difficulties and untold sufferings; we have been through dark days of apprehension and anguish; but I can say with confidence that with courage and self-reliance and by the Grace of God we shall emerge triumphant.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Speech at a rally at the University Stadium, Lahore (30 October 1947)

God, Confidence, Courage, Freedom

“It's not easy, it's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards - no. So - you know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political, it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game, they think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, and it's really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we will do to do on day one and some of haven't really thought that through enough. And so when we look at the array of problems we have and the potential for it getting - really spinning out of control, this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced. So as tired as I am - and I am - and as difficult as it is to try to kind of keep up with what I try to do on the road like occasionally exercise and try to eat right - it's tough when the easiest food is pizza - I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation. So I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

In response to the question, "How do you do it?" from Marianne Pernold The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702954.html Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

People, Food, Exercises, Game

“Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington's house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, pp. 140-141
Paper Towns (2008)

Fear, Feeling, Exercises, Fish

“There's no question that at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God's forgiveness. Not God's understanding, but God's forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there's a forgiving God. Somebody once said that when we're young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

2011-03-09 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, quoted in * 2011-03-09
Gingrich: Past Adultery 'Partially Driven By How Passionately I Felt About This Country' (Video)
Eric
Kleefeld
Talking Points Memo
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/gingrich-past-adultery-partially-driven-by-how-passionately-i-felt-about-this-country-video.php
2011-03-31
2010s

Life, God, People, Justice

“We need to recognise that the entire information sector—from music to newspapers to telecoms to internet to semiconductors and anything in-between—has become subject to a gigantic market failure in slow motion. A market failure exists when market prices cannot reach a self-sustaining equilibrium. The market failure of the entire information sector is one of the fundamental trends of our time, with far-reaching long-term effects, and it is happening right in front of our eyes.”

Eli Noam (1946) professor of Finance and Economics at the Columbia Business School

Eli Noam in: " Eli Noam: Market failure in the media sector http://www.citi.columbia.edu/elinoam/FT/2-16-04/MarketFailure.htm" at news.ft.com, February 16 2004 The context of this quote was a digression on the media, telecommunication, information technology, and internet industries.

Music, Failure, Time

“Let us never forget that the deep things that are American are the soul and the spirit. The Statue of Liberty is not tired, and not because it is made of bronze. It is because no matter what happens, here the individual is dignified because he is created in the image of his God. Let us not forget it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Source: 1950s, Speech to the B'nai B'rith (1953)

God, Soul, Forgetting

“It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half. But to consider all the chief effects of a proposed course on everybody often requires a long, complicated, and dull chain of reasoning. Most of the audience finds this chain of reasoning difficult to follow and soon becomes bored and inattentive. The bad economists rationalize this intellectual debility and laziness by assuring the audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits because it is only “classicism” or “laissez-faire,” or “capitalist apologetics” or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Lesson (ch. 1)

Men, Truth, Error

“I have the kind of personality that I always look ahead than look at what’s happened. It does help a lot, especially when you’ve done badly or you’ve failed. It’s instinctive of me that I look at what’s next, I look ahead a lot, and start preparing for that, in victory and in defeat.”

Rahul Dravid (1973) Indian cricketer

Victory, Help, Personality

“What happens to the state? It probably gets less powerful over time – and in the end its functions are assumed by society. I’ve tried to make this a project usable both by people who see states as useful and those who don’t; you could model an anarchist version and a statist version and try them out. There is probably even a conservative version of postcapitalism, and good luck to it.”

Paul Mason (journalist) book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

People, Time

“What happened at Hiroshima was less than a millionth part of a holocaust at present levels of world nuclear armament.”

Jonathan Schell (1943–2014) American author

In The Fate of the Earth.

