Quotes about harmony (1017 quotes, page 5)

“Great art should come from the harmony of two lines.”

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) painter from the United States

Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston (1899)
Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston (1899)

Art

“Critical theory … values Freud as a non-ideological thinker and theoretician of contradictions—contradictions which his successors sought to escape and mask. … “The greatness of Freud,” wrote Adorno, “consists in that, like all great bourgeois thinkers, he left standing undissolved such contradictions and disdained the assertion of pretended harmony where the thing itself is contradictory. He revealed the antagonistic character of the social reality.” … A parallel can be established between Marx’s judgment on Ricardo and the post-Ricardians. To Marx, Ricardo was the classic and best representative of bourgeois economics since he articulated the contradictions of bourgeois society without glossing them over.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 27-28

Reality

“By virtue of the universal concept, thought attains mastery over the particular cases. However, the most formalized universe of logic still refers to the most general structure of the given, experienced world; the pure form is still that of the content which it formalizes. The idea of formal logic itself is a historical event in the development of the mental and physical instruments for universal control and calculability. In this undertaking man had to create theoretical harmony out of actual discord, to purge thought from contradictions, to hypostatize identifiable and fungible units in the complex process of society and nature. Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless; the material content is neutralized; the principle of identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault of incorrect thinking); final causes are removed from the logical order. Well defined in their scope and function, concepts become instruments of prediction and control. Formal logic is thus the first step on the long road to scientific thought”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 137

World , Idea , Nature , Thinking

“When I was a little girl (but being raised as a little boy), what I wanted more than anything was to be a dancer. How I longed for it — the lights, the stage, the gorgeous costumes, most of all for the delivering grace of movement in harmony with a choreography greater than myself. Like a little Chinese and two left feet saw to that: I was laughed, bullied, or shamed out of every dance class I attempted.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Girl , Boy , Light , Dance

“I agree with you to the letter in all you say about Ireland. There is no doubt that the land question (coupled with the Church Establishment) is at the root of the evil. And here let me say that I go heartily with you in the determination to attack the land monopoly root and branch both here and in Ireland and Scotland…. Wherever the deductions of political economy lead I am prepared to follow. By the way, have you had time to read Bastiat's partly posthumous volume, 'Les Harmonies Economiques'? If not, do so; it will require a studious perusal, but will repay it. He has breathed a soul into the dry bones of political economy, and has vindicated his favourite science from the charge of inhumanity with all the fervour of a religious devotee.”

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

Letter to John Bright (1 October 1851), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 561.
1850s

Way , Soul , Question , Science

“And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh airs of Liberty and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the preservation of this constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and the brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the states to this constitution, for ages to come.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech to the Senate In reference to the Slavery Compromise (7 March 1850)

Men , People , Age , Peace

“As I go musing through this mournful land
Soothed by the pine-tree's solemn harmony,
Thy well-loved image comes and walks by me.
I seem to hold thee by the gentle hand
And talk of things I dimly understand,
That thy dear spirit set to mine may be
As to an intricate lock the simple key.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XXXII. "As I go musing through this mournful land"
Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love , Understanding , Tree

“Muhammad became the archetypal example of that perfect submission to the divine, and Muslims, as we shall see, would attempt to conform to this standard in their spiritual and social lives. Muhammad was never venerated as a divine figure, but he was held to be the Perfect Man. His surrender to God had been so complete that he had transformed society and enabled the Arabs to live together in harmony. The world Islam is etymologically related to salam (peace), and in these early years Islam did promote cohesion and concord.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Islam: A Short History (2000), Chapter 1: Beginnings

God , World , Peace , Perfection

“When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

As quoted in The School as a Home for the Mind : Creating Mindful Curriculum, Instruction, and Dialogue (2007) by Arthur L. Costa, p. 91

Life , Business , Training

“It is not expensive to be beautiful. It takes only a little effort to be presentable and beautiful. But it takes some effort. And unfortunately people think of beauty as luxury, beauty as frivolity, … or extravagance. Beauty is a discipline, beauty is art, is harmony, in the ideological sense and in the theological sense, beauty is God and love made real. And the ultimate reach in this world is beauty.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

Quoted in "Imelda (2003).

Love , God , People , World

““You’ll find God among the poor,” they say. Is that true anymore? Is the connection between poverty and divinity simply a panacea for the world’s destitute, an assurance that they’ll be rewarded in the hereafter? Or does a material deficit provide space for God? My love of God elevates the intention of this book beyond the dry and admirable establishment of collectivized communities. I am enraptured by the magnetic pull of evolution: What is this energy that heals the body and escalates one cell to two, that repairs and creates and calculates in harmony with environment, outside of time? Where is evolution trying to go? Evolutionary psychologists would likely say the imposition of an anthropocentric concept like “trying” or “intending” is naïve, but I’m not going to ask one, they get enough airtime, the killjoys. I remain uncharmed by the incessant rationalization that requires the spirit’s capitulation. The infusion of the scientific with the philosophical is materialism. The manifesto for our salvation is not in this sparse itinerary.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love , God , Books , World

“In anarchy there is no automatic harmony.”

