Quotes about head
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“There is more to do. We need to prepare our children to read and succeed in school with improved Head Start and early childhood development programs. We must upgrade our teacher colleges and teacher training and launch a major recruiting drive with a great goal for America: a quality teacher in every classroom.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Children, School, Teachers, Reading

“A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristic of western civilization comes to a head in modern science, and finds its highest material expression in the technology of the machine industry.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization", 1906, p. 355

Science

“We are always repeating ancestral signs which are quite useless now. When a great actress wants to express hate she draws back her charming lips and shows her canine teeth, an unconscious sign of cannibalism. We shake hands with a friend to prevent him using it to strike us, and we take off our hats because our ancestors used to humbly offer their heads, to the bigwigs of those days, to be cut off.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Hate, Drawing

“The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the business cycle is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.”

Robert Fogel (1926–2013) American economist, historian

Robert Fogel, in: " Transcript from an interview with Professor Robert W. Fogel, 2004 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1993/fogel-interview-transcript.html" at nobelprize.org.

Business, Personality

“On the evening of the 29th, the army fell back to the north end of the Island. The next morning, the enemy advanced upon us in two columns upon the east and west road. Our light troops, commanded by Colonel Livingston and Colonel Laurens, attacked the heads of the columns about seven o'clock in the morning, but were beat back they were reinforced with a regiment upon each road. The enemy still proved too strong. General Sullivan formed the army in order of battle, and resolved to wait their approach upon the ground we were encamped on, and sent orders to the light troops to fall back. The enemy came up and formed upon Quaker Hill, a very strong piece of ground, within about one mile and a quarter of our line. We were well posted, with strong works in our rear, and a strong redoubt in front, partly upon the right of the line.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Light, Strong, Waiting

“[Deinonychus] is usually considered a small dinosaur. But the largest individual was an eleven-foot-long animal whose head approached half a yard long, and was of male-timber-wolf mass. If alive today it would be considered a big predator.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 367
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Wolf, Animals

“It’s tradition. I remove a head, I bring it backstage, I place it on Mr. Fertitta and Mr. White’s desk. "Here you go boss. Another one done."”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

And then we discuss big business. UFC Fight Night: Boston post-event press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlE8zHZBepg (January 2015) Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC 2010s, 2015

Business

“There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor.
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm.
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground.
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart,
Blow away the dreams that break your heart.
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The Promised Land"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Faith, Dreams, Tear, Heart

“It was difficult to believe these things had taken place such a very long time ago. The events seemed distant, as though he had only read about them and not experienced them at all. He knew that at this point his death was far closer, far more tangible. That was something he could almost touch. One could feel one’s mortal form progressing slowly to ruin, like that old abbey—the signs were undeniable. Things went wrong inside a man and did not come right again. That was the truth that hung over one’s head like a blade. Injuries and illnesses were no longer easily repaired. And as with some part of a painting that he could never get right, the great danger was to see nothing but what was wrong. The trap of age.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 7 (p. 89)

Death, Truth, Age, Feeling

“.. ambition to surpass Impressionism, destroying the subject's unity of time and place.... [to render its relations to] things that apparently had nothing to do with it, but that in reality were linked to it in my imagination, in my memories or by feeling. In the same canvas I brought together the Arc of Triumph, the Tour Eiffel, the Alps, the head of my father, an autobus, the municipal hall of Pienza, the boulevard…”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Quote from his article 'Processo e difesa di un pittore d'oggi', L'Arte 5, Rome, September – November, 1931; as cited in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 25
quote, referring to his painting 'Memories of a Voyage', Severini painted in 1910-1911.