World, Parting

“In my eyes, the year 1942 already has behind it the most fateful trial of our people. That was the winter of '41 to '42. I may be permitted to say that in that winter the German people, and in particular its Wehrmacht, were weighed in the balance by Providence. Nothing worse can or will happen. That we conquered that winter, that "General Winter," that at last the German fronts stood, and that this spring, that is, early this summer, we were able to proceed again, that, I believe, is the proof that Providence was content with the German people… You do not realize what is hidden beneath these words in the way of human heroism, and also of human pain, and suffering, and we may say, often anxiety too, naturally, deathly anxiety on the part of all those who, especially for the first time, are placed before the trial of God in this highest court.”

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

Address at the Opening of the Winter Relief Campaign http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-address-at-the-opening-of-the-winter-relief-campaign-september-1942 (September 30, 1942) 1940s

God, Pain, Fate, People

“I feel the conflict still exists in me – but not causing me any difficulty in working, as it did immediately after returning from Italy [in 1925]. In fact I ask myself is this [the] conflict what makes things happen? For it seems to me now that this conflict between the excitement & great impression I got from Mexican sculpture & the love & sympathy I felt for Italian art, represents two opposing sides in me, the 'tough' & the 'tender', & that many other artists have had the same two conflicting sides in their natures.... and really I see no difficulty in appreciating both sides & finding them in the same artist. Perhaps an obvious & continuous synthesis will eventually derive in my own work – I can’t say – I can only work as I feel & believe at the time I do the work.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

in 'Undated notes' 1950; as quoted in The Art of Henry Moore, Will Grohmann, Thames and Hudson, London 1960, n.p.
1940 - 1955

Love, Art, Feeling, Nature

“You know, it's interesting for the president to say something that juvenile. I'm not picking on anyone. Again, as we just said, four Americans died! Is that picking on anybody when you want to place responsibility and find out what happened so that we can make sure it doesn't happen again?”

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

On the Record w/Greta van Susteren http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2012/11/15/mccain-obama-were-not-picking-anybody-we-want-answers-and-buck-stops-your-desk-mr-preside, Fox News, regarding McCain's opposition to the potential nomination of ambassador Susan Rice to Secretary of State over her statements about the 2012 Benghazi attack, and President Obama saying in a press conference, "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after someone, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the United Nations ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intel she had received, and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous." 2010s, 2012

“A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal [sic] band!"I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike "Silent Night") has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and compare the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!"Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do that," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?"”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

I asked, and he replied, "No, I already told you — I hate rock music."
Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 58-59

Hate, Hope, Music, Learning

“Nuclear power started in weaponry. It was designed for war. And any instrument that has its origins in war always has the potential for war. First because the material you need to make bombs, you’re multiplying it though nuclear power, you’re taking uranium and turn it into plutonium. Second by equipping governments and private companies with this potential, in society you spread this potential, that here is a weapon of mass destruction available. This is exactly what happened with fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers came from explosive factories are increasingly used in terrorist attacks.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On nuclear power, as quoted in " Koodankulam Must Be Stopped: Vandana Shiva http://www.dianuke.org/koodankulam-must-be-stopped-vandana-shiva/", DiaNuke (29 May 2012)

War

“It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, Finds Print of Man's Foot on the Sand.

“I say if you have the urge to pursue this, do it, especially when you’re very young. If you don’t throw your marbles out and see what happens, for the rest of your life you’ll wonder what could have happened. And that can have negative effects on the rest of your life. Not necessarily devastating, but you’ll always have that nagging thing. When you go out like I did – I went from Arkansas to New York City – and if I had done that and spent five, 10 years trying to do it, I would either have been successful or I would have said, you know, I’m done with this. I gave it my shot. The only failure is not trying. And I encourage all young people, if you have any inkling whatsoever, that you can do this. At least try.”

Rodger Bumpass (1951) American character actor and voice actor

Rodger Bumpass is Squidward Tentacles http://georgiastatesignal.com/rodger-bumpass-is-squidward-tentacles/ (September 8, 2013)

Life, People, Failure, Success

“Tuesday morning at the Bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Casimir Pulaski Day"
Lyrics, Illinois (2005)

Study

“According to my theory, a dark spot in the sun is a place in its atmosphere which happens to be free from luminous decompositions”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

above it
Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" quote from his paper "Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars" (1795).