Kenneth N. Waltz book Man, the State, and War

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter VI, The Third Image, p. 160

“From now on whatever the hour represented on the canvas, a supreme accord will be wrought amongst all the parts of the subject: the water, the sky, the clouds, the foliage, reunified by the atmosphere, will form a whole of an irreproachable homogeneity, a grandiose and charming image of natural harmony.”

Gustave Geffroy (1855–1926) French writer

1898 in: Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93: presented as "account at the time of the reexhibition of the seven Cathedrals in 1898."

Nature , Water , Parting

“So is the song of life being sung/ By us and by all the living beings/ A melodious and harmonious song,/ Where the singer loses her own self/ And absorbs in the wonderful harmony of the song!/ An almost ecstatic experience.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

Life

“Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 261.

Feeling , Appearance , Parting , Happiness

“[Ramsay MacDonald was] a man of great stature, capable of inspiring massive affection and massive attack—a man who created and led a great party and who has become a legend in that party equally for the manner of his leaving it as for the years he gave its creation. … They drew their inspiration from Merrie England and dry statistics, they sang their widely differing battle songs, and Ramsay MacDonald had to fashion from the strains of Edward Carpenter's 'England Arise', from the 'Internationale', from 'Jerusalem', from the 'Red Flag', from 'These Things Shall Be', a new harmony. In 1906 in MacDonald's fortieth year, he saw the victory—the dawn of the new era.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at a luncheon in the House of Commons to commemorate the centenary of Ramsay MacDonald's birth (12 October 1966), quoted in The Times (13 October 1966), p. 12.
Prime Minister

Fashion , Victory

“What we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can only be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony then which is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Introduction, p. 14
The Value of Science (1905)

Truth , World , Law , Beauty

“The concept of the “organic growth” of mankind, as we have proposed in this report, is intended as a contribution toward achieving that end. Were mankind to embark on a path of organic growth, the world would emerge as a system of interdependent and harmonious parts, each making its own unique contributions, be it in economics, resources, or culture.
… Such an approach must start from and preserve the world’s regional diversity. Paths of development, region-specific rather than based on narrow national interests, must be designed to lead to a sustainable balance between the interdependent world-regions and to global harmony – that is, to mankind’s growth as an “organic entity” from its present barely embryonic state.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. viii as cited in: Brent Jessop " Psychopathic Groups and Distorted Definitions http://burningbabylon.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/psychopathic-groups-and-distorted-definitions/" at burningbabylon.wordpress.com, Nov. 29, 2008

World , Parting

“It's going to take some time this time
To get myself in shape.
I really fell out of line this time,
I really missed the gate.
The birds on the telephone line, (next time)
Are cryin' out to me, (next time)
And I won't be so blind next time
And I'll find some harmony.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

It's Going to Take Some Time, co-written with Toni Stern
Song lyrics, Music (1971)

Bird , Time

“I believe in all-wise-and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

Love , God , Happiness

“People frequently ask why my canvases are compartmentalized. No one ever asks this about a house. A man with a large family would not choose to live in a one-room house... I am like a man with a large family and must have many rooms. The children of my imagination occupy the various compartments of my painting, each independent and occupying its own place. At the same time they have the proper atmosphere in which to function together, in harmony and as a unified group. One can say that my paintings are like a house, in which each occupant has a room of his own.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Arts and Architecture, vol. 68, no 9, September 1951, p. 21.
1950s

Children , People , Family , Imagination

“Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class – and so tenaciously withheld from the working women – brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Women , Communication , Birth , Knowledge

“What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:
"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

Age , Law

“What's evil for the hawk is the mouse because, you know, the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point… if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down, so it can just barely move, the hawk would lose its flight. So that in a weird way the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty. So I definitely feel that the tension we have right now within the human community in particular — that those are ultimately going to be resolved with a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

God , Beauty , Way , Feeling

“Even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.”

Thomas Carlyle book Past and Present

Past and Present.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Soul

“I’ve only known a vegan life and have been constantly teaching others of the joys and benefits of being a vegan … As an adult, I THANK my Mother profusely for being extremely honest with me as a kid and for never hiding the truth about milk, “meat”, animal experimentation … There is speciesism and that is about as cruel as it gets because it sets the stage and practice for cruelty amongst human beings. … Discrimination is discrimination—as abuse is abuse … regardless of an animals human or nonhuman form, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation or level of intelligence/knowledge it should be our birthright to LIVE our lives peacefully and harmoniously without inflicting pain on others. People who inflict intentional pain without moral or ethical regard for other human or nonhuman animals are just reminders of how much further we have to go until oppression is completely eradicated.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson" http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/interview-with-seba-johnson/, The Ghosts in Our Machine (2014).

