Quotes about head
page 22

Robert E. Howard photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
George Mikes photo
Pauline Kael photo
James Jeans photo

“The motion of the stars over our heads is as much an illusion as that of the cows, trees and churches that flash past the windows of our train.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Source: The Stars in their Courses (1931), p. 3.

Pete Yorn photo
Luise Rainer photo
Phil Brooks photo
Phil Brooks photo

“I tried. I tried so hard to empathize with all of your weaknesses. I implored every single one of you to just say "no," and all my empathy got was for you to love Jeff Hardy that much more than you already did. But this will not deter me. I will stay the course; I still believe in teaching you people the difference between right and wrong. (Audience chants "Hardy!") Oh, obviously it's gonna be challenging, listening to you people, and by the looks of some of you, it's gonna be a big challenge. But just like any other challenge that's come down the pipe in my lifetime, I'm gonna meet that challenge head on like a man, just like I did last week. Let's take a look. (Recap of Punk's assault on Hardy) See, now I know why you people love Jeff Hardy so much. It's because you are all just like him; and, in turn, Jeff Hardy is just like all of you. The reality is, none of you have the strength to be straight-edge. (Audience resumes chant) You gravitate towards Jeff because it's the easy way out: it's easier to weak like Jeff, because you sure can't be strong like me. Oh, you can boo all you want. I know why you boo, you know why you boo. It's because I tell the truth. And the truth sometimes hurts, doesn't it? For instance, what does it say on your prescription bottle of pills? "Take one every four hours"? Well, don't tell me you people don't gobble four, six, eight at a time like they were Pez. That is drug abuse—I don't do that. I also don't smoke, and those who do are stupid. You gotta be stupid to not listen to the Surgeon General, especially when he prints the warning label on the package of smokes. You gotta be a fool. And we can talk about those funny cigarettes, and you obviously know what I'm talking about because you cheer, and that's utterly sad. That's pathetic. I…I can't even wrap my head around you people cheering, 'cause when you smoke those funny cigarettes, not only is that hazardous to your health, it's also illegal. So those who have taken a puff, not only are you poisoning yourself, you're also breaking the law, so the vast majority of everybody here in this arena is a criminal. I am not a criminal—I never have been, and I never will be. Now let's talk about alcohol. I've saved the best poison for last, see because this is a gateway drug. Don't tell me not a single one of you here has ever said, "I'm gonna go out for one drink," and one leads to two, and two drinks leads to three, and then it's a double of this, and a shot of that, and then your head winds up in the toilet, night in and night out. Congratulations, that is alcoholism. And in my book, if you even take one drink, you're an alcoholic. So I understand why you people love Jeff Hardy so much, I understand why Jeff loves you—it's because you're all weak. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, you deserve better. This entire world deserves better. What you need is a leader. You need a strong leader who's gonna stand up in the face of adversity and just say "no."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

You need a strong leader that's gonna carry the banner of the World Heavyweight Championship with honor, with pride, respect, dignity, integrity, and class. What you people need is a straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion. You need CM Punk.
August 7, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Michael Moorcock photo

“My instinct shouted “Conspiracy” but my head reasoned “Coincidence.””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The von Bek family, The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 8 (p. 291)

Nigella Lawson photo
Otto von Bismarck photo

“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Frequently quoted in online leftist circles. Refers to the split of the First Internationale (between anarchists and socialists). The earliest mention is on page 95 of American radicalism, 1865-1901, essays and documents https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015011722785?urlappend=%3Bseq=111 (1946) by Chester McArthur Destler, but as of now the German original could not be found.
In German political parlance, "black" more often referred to Catholic interests than to anarchism; it is possible that if Bismarck did say this, it referred rather to a union between the Catholic Center and the Socialist "reds" against the German nationalist/Protestant "blues."
Disputed

Gabriel García Márquez photo
Lulu (singer) photo

“It's important to be open to new experiences. I recently went to Disneyland for the first time in 20 years. There were three of us 60-year-olds on a rollercoaster, screaming our heads off. It was white knuckles all the way and I loved it!”

Lulu (singer) (1948) Scottish singer, actress, and television personality

I'm through with having Botox, says pop diva Lulu, 2008-03-31, 2008-03-31, Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=550849&in_page_id=1879,

Wolfram von Eschenbach photo

“To win a boar’s head one must sacrifice the hounds.”

Bk. 3, st. 150, line 22; p. 86.
Parzival

Naomi Klein photo
Karel Appel photo
Roger Manganelli photo

““You split hairs.”
“Better to split hairs than the heads beneath them.””