Sun

“They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM talks about plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 2008.

God, Home, Light, Night

“Maybe some of this has to happen. Every year there is some outrageous act that reminds us that there is still so much work to be done.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1990s

“It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 2: "The Haj in the Heart", Ch. 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

Learning, Teachers

“Something good has happened to us. We are, dare I say it, a professional unit these days. When people get us in a room together now, they actually treat us like musicians. Before, they would treat us as anything but: pigeon fanciers, candles, dry humpers…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Talking about Babyshambles to Spin Magazine, Autumn 2007
Definitions and objects

People

“So, too, when it is recorded that he drove the money changers from the temple. This, had it happened, would have been the act simply of one who had respect for this temple and not for the religion taught in it. It would seem that, at first, Christ believed substantially in the religion of his time; that afterward, seeing its faults, he wished to reform it; and finally, comprehending it in all its enormity, he devoted his life to its destruction.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life, Money, Religion, Time

“God is not running the world. (…) All happens by itself. You are asking the question and you are supplying the answer. And you know the answer when you ask the question. All is play in consciousness. All divisions are illusory. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

God
Source: "I am That." P.36.

God, World, Question

“Why do I—the original advocate of realignment on the Left—object to the Lib-Lab pact? Precisely because I do not think it will lead to realignment. For one thing, the Gaitskellites have fled the field. The Labour Party looks and behaves more and more as the servants of the trade union leaders…When the election comes, either the Labour Party win—and if that happens they will say "Thank you very much" to us and go on with more collectivism—or they lose, and we shall be tarred with their failure…Don't let us become oysters to Carpenter Jim, however genuinely benevolent he may seem.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

The Daily Mail (26 July, 1977).

Failure, Thinking

“It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“The other reason is that what happens to the individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world--of its well-being, its fulfillment, or its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything--anything at all--from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that's what you're doing when you complain: hacking and destroying.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
V, 7
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

World, Parting

“Action will happen in its own time. Action taken on strength of feelings inevitably leads to more feelings to correct the action previously taken - and so the feelings of discontent and conflict, and corrective actions go on and on repeating themselves.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Love is not a feeling ~ The Article (1995)

Feeling, Time

“He’s been off-line for the best part of six hours and is getting a panicky butterfly stomach at the idea of not being in touch with everything that’s happened in the last twenty kiloseconds.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), p. 54

Idea, Parting

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 35. It just happened—it just came over me. I’d gotten asthma and was having trouble sleeping, getting less than an hour of sleep a night. … I decided I wouldn’t eat meat any more, not even for a million dollars. I felt cleansed and incredible, like the inflammation in my body had been reduced. It was life-changing. … When I decided to become vegetarian, I had to learn how to ‘recook,’ if you will. … When I gave up meat, I wondered what I would make. That turned out to be vegetables, really organic and fresh. I made them very flavorful, using herbs, lemon and a little oil. I think I taught my kids well. My daughter, Dinah, for example, is also a vegetarian and doesn’t eat anything that can look at her.”

Cloris Leachman (1926) American actress

"For Cloris Leachman, No Bad Days" https://parade.com/362906/stephaniestephens/for-cloris-leachman-no-bad-days/, interview with Parade magazine (2 January 2015).

Life, Thinking, Sleep, Learning

“We made a mistake lowering the voting age to 18. I think it happened basically out of guilt.”