Life , Pain , People , Truth

“In war we are all equal, but among a thousand good men, a bullet hit an irreplaceable one... We painters know well that with the loss of his harmony [ of August Macke ], the color in German art will become many shades paler..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote of Franz Marc, in exhibition-text 'Die Blaue Reiter', Gemeentemuseum the Hague, Netherlands 2010
c. 1914/15, on the death of his close friend August Macke, who fell in the first months of World War 1.
1915 - 1916

Men , War , Art , Color

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Statement to German anti-Nazi diplomat and author Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein around 1941, as quoted in his book Towards the Further Shore : An Autobiography (1968)
Attributed in posthumous publications

God , People , Quotes , Support

“There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

The New York Times, April 19, 1992, "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthy-venom.html by Richard B. Woodward

Life , Way , Soul , Idea

“As in poetry and music, even the unskilled ear may be offended by a mistake in measure, without discerning the cause, may not also a mistake in the harmony of dimensions unconsciously offend us in design?”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II

Music

“Development cannot be left to complete improvisation. It is necessary to plan the construction of the new society. Planning is one of the laws of socialism, and without it, socialism would not exist. Without correct planning there can be no adequate guarantee that all the various sectors of a country's economy will combine harmoniously to take the leaps forward that our epoch demands.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

Law , Country

“Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world?”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

World , Way , Home

“Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“It has, alas, for centuries been taught that the intellect and the emotions were two separate and antagonistic things. This teaching has been firmly believed, cruelly lived up to.
How depressing it is to realize that it might have been taught that they are two beautifully congenial and harmonious phases of that single and integral essence that we call the soul. That no nature in which the development of either is wanting can be called a completely rounded nature.”

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect

Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)

Soul , Nature

“Nearby…. are monsters personifying Pestilence and Famine, those inseparable partners of War. On the ground, turning her back, lies a woman with a broken lute representing Harmony… [T]here is also a mother with a child in her arms indicating that fecundity, procreation and charity are thwarted by War, which corrupts and destroys everything.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

Rubens is describing his painting 'The Horrors of War' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Rubens_-_The_Consequences_of_War.jpg 1637
In a letter to Justus Sustermans, c. 1637 (Rubens' agent at the Medici court in Florence); as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 180
Simon Schrama describes: The blue skies in the painting are overwhelmed by smoky darkness.. ..despite support from the usual team of putti and her own spectacularly opulent charms, Venus is losing the battle for Mars's attentions to the Fury Alecto
1625 - 1640

War

“…WHEREAS, IN THE PAST, THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, BETWEEN NOISE AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS.
THE PRESENT METHODS OF WRITING MUSIC, PRINCIPALLY THOSE WHICH EMPLOY HARMONY AND ITS REFERENCE TO PARTICULAR STEPS IN THE FIELD OF SOUND, WILL BE INADEQUATE FOR THE COMPOSER, WHO WILL BE FACED WITH THE ENTIRE FIELD OF SOUND.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); SILENCE; lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, CREDO/3
1930s

Music , Past , Future

“If you and I shall, like the believing shepherds, watch and long for His appearing, one day we, too, shall hear a music grander and sweeter even than the song of angels, when the great Composer shall transpose all the strains of earth from the minor into the major, when the wail of nature shall give way to the glad harmony of the everlasting jubilee.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 555.

Music , Angels , Way , Nature

“They [French critics of the Paris Salon of 1824, where his painting 'the Hay Wain' received a gold medal] are very amusing and acute — but very shallow and feeble. Thus one — after saying: "'it is but justice to admire the truth — 'the color' — and 'general vivacity' & richness —" – yet they want the objects more formed and defined &c, and say they are like the rich preludes in musick, and the full harmonious warblings of the Aeolian lyre, which means 'nothing,' and they call them orations — and harangues — and high-flown conversations affecting a careless ease — &c &v &c - Is not some of this 'blame' the highest 'praise' – what is poetry?”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

What is Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (the very best modern poem) but something like this?
Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher, 1824, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 205
1820s

Truth , Justice , Color , Painting

“When feudal lords love one another there will be no more war; when heads of houses love one another there will be no more mutual usurpation; when individuals love one another there will be no more mutual injury. When ruler and ruled love each other they will be gracious and loyal; when father and son love each other they will be affectionate and filial; when older and younger brothers love each other they will be harmonious. When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not overpower the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor, the honoured will not disdain the humble, and the cunning will not deceive the simple. And it is all due to mutual love that calamities, strife, complaints, and hatred are prevented from arising. Therefore the benevolent exalt it.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love II
Mozi