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XXV (p. 447)

Walter Scott photo
Karl Denninger photo
John Gay photo

“Is there no hope? the sick man said;
The silent doctor shook his head.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable, The Sick Man and the Angel
Fables (1727)

Daniel Abraham photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Georges Bataille photo
Walt Disney photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
William Gibson photo
Trent Reznor photo
Klaus Kinski photo
Marshall Faulk photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Kit Carson photo

“Shortly after the ignominious expulsion of the Texas invaders, General J. H. Carleton was appointed to the command of this Department, and with the greatest promptitude he turned his attention to the freeing of the Territory from these lawless savages. To this great work he brought many years' experience and a perfect knowledge of the means to effect that end. He saw that the thirty (30) millions of dollars expended and the many lives lost in the former attempts at the subjugation, would not have been profitless, had not there been something radically wrong in the policy pursued. He was not long in ascertaining that treaties were as promises written in sand. nor in discovering that they had no recognized 'Head' authority to represent them; that each chief's influence and authority was immediately confined to his own followers or people; that any treaty signed by one or more of these chiefs had no binding effect on the remainder, and that there were a large number of the worst characters who acknowledged no chief at all. Hence it was that on all occasions when treaties were made, one party were continuing their depredations, whilst the other were making peace. And hence it was apparent that treaties were absolutely powerless for good. He adopted a new policy, i. e., placing them on a reservation (the wisdom of which is already manifest); a new era dawned on New Mexico, and the dying hope of the people was again revived; never more I trust, to meet with disappointment. He first organized a force against the Mescalero Apaches, which I had the honor to command. After a short and inexpensive campaign, the Mescaleros were placed on their present reservation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

“Wherever two or three are gathered together, one, at least, has left his head at home in his night-cap, or hung it up in his hat as he entered.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That Two Heads are Better than One".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Timothy McVeigh photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Stephen Harper photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Pete Yorn photo
André Maurois photo
Thomas Gray photo

“Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth.
And Melancholy marked him for her own.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

The Epitaph, St. 1
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Eyal Berkovic photo

“If my head had been a ball, it would have been in the top corner of the net.”

Eyal Berkovic (1972) Israeli footballer and manager

Discussing incident when John Hartson kicked Berkovic in the head during training. [Football: Hartson fined pounds 20,000 by FA, The Independent, 2 February 1999, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990202/ai_n14214534, 27 March, 2007]

Iltutmish photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Pete Yorn photo
Mariah Carey photo
Prince photo

“I'm going down 2 Alphabet Street
I'm gonna crown the first girl that I meet
I'm gonna talk so sexy
She'll want me from my head 2 my feet.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Alphabet St.
Song lyrics, Lovesexy (1988)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Rufus Wainwright photo
John Ruskin photo

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Czeslaw Milosz photo

“Earth, what have I to do with thee?
With your meadows where dumb beasts
Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads?
What have I to do with your implacable births?
So why this gracious melancholia?
Is it because anger is no use?”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Portal" (1976), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“I can't help reflecting that it's taken a Government headed by a housewife with experience of running a family to balance the books for the first time in twenty years—with a little left over for a rainy day.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Women's Conference (25 May 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107248
Third term as Prime Minister

Sam Houston photo

“Texas will again lift its head and stand among the nations. it ought to do so, for no country upon the globe can compare with it in natural advantages.”

Sam Houston (1793–1863) nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, namesake of Houston, Texas

As quoted in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum http://www.shsu.edu/~smm_www/History/quotes.shtml.

Anton Chekhov photo

“I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written.”

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

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 27, 1888)
Letters

Eliezer Yudkowsky photo
W. H. Auden photo
Assata Shakur photo
Robert Menzies photo
Ben Croshaw photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Gerald Ford photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Stephen Baxter photo

“Boxing moves the head to dodge punches, but in Wing Chun we don't,”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wisdom Quotes
Context: Boxing moves the head to dodge punches, but in Wing Chun we don't

Tom Lehrer photo

“So get down upon your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"The Vatican Rag"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Ken Ham photo
Pete Doherty photo
Tom Baker photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“At no point am I going to lick a little frogs head.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 4
On Nature

Madonna photo
Gerry Rafferty photo
Eleanor Farjeon photo
Ian Kershaw photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Iltutmish photo
Samuel Romilly photo
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

About to disembark on state visit to Brazil (November 1968), as quoted in The Reality of Monarchy (1970) by Andrew Duncan
1960s

Francis Escudero photo

“There should be a top to bottom revamp of the Bureau of Corrections. Replacing the head is not enough. That has been done several times before and did not work.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, December 16). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152913871520610/
2014, Facebook
Variant: There should be a top to bottom revamp of the Bureau of Corrections. Replacing the head is not enough. That has been done several times before and did not work.

Chuck Berry photo
John Dryden photo
Agatha Christie photo
John Updike photo

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Marianne von Werefkin photo

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

William Gibson photo