Chris Shays (1945) American politician

Age, Thinking

“Had there been a lunatic asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on the pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him, and everything that happened after could but have confirmed the diagnosis.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Impressions and Comments, series 3

Christ

“There was Your Humble Narrator Alex coming home from work to a good hot plate of dinner, and there was this ptitsa all welcoming and greeting like loving…. I had this sudden very strong idea that if I walked into the room next to this room where the fire was burning away and my hot dinner laid on the table, there I should find what I really wanted…. For in that other room in a cot was laying gurgling goo goo goo my son…. I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

Love, Home, Idea, Strong

“We Dadaists are often told that we are incoherent, but into this word people try to put an insult that it is rather hard for me to fathom. Everything is incoherent… There is no logic… The acts of life have no beginning and no end. Everything happens in a completely idiotic way. That is why everything is alike. Simplicity is called Dada. Any attempt to conciliate an inexplicable momentary state with logic strikes me as a boring kind of game… Like everything in life, Dada is useless… Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin microbe that penetrates with the insistence of air into all of the spaces that reason has not been able to fill with words or conventions.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Life, People, Way, Game

“Stupefied parents must be persuaded that by not vaccinating their children they harm these children and the enitre society. Because, as a significant part of society will not become resistant to a given pathogen, there is a chance that an epidemic will occur. Now, for example, measles returns. Completely harmless in childhood (in my time all children went through it and nothing bad happened), can lead to very serious complications in adult patients.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Mazurek, Maria (7 July 2017): Cudowna armia, która broni naszego ciała http://plus.gazetakrakowska.pl/magazyn/a/cudowna-armia-ktora-broni-naszego-ciala,12271571. Gazeta Krakowska (in Polish), pp. 18–19.

Children, Parent, Chance, Time

“There are scarcely fifteen art-collectors in Paris capable of liking a painter without the backing of the Salon. There are eighty thousands of them who wouldn't buy a thing from a painter who is not in the [Paris'] Salon. I am not going to be so foolish as to condemn a thing just because of where it happens to be. In short, I'm not going to waste my time bearing a grudge against the Salon – I don't even want to look as if I do. To my mind, one must simply paint as well as one possibly can – and that's all.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, pp. 127-128 : in his letter to Durand-Ruel (1880's), explaining his choice to participate in the yearly official Salon as well as in the Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, on the same time.

Art, Time, Painting

“Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: Life's Solution (2003), p. XV.

World, Way

“Because it doesn't happen like this, where we're having an interview and it sort of turns into a conversation--and a quite gratifying one, because it's all about me.”

Paul Bettany (1971) British actor

Interview http://www.paulbettany.net/articles/press.php?p=backstage

“Most of the writers I know come from a variety of backgrounds: history, journalism, engineering, physics. The common element here is not what you study, but the fact that you learn how to study, to do research, and to synthesize new ideas out of old. The soul of science fiction, and perhaps even all fiction, is to look at a situation and ask, “what would happen if….” Change some variables and see how that makes people react to the situation. So, getting yourself a good grounding in any field of study will supply you with a great background wealth of material to use to build your stories. Then you really just need to start writing and keep writing. Writing is a skills-based endeavor and there is no easy way to become successful at it. Writers write.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

"Interview" at his official website http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?page_id=8

People, Way, Soul, History

“Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods. Ironically, the modern equivalent lies, again, in the desert. This time, the nomads also settled by a river… a river of oil. But what had took the pharaohs 4,000 years to build took the Kuwaitis 4,000 days. What's happened in Kuwait, the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation. Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced, because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years. Here it's been focused. Change has been instant and total. Kuwait has suddenly become like New York, or any other of the great urban islands on technology, totally dependent on that technology. Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect

God, Way, Change, Time

“The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 14.

Life, Thinking, Fight

“It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed…. To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition…Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

Music, Idea, Appearance, Memory

“And on that day, at that time, we as a collective being must not give in. On that day, we don’t have to change everything about our lives, we don’t have to add things that make us not a free people … if we want to have a free nation, there’s give and there’s bend. If you see something, say something, but beyond that don’t freak out when it happens. Easier said than done, isn’t it?”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

As quoted in "After Ottawa Shootings, Shep Smith Urges Public Not To 'Give In' To Panic" https://web.archive.org/web/20141028004609/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/shepard-smith-ottawa-shooting_n_6035208.html (October 23, 2014), by Avery Stone, The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post, Inc. 2010s

People, Change, Time

“It is now time for us to bring a greater degree of closure to a tragic period of our history. We must not forget what happened in 2000, but we must turn our eyes more to the future.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

History, Time, Future, Forgetting

“The old shepherd had died, or got drunk, or got rats, or got the sack, or a legacy, or got sane, or chucked it, or got lost, or found, or a wife, or had cut his throat, or hanged himself, or got into Parliament or the peerage—anyway, anything had happened to him that can happen to an old shepherd or any other man in the bush, and he wasn't there.”