Love , War , People , World

“It is doubtful whether the artist [unknown] altogether knew what he depicted here in this panel, and even more doubtful whether he could have expressed it in words. That which we praise here as well thought-out and cleverly arranged may, in fact, have been achieved by him unconsciously; for the artist was transformed by pure harmoniousness while executing this picture, and his feeling become his law. Only his disposition, his spiritual exaltation, could have brought forth such a fruit as this picture. Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feeling paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it; while even the less sensitive gain some inkling of it.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

cited in: Vaughan, William-Börsch-Supan, Helmut- Neidhardt, Hans Joachim, Caspar David Friedrich. 1774-1840. Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden, London, The Tate gallery, 1972, p. 104
undated

Law , Feeling , Understanding , Painting

“A musician would not willingly consent that his lyre should be out of tune, nor a leader of a chorus that his chorus should not sing in the strictest possible harmony; but shall each individual person be at variance with himself, and shall he exhibit a life not at all in agreement with his words?”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: On Greek Literature, p. 401

Life , Singing , Personality

“The change in consciousness will not take place automatically, just as it doesn't take place automatically in the economy. The alterations are slow and are not harmonious; there are periods of acceleration, pauses and even retrogressions.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Change

“The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related. We have now whole congregations whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. They ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. They look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned Christian with the salvation of his soul as something sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and 'muscular' attitude, which to our forefathers would have seemed purely heathen, has become in their eyes an ideal element of Christian character. I am not asking whether or not they are right, I am only pointing out the change.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures IV and V, "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Soul , Fashion , Hell , Change

“Our system of production is in the nature of an orchestra. No one man, no one town, no one state, can be said any longer to be independent of the other; the whole people of the United States, every individual therein, is dependent and interdependent upon all the others. The nature of the machinery of production; the subdivision of labor, which aids cooperation and which cooperation fosters, and which is necessary to the plentifulnesss of production that civilization requires, compel a harmonious working together of all departments of labor, and thence complete the establishment of a central directing authority, of an orchestral director, so to speak, of the orchestra of the cooperative commonwealth.”

Daniel De Leon (1852–1914) American newspaper editor

Government-The State
Reform or Revolution (1896)

People , Nature , Dependency

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love , Life , Pleasure , Truth

“I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.”

George Benson (1943) American musician

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 115, 0-679-74275-1]

Knowledge , Learning , Time

“Sport is linked with the technical world because sport itself is a technique. The enormous contrast between the athletes of Greece and those of Rome is well known. For the Greeks, physical exercise was an ethic for developing freely and harmoniously the form and strength of the human body. For the Romans, it was a technique for increasing the legionnaire’s efficiency. The Roman conception prevails today.”

Jacques Ellul book The Technological Society

Source: The Technological Society (1954), pp. 382-383

World , Exercises , Sport

“Art is an expression and stimulus to the imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life. Art appreciates emotion in and for itself. The artist, is the most constantly observant of his surroundings and the least affected by their intrinsic aesthetic value. As he contemplates a particular field of vision the aesthetically chaotic and accidental conjunction of forms and colours begin to crystallize into a harmony.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

An essay on aesthetics (1909) from Vision and design by Roger fry, Forgotten Books , 2012
Art Quotes

Life , Art , Imagination

“.. I want a lovely life; in order for it to be, harmony and style are necessary. I avow mine to the key of aesthetic sentiment – the constant permanent creation everywhere and in every one. All is false there, all is true. The truth is the desire to see falsely. I do not want the naked truth; it is the principle of my life. It is that which makes my life one which is artistic and complete. Feelings, events, people and things, such as they are, are nothing to me. I wish them invented, illusory, false in so far as true life and in so far as art.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love , Life , People , Truth

“In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, quoted by Haile Selassie in an address http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=radhakrishan during the Indian President's state visit to Ethiopia (13 October 1965), quoted in Foreign Affairs Record Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministry of External Affairs, p. 266; Radhakrishnan is also quoted as having made these remarks in The Visva-Bharati Quarterly Vol. 5 (1939-1940)

Age , World , Religion , Communication

“Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in His universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 531.

God , Truth , Beauty , Universe

“Some of the evils which are caused by the fallacy of an incompatibility between theory and practice having been described, it must now be admitted, that at the present time those evils show a decided tendency to decline. The extent of intercourse, and of mutual assistance, between men of science and men of practice, the practical knowledge of scientific men, and the scientific knowledge of practical men, have been for some time steadily increasing; and that combination and harmony of theoretical and practical knowledge—that skill in the application of scientific principles to practical purposes, which in former times was confined to a few remarkable individuals, now tends to become more generally diffused.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Men , Knowledge , Science , Evil

“We shall not set up demands nor programmes, but simply describe the child-nature. (…) Vague and general phrases — ‘the harmonious development of all the powers and talents in the child,’ and so forth — cannot provide the basis for a genuine art of education. Such an art of education can only be built up on a real knowledge of the human being. Not that these phrases are incorrect, but that at bottom they are as useless as it would be to say of a machine that all its parts must be brought harmoniously into action. To work a machine you must approach it, not with phrases and truisms, but with real and detailed knowledge.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 34), an essay of 1909.

Education , Art , Nature , Knowledge

“He who is above cannot be below / Not to show one’s colours is to be like flotsam / not to be consistent (to be oneself) is not being / inconsistent / but never being true / here all flag-heroism but incite to / being oneself / suffering the consequences of being:/ to be hard to be cold to be cruel / To kill to hurt / to disturb tranquility / to distort harmony / from truly being / that is heroic thing / to be oneself is / being neither under bond nor borrowed nor sold nor hired / to be / means / to be spiritually free”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Source: 1926 – 1931, lines from his poem 'The other face. To be', I.K, Bonset (= pseudo as writer for Theo van Doesburg); 'De Stijl' Vol. XIII, 75-6, 1926, p. 64

Suffering , Hurt

“Poetry emulates the Cosmos perhaps because the Cosmos itself is the grandest conceivable example of rhythm, rhyme, harmony and concinnity.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)

“Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

A Chapter on Ears; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Essays of Elia (1823)

“The listener with no preconceptions hears massive waves of sound breaking over him and forms from them the image of a passionate soul seeking and finding the path to faith and peace in God through a life of struggle and a vigorous pursuit of ideals. It is impossible not to hear the confessional tone of this musical language; Liszt’s sonata becomes - perhaps involuntarily on the part of the composer - an autobiographical document and one which reveals an artist in the Faustian mold in the person of its author. As in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, the underlying religious concept which dominates and permeates the whole work demands a special kind of approach. Whereas representations of human passions and conflicts force themselves on our understanding with their powerfully suggestive coloring, this concept only becomes manifest to those souls who are prepared to soar to the same heights. The equilibrium of the sonata’s hymnic chordal motif, the transformation of its defiant battle motif (first theme) into a triumphant fanfare, and its appearance in bright, high notes on the harp, together with the devotional atmosphere of the Andante, represent a particular challenge to the listener; he is, after all, also expected to grasp the wide-spanned arcs of sound which, from the first hesitant descending octaves to the radiant final chords, build up a graphic panorama of the various stages of progress of a human spirit filled with faith and hope. As the reflection of a remarkable artistic personality worthy of deep admiration and, by extension, of the whole Romantic period, Liszt’s B minor Sonata deserves lasting recognition.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

About the Liszt Sonata in B minor

Life , God , Peace , Faith

“You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 277
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

World , Nature , Universe , Drawing

“Meet your own self. Be with your own self, listen to it, obey it, cherish it, keep it in mind ceaselessly. You need no other guide. As long as your urge for truth affects your daily life, all is well with you. Live your life without hurting anybody. Harmlessness is a most powerful form of Yoga and will take you speedily to your goal. This is what I call nisarga yoga, the Natural Yoga. It is the art of living in peace and harmony, in friendliness and love. The fruit of it is happiness, uncaused and endless.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Nisarga Yoga
Source: I am That, P.173.

Love , Life , Truth , Peace

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Life , God , War , Health

“Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

"On Manner"
The Round Table (1815-1817)

Soul

“Coherence and harmony in relations and interactions between the members of a human social system are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in an ongoing social learning which their own social ( linguistic) operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of the members.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: The tree of Knowledge (1987), p. 199 as cited in: Vincent Kenny (1989) " Life, the Multiverse and Everything; an Introduction to the Ideas of. Humberto Maturana http://www.oikos.org/vinclife.htm".

Learning

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion…. Harmony… can be considered a special kind of rhythm…. pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler… in the third book of Harmonice mundi… attempted to make other… related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Books , Music , Mathematics , Time

“You can play the piano with the white keys only or you can play it with only the black keys. But for harmony you must use the black and the white keys.”

Ernest Debrah (1947–2016) Ghanian politician

On the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), in Will Ross, " Africans wary of Europe's trade offer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7134407.stm", BBC (8 December, 2007).