Henry Lawson (1867–1922) Australian writer and poet

His Mistake, from Triangles of Life and Other Stories (1913)

“To me there is nothing more important in a democracy than free speech and debate. We should debate everything, we should talk about everything, we should engage ideas we aren't comfortable with, and we should let the best ideas win, that's how a healthy society based on rational ideas and a secular government should work, but too often these days it's simply isn't what's happening, and while the far right in this country went off the deep end a while ago, what I've really been affected by is seeing my side, the people on the Left cherry-picking, fact stifling, debate and labeling everyone they disagree with a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, or worse. These aren't liberal principles, much less are they the ideals our founders intended for us to use when they started this country.”

Dave Rubin (1976) American comedian

Dave Rubin Explains The Rubin Report Rules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97SafVeKoF4 (September 9, 2015)

People, Democracy, Idea, Country

“As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn't also happen to have the Qur'an.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos" (29 March 2006) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/2863 — in Free Inquiry, Vol. 26, issue 3 2000s

Books

“There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. […] A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Lord Kitchener (1917), pp. 7–8 https://archive.org/stream/kitchener00chesuoft#page/7/mode/2up

World, Heart

“I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens – you know, until it finds its own plot – because you can't outline and then fit the thing into it. I suppose it's a slow way of working.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)

Books, Way

“Ray Black was in prison, so we weren't able to talk to him. I did some research on the internet and found out that he was in prison because he murdered two children after he raped them. There were also pictures of the dead children, and even though I knew it would only hurt me to look at them, I did. I printed them out and put them in *Stuff That Happened To Me*, right after the picture of Jean-Pierre Haigneré, the french astronaut who had to be carried from his spacecraft after returning form the MIR spacestation, because gravity isn't only what makes us fall, it's what makes our muscles strong.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Children, Strong, Hurt, Dead

“The Professor of Philosophy seems quite aware of what has happened. His previous little eye-flick of malice toward Phædrus has turned to a little eye-flick of fear. He seems to understand that within the present classroom situation, when the time comes, he can get exactly the same treatment he gave, and there will be no sympathy from any of the faces before him. He's thrown away his right to courtesy. There's no way to prevent retaliation now except to keep covered.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Fear, Way, Understanding, Time

“Change happens at the speed of trust. (cf. The SPEED of Trust, 2008)”

Stephen R. Covey book First Things First

First Things First (1994), Disputed

Change, Speed

“Menenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: "It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Coriolanus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Parting

“I love CGI when it’s done well. It may sound strange coming from me, because if you watch my stuff in movies it’s happening right in front of you, but I wish we had CGI back then to solve some problems. Getting rid of an edge or enhancing stuff, which is what they have today. I love it when it’s done well.”

Tom Savini (1946) American actor, stuntman, director and makeup artist

Love, Problem

“We never have any understanding of any subject matter except in terms of our own mental constructs of "things" and "happenings" of that subject matter.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Structured analysis (SA): A language for communicating ideas (1977), p. 19.

Understanding

“I totally regret as a German what happened at this point of history. But when people ask me are you, as a German, feel responsible for the Holocaust? No, because I'm born 1965 and it would be completely un-logical to say I'm responsible, but as a country we are responsible.”