“And since the proportions of the human voice and the gesticulations of the human body are regulated by the same modulation as that by which sound and the motion of other bodies are, musical thought is subalternated not only to the harmony of human voice and gesticulation, but also of instruments and of those whose delectation consist in motion or sound and with these the harmony of the celestial and non-celestial. And since the concordance of times and the composition and harmony of the lower world and of all things composed of four elements come from celestial motions, and, moreover, since it is necessary to find the harmony of causes in their effects, the study of music also extends to knowing the proportions of times and the constitution of the elements of the lower world, and even the composition of all the elements.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

As quoted by Tanner, Bower, McLeish, and Gaspar in Ch. 1. "Unity and Symmetry in the De Luce of Robert Grosseteste," Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages (2016) ed., Jack P. Cunningham, Mark Hocknull, p. 17.
De artibus liberalibus (c. 1222-1237)

World , Music , Study , Time

“Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed ways, with one another, and through the midst of one another — killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and quantities.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" Wild Wool http://books.google.com/books?id=LcIRAAAAYAAJ&pg=P361", Overland Monthly, volume 14, number 4 (April 1875) pages 361-366 (at page 364); reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 1
1870s

Way , Star , Animals

“It seems, you expect from me an expression of my views on the specific question: What type of missionary workers are wanted in India, rather than on the question whether any missionary workers should come at all to India? I shall respectfully speak my opinion on the latter point. I feel it is not really possible on the ground of logic or on the evidence of miracles to hold that amongst the religions known as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, anyone is nearer the truth than any other. You will permit me to object to the exclusive claims for Truth made on behalf of any one of these faiths. If this my first point is granted, the only justification for missionary work is proselytism. But is it good on the whole for men and women to change from one religion to another? I think it is not desirable to make any effort at proselytism. I feel that such efforts undermine the present faith of the people, which is good enough for promoting right conduct in them and to deter them from sin. They tend to destroy family and social harmony, which is not a good thing to do.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

The National Christian Council Review, December 1956, p. 490. quoted from Madhya Pradesh (India), Goel, S. R., Niyogi, M. B. (1998). Vindicated by time: The Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities. ISBN 9789385485121

Women , Men , People , Truth

“Relativity does set limits on what humans can ultimately do. But the universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human aspirations.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 201

Universe , Perfection

“In all God's providences, it is good to compare His word and His works together; for we shall find a beautiful harmony between them, and that they mutually illustrate each other.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 281.

God , Beauty

“Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Life , Music , History , Business

“We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances…”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

New Atlantis http://www.constitution.org/bacon/new_atlantis.htm (1627)

Music , Bird , Time , Help

“Paint studies of parts, for instance a piece of land, a group of trees or things like that, but always in a way that people can understand these things in relation with the whole landscape, by adding behind that group of trees the air in a right tone color and thereby in connection with the trees... Furthermore studies of a whole, preferably very simple subjects - A meadow with horizon and a piece of air to examine further the general tone color, the harmony of the whole.... and study nature even more by thinking about it than working after it.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Schilder studies van gedeelten, bv. een stuk grond, een boomgroep of dergelijke maar toch altijd zóó dat men die in verband met het geheele landschap begrijpen kan, door achter die boomgroep de lucht juist van toon en daardoor in verband met de boomen er bij te schilderen.. .Verder studies van een geheel, liefst zeer eenvoudige sujetten - Eene weide met horizon en stuk lucht. Om nog meer de algemeene toon, de harmonie van het geheel na te gaan.. ..en bestudeer de natuur nog meer met er over te denken dan met er na [naar!?] te werken.
Quote from a letter of Roelofs to his pupil Hendrik W. Mesdag, 27 May 1866; as cited by De Bodt, in Halverwege Parijs, Willem Roelofs en de Nederlandse Schilderskolonie in Brussel, Gent, 1995a, p. 238
1860's

People , Color , Way , Understanding

“As human voice and instrument blend in one harmony, as human soul and body blend in each act of feeling, thought, or speech, so, as far as we can know, divinity and humanity act together in the thought and heart and act of the one Christ.”

Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–1886) American Presbyterian leader

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 56.

Feeling , Soul , Heart , Christ

“The greatest problem before engineers and managers today is the economical utilization of labor. The limiting of output by the workman, and the limiting by the employer of the amount a workman is allowed to earn, are both factors which militate against that harmonious co-operation of employer and employee which is essential to their highest common good.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

H.L. Gantt (1904) paper presented before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, St. Louis, 1904. Published in: H.L. Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910.

Problem

“Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance…to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man…The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.

Life , Death , Secret , Sea

“We all need to embrace broad principles that accommodate the rights and aspirations of all the people of Fiji. Only then will peace and harmony prevail.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

Senate speech, 24 August, 2005 (excerpts)

People , Peace

“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Albert Einstein, in response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929) ; he later expanded on his comments about Spinoza's and his own ideas on religion elsewhere : "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza … I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." — as quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar
A - F

God , Fate , World , Law

“With a wracking head and literally my whole body shaking as with ague I write this and tell you I have just this afternoon early finished Clavicembalisticum… The closing 4 pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done — the harmony bites like nitric acid — the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God…”

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) English composer, music critic, pianist and writer

Letter to his friend the Scots composer Erik Chisholm (1904-65) upon completion of Opus clavicembalisticum, 1930; quoted by pianist John Ogdon.

God

“When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 34.

Love , God , People , Truth

“The Buddhist PAVARANA ceremony at the end of the rainy season retreat was instituted by the Lord Buddha, who did not want human beings to live in silence "like dumb animals." This ceremony, during which monks ask mutual forgiveness for any offence given during the retreat, can be said to be a council of truth and reconciliation. It might also be considered a forerunner of that most democratic of institutions, the parliament, a meeting of peoples gathered together to talk over their shared problems. All the world's great religions are dedicated to the generation of happiness and harmony. This demonstrates the fact that together with the combative instincts of man there co-exists a spiritual aspiration for mutual understanding and peace.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

People , Truth , World , Peace

“According to Goldschmidt, all that evolution by the usual mutations—dubbed "micromutations"—can accomplish is to bring about "diversification strictly within species, usually, if not exclusively, for the sake of adaptation of the species to specific conditions within the area which it is able to occupy." New species, genera, and higher groups arise at once, by cataclysmic saltations—termed macromutations or systematic mutations—which bring about in one step a basic reconstruction of the whole organism. The role of natural selection in this process becomes "reduced to the simple alternative: immediate acceptance or rejection." A new form of life having been thus catapulted into being, the details of its structures and functions are subsequently adjusted by micromutation and selection. It is unnecessary to stress here that this theory virtually rejects evolution as this term is usually understood (to evolve means to unfold or to develop gradually), and that the systematic mutations it postulates have never been observed. It is possible to imagine a mutation so drastic that its product becomes a monster hurling itself beyond the confines of species, genus, family, or class. But in what Goldschmidt has called the "hopeful monster" the harmonious system, which any organism must necessarily possess, must be transformed at once into a radically different, but still sufficiently coherent, system to enable the monster to survive. The assumption that such a prodigy may, however rarely, walk the earth overtaxes one's credulity, even though it may be right that the existence of life in the cosmos is in itself an extremely improbable event.”

Theodosius Dobzhansky book Genetics and the Origin of Species

Genetics and the Origin of Species (1941) 2nd revised edition

Life , Family , Hope , Imagination

“Our Constitution has given us the framework for a strong nation, a Union of States; a nation of harmony between the Union and States and between the various institutions of our democratic polity. We can claim to have achieved significant success in the diverse and inter-connected spheres of democratic governance, our Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary. The philosophy of the Constitution nurtures a polity where the precepts and practices of democracy can become second nature to the people. Through the elections to eleven Lok Sabhas, the people of India have repeatedly displayed their determination to fulfil their duties as responsible citizens of the Republic.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

People , Democracy , Nature , Strong

“An old oriental saying tells us, ‘when our willpower is concentrated upon a stone, it can pass through it. When our willpower is focused and in harmony with the universe, it can command the wind, rain and thunder’. But from where does our willpower come? Those who understand and answer this question are those who accomplish important tasks. When we coordinate mind and body by stilling the waves of our mind to imperceptible, infinitely decreasing ripples, we can send forth our great willpower that moves the universe.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

19 : Willpower
Ki Sayings (2003)

Understanding , Question , Universe

“For me it is important to live in harmony with developments in Sweden and all over the changing world around us that we are actually part of.”

Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (1946) King of Sweden

royalcorrespondent.com http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/02/15/an-interview-with-his-majesty-king-carl-xvi-gustaf-of-sweden/

World , Change , Parting

“Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art; the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"The Conservation Ethic" [1933]; Published in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott (eds.) 1991, p. 191.
1930s

Food , Beauty , Art , Music

“The Psalms are an everlasting manual to the soul; the book of its immortal wishes, its troubles, its aspirations, and its hopes; sung in every tongue, and in every age; destined to endure while the universe of God has light, harmony, or grandeur, while man has religion or sensibility, while language has sublimity or sweetness.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 33.

God , Books , Age , Religion

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Life , Men , God , War

“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Article 11 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp#art11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers on January 3, 1797 and received ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797; it was signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul); This phrase has also sometimes been misattributed to George Washington, and has also been misquoted as "This nation of ours was not founded on Christian principles".
Misattributed

Religion , Law , Sense , Country

“Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Art , Feeling , Passion , Parting

“Equally unfounded is the complaint that the study of science and the technical application of the forces of nature gives to mankind a thoroughly material direction, makes them proud of their knowledge and power, and alienates ideal endeavours. The deeper we penetrate into the harmonious action of natural forces regulated by eternal unalterable laws, and yet so thickly veiled from our complete comprehension, the more we feel on the contrary moved to humble modesty, the smaller appears to us the extent of our knowledge, the more active is our endeavour to draw more from the inexhaustible fountain of knowledge, and understanding, and the higher rises our admiration of the endless wisdom which ordains and penetrates the whole creation.”