Uwe Boll (1965) German restaurateur and former filmmaker

interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huqiOG51gms (2010), Lopta Film, Lopta and Moist. 2010s

People, Feeling, History, Country

“The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008)

Men, World, Cats, Understanding

“At any rate that is precisely what happens: the “means” oriented stories come from countries which have managed to overcome the obstacles to economic achievement more successfully than other countries… These results serve to direct our attention as social scientists away from an exclusive concern with the external events in history to the “internal” psychological concerns that in the long run determine what happens in history”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 104-5

History, Country

“I recently had to wait two and a half hours in a doctor's office, just waiting to be seen. I literally was genuinely thinking "Well, maybe this is a time loop", because nothing seemed to be happening, no progress of any kind seemed to be being made, so I think we've all fallen into those time loops.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

Interview at "Loopy" at BBC (2002) http://bbc.adactio.com/cult/buffy/interviews/espenson2002/page6.shtml

Thinking, Time, Waiting

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, Age, World

“The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M. D.,'… appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'… His treatise… is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. 'However trivial a thing,' he says, 'a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,' &c.; 'and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 36
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Books, Age, Art, Nature

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"An interview with James Baldwin" (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 21

Peace, Nature

“When the media attention switches away from this story onto the next thing that happens in the world, the circumstances will still be there.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

On the Hurricane Katrina devastation in New Orleans, as quoted in "New Orleans Musicians Hold Benefit in NYC" (21 September 2005) http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=202276

World

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days later, we try again and find that the same thing has happened. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we're off to reach the next one, then the next one, then the next.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Bisy Backson.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Thinking, Time, Christmas

“When it is stated in Genesis that God said to Adam, “Only from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat,” it follows as a matter of course that Adam really has not understood this word, for how could he understand the difference between good and evil when this distinction would follow as a consequence of the enjoyment of the fruit. When it is assumed that the prohibition awakens the desire one acquires knowledge instead of ignorance, and in that case Adam must have had knowledge of freedom, because the desire was to use it. The explanation is therefore subsequent. The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in him freedom’s possibility. What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing-the anxious possibility of being able. He has no conception of what he is able to do; otherwise-and this it what usually happens-that which comes later, the difference between good and evil, would have to be presupposed. Only the possibility of being able is present as a higher form of ignorance, as a higher expression of anxiety, because in a higher sense it both is and is not, because in a higher sense he both loves it and flees from it.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844), p. 44-45

Love, God, Understanding, Knowledge

“The idea is to create a picture among the population that we're all one happy family. We're America, we have a national interest, we're working together. There are us nice workers, the firms in which we work and the government who works for us. We pick them — they're our servants. And that's all there is in the world — no other conflicts, no other categories of people, no further structure to the system beyond that. Certainly nothing like class. Unless you happen to be in the ruling class, in which case you're very well aware of it.”

Noam Chomsky book The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many

"The Unmentionable Five-Letter Word" in How the World Works, p. 121
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, 1993

People, World, Family, Idea

“If [Hitler's] proposal means that we should come to an understanding with Germany to dominate Europe I think this would be contrary to the whole of our history. You know the old fable of the jackal who went hunting with the tiger and what happened after the hunt was over. Thus Elizabeth resisted Philip II of Spain. Thus William III and Marlborough resisted Louis XIV. Thus Pitt resisted Napoleon, and thus we all resisted William II of Germany. Only by taking this path and effort have we preserved ourselves and our liberties, and reached our present position. I see no reason myself to change from this traditional view.”

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

Letter to Lord Rothermere (12 May 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 648−649
The 1930s

History, Understanding, Thinking, Effort

“And then a funny thing happened to me…except when I think about it, it wasn't very funny at all. There must be a line in all of us, a very clear one, just like the line that divides the light side of a planet from the dark. I think they call that line the terminator. That's a very good word for it. Because at that moment I was freaking out, and at the next I was as cool as a cucumber.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Thinking, Light

“I want to make films and write films, which will happen, I'm just taking a different route right now. I'm a bit of a chameleon with the whole entertainment industry so to speak.”