Werner von Siemens (1816–1892) German inventor and industrialist

Bonnier Corporation. Popular Science https://books.google.com/books?id=tyoDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Apr 1887,Vol. 30, No. 46. [0161-7370]. pp. 814-820\
Werner von Siemens (1895). Scientific & technical papers of Werner von Siemens. J. Murray. p. 518

Wisdom , Law , Feeling , Understanding

“I saw Guillaumin. We went to look at my two latest paintings which were bought by Durand. All he said was 'there's no firmness in the foreground'. It was evening, we were seeing the paintings by gas-light, which neutralized the orange tones. As Seurat says, what they [the Impressionists]] look for is thick impasto; but at Clauzet's I saw a Guillaumin, also in the evening, and it looked made of tar, so much shellac was used at the base of this painting, which in my view is really old stuff; it must be admitted that he made an effort to tighten the design but then the harmonies are insignificant and lack logic - there is no drawing, there is a flurry of colors, but no modeling; it is one step from [w: Jules Dupré|Jules Dupreé]] - modernized.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Pissarro, in a letter, Paris, 6 December 1886, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 84
1880's

Color , Effort , Light , Drawing

“I hope to stand for a new harmony, a greater tolerance. We've come far, but I think we need a new harmony among the races in our country. And we're on a journey into a new century, and we've got to leave that tired old baggage of bigotry behind.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

RNC acceptance speech (1988)

Hope , Thinking , Country

“Just as counterpoint and harmony follow their own laws, and differ in rhythm and movement, both formal tensions and color tensions have a development of their own in accordance with the inherent laws from which they are separately derived. Both, however, aim toward the realization of the same image. And both deal with the depth problem.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Law , Color , Problem

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2004-07-03 speech to Congress opposing House resolution celebrating 40th anniversary of Civil Rights Act, quoted in * Civil Rights Act
RonPaul.com
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/civil-rights-act/
2000s, 2001-2005

Color , Business , Country

“The frame [is no longer as in the beginning version] is in a harmony opposed to those of the tones, tints, and lines of the [motif of the] picture.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Maurice Beaubourg', August 1890

“Let me end with… man's ageless fantasy, to fly to the moon…. Plutarch and Lucian, Ariosto and Ben Jonson wrote about it, before the days of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and science fiction. The seventeenth century was heady with… fables about voyages to the moon. Kepler wrote one full of deep scientific ideas… wrote… The Discovery of a New World. They did not draw a line between science and fancy… they all tried to guess where… earth's gravity would stop. Only Kepler understood that gravity has no boundary, and put a law to it—… the wrong law.
All this was a few years before Isaac Newton was born, and it was all in his head that day in 1666, when he… came to conceive… that the moon is like a ball… thrown so hard that it falls exactly as fast as the horizon… he went on to calculate how long… the distant moon would take to round the earth… [T]he imagination that day chimed with nature, and made a harmony.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

World , Law , Imagination , Idea

“What we cannot express by the art of thinking, by the art of Science or philosophy or logic, we can and should express by the poetic, visual, or some other arts. It is for that reason that I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same; for they cover only one impulse, one drive inherent in our consciousness - to bring our life and all our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of the world, as our consciousness want it to be, in harmony with our life and according to the laws of consciousness itself - Naum Gabo”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote from The Quotable Artist, by Peggy Hadden; Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2010; not paged
undated

Life , World , Law , Art

“Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i. e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)

World , Way , Thinking

“The espionage is illegal, and I think that it breaks from the climate of harmony and cordiality we should have among our nations and peoples. Given everything that is now known, and the position of other heads of state on this issue, we hope that the United States, with humbleness, will recognize [the error of] what it did and avoid such actions from now on. And if there have been violations of international law, penalties should take place.”

Enrique Peña Nieto (1966) 57th President of Mexico

Foreign Affairs interview (January 2014)

People , Law , Penalty , Hope

“For if society lacks the unity that derives from the fact that the relationships between its parts are exactly regulated, that unity resulting from the harmonious articulation of its various functions assured by effective discipline and if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men's wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Émile Durkheim (1903/1961, p. 102); Quoted in: Kenneth Allan (2012). Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World: Seeing the Social World p. 151

Men , Parting

Quotes about harmony page 5

Quotes about harmony
page 5