David Boreanaz (1969) American actor, famous for Angel and Buffy

Interview with a vampire By Chuck Holliday

“What the earliest utopians—Montaigne, Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella—understood was that they fought not for a place but for a new set of ideas through which to recognize what would count as Real: Equality, not hierarchical authority. Individual dignity, not slavish subservience. Our preeminent problem is that we recognize the Real in what is most deadly: a culture of duty to legalities that are, finally, cruel and destructive. We need to work inventively—as Christ did, as Thoreau did—in the spirit of disobedience for the purpose of refusing the social order into which we happen to have been born and putting in its place a culture of life-giving things.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Life, Idea, Problem, Christ

“Postponing the elections is not possible. Under the Constitution and even under our laws, elections cannot and should not be postponed. Comelec has no power to do that. Their only mandate is to supervise elections in our country every three years. And precisely because elections happen only every three years, there is no reason for the Comelec not to do it effectively.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, April 22). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153227326970610/ 2015, Facebook

Law, Country

“Foreigners assume that because of the war, the two sides must dislike each other more than West and East Germans did. The opposite is the case. Some of my students say, “The North would never attack us, we’re the same people,” as if the war never happened. And North Korea would now be just as committed to unification if it hadn’t.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

War, People

“If any god exists, and it happens that there’s only one of them, then surely every spiritually enlightened and visionary holy man from any nation or tribe should be able to sense it, if men can sense such things at all. And their scribes would write the scrolls seeking to make sense of it –however feeble an attempt that may be. Perhaps that’s why there are so many different religions; because no man can know the true state of God. There can only be one truth, and only one version of it. But rather than coming together, as everyone’s search for the one truth should, religions continuously shard further and further apart into more divided factions with mutually-exclusive beliefs, -and there are as many wrong interpretations as there people claiming theirs as the “absolute truth.””

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, People, Truth

“Nowadays I hear of the princely comforts provided for national teams traveling overseas, and fuss players raise if they happen to miss even a cup of tea! When we used to travel the name of our country and the game were the only two things that mattered.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

During India’s title defense at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when he captained the hockey team to victory in the Olympics in page=59
Quote, Olympics - The India Story

Travel, Game, Tea, Country

“The fact that each nation came to believe in the virtue of whatever policy happened to be in effect when recovery began supports [the] argument that haphazard economic vacillations play an important role in determining which policy strategies become constructed as economically efficacious. This also tends to undermine the realist/utilitarian view, which suggests that policy improves over time as rational policymakers learn more about universal economic laws from experience, because wildly inconsistent policies won favor in different contexts.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1993), "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain and France," in: Theory and Society 22, p. 47; As cited in: Kieran Healy, "The new institutionalism and Irish social policy." Social Policy in Ireland: Principals, Practices and Problems. Oaktree Press, Dublin (1998).

Law, Support, Learning, Universe

“There comes a part where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody's under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn't. And the studios and the money always have one perspective and the creative people have another one, and usually what happens is a lot of compromises get made. I decided not to. I walked off and did Tideland and came back six months later.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

As quoted in the New York Times article Terry Gilliam's Feel-Good Endings http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/movies/14mcgr.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=terrygilliam (14 August 2005)

Money, People, Parting

“This is his [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus'] conclusion (II. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Death, Pain, Pleasure, Feeling

“Chance as a theme and as method. A method of allowing something objective to come into being; a theme for creating a simile (picture) of our survival strategy:
(1) The living method, which not only processes conditions, qualities and events as they chance to happen, but exists solely as that non-static 'process', and in no other way.
(2) Ideological: denial of the planning, the opinion and the world-view whereby social projects, and subsequently 'big pictures', are created. So what I have often seen as a deficiency on my part – the fact that I've never been in a position to 'form a picture' of something – is not incapacity at all but an instinctive effort to get at a more modern truth: one that we are already living out in our lives”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

life is not what is said but the saying of it, not the picture but the picturing Quotes from Notes, 1989; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5 1980's

Life, Truth, World, Way