Feeling, Imagination, Reality, Memory

“[Footnote:] The head of a Pike, served at supper, is said to have caused the death from terror of Theodoric the Goth, who imagined the fish's features to be those of Symmachus, a man he had just killed. But for this story, we of today would have no idea what Symmachus looked like.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Pike
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Death, Imagination, Idea, Fish

“How much more infinite a sea is Man? Be not so childish as to measure him from head to foot and think that you have found his borders.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Thinking, Sea

“If ever there was a hard-headed and not a soft-hearted Sovereign it was she; if ever there was a place where there was little of that romantic sentiment of going abroad to do right and justice to other people, I think it was in that Tudor breast of our 'Good Queen Bess,' as well call her. … When I see the accounts of what passed when the [Dutch] envoys came to Queen Elizabeth and asked for aid, how she is huckstering for money while they are begging for help to their religion,—I declare that, with all my principles of non-intervention, I am almost ashamed of old Queen Bess. And then there were Burleigh, Walsingham, and the rest, who were, if possible, harder and more difficult to deal with than their mistress. Why, they carried out in its unvarnished selfishness a national British policy; they had no other idea of a policy but a national British policy, and they carried it out with a degree of selfishness amounting to downright avarice.”

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

Speech in Rochdale (23 November 1864), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 484-5.
1860s

Money, People, Religion, Justice

“How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field… Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

George, Act I
Jumpers (1972)

Wisdom, Hell

“That whatever position I'm holding right now won't last forever. It will come to an end, and so I better be sure that at the end of it all I'd still be able to hold my head up high and still be able to live and breath freely.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

on the best political advice his father has given to him
"The Commissioner", FHM 01 September 2010, p. 54.
2010

“Protocols: What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a foreign loan? A loan is an issue of government bills of exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the sum of the loan capital. If the loan bears a charge of 5 percent, then in twenty years the State vainly pays away in interest a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in forty years it is paying a double sum, in sixty treble and all the while the debt remains an unpaid debt.
from this calculation it is obvious that with any form of taxation per head the State is bailing out the last coppers of the poor taxpayers in order to settle accounts…; instead of collecting
Graves: These two books were written 40 years apart from each other…why is the same interest rate employed by the “Protocols?””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Surely they must have changed during all that time.
Raslovlev: Very revealing…eh?
Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.85

Books, Change, Time

“I rapidly discovered that Aristotle had known almost no mechanics at all. … How could his characteristic talents have deserted him so systematically when he turned to the study of motion and mechanics? Equally, if his talents had so deserted him, why had his writings in physics been taken so seriously for so many centuries after his death? … I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's Physics open in front of me… Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I'd never dreamed possible. Now I could understand why he had said what he'd said, and what his authority had been. Statements that had previously seemed egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and generally successful tradition. That sort of experience -- the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way -- is the first general characteristic of revolutionary change that I shall be singling out after further consideration of examples. Though scientific revolutions leave much piecemeal mopping up to do, the central change cannot be experienced piecemenal, one step at a time. Instead, it involves some relatively sudden and unstructured transformation in which some part of the flux of experience sorts itself out differently and displays patterns that were not visible before.”

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) American historian, physicist and philosopher

Source: The Road Since Structure (2002), p. 16-17; from "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" (1982)

Death, Dreams, Way, Understanding

“I laughed. I could see her point completely, because in Spanish you’d never say, “I think I love you,” especially after four years. That would be an insult. You’d say, “I feel love for you so deeply that when I just think of you, I start to tremble and feel my heart flutter.” Why? Because Spanish is a feeling-based language that comes first from the heart, just as English is a thinking-based language that comes first from the head.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—
And that cannot stop their tears.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

The Cry of the Children http://www.webterrace.com/browning/The%20Cry%20Of%20The%20Children.htm, st. 1 (1844).

Children, Tear

“The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?

Night

“I often meet people who are very, very staunch Southerners, some of whom feel that the Yankees are out to do the South in. But believe me, there is not, and never has been anyone, including General Sherman, who does more damage to the South then their own schools heading by their own people. They need to wake up and every part of the country needs to recognize what is being done to it by these educators, this systemic destruction of everything that people treasure and believe in.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

People, Education, School, Feeling

“Referring to a professor aboard ship: This passenger — the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port on the coast — was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my smoother days, and the last person I should have expected to see on the coast of California — Professor Nuttall of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of the Botany and Ornithology Department at Harvard University, and the next I saw of him, he was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailors' pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells… I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business… The Pilgrim's crew called Mr. Nuttall "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities; and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself this way. Why else would (he)… come to such a place as California to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, who had seen something more of the world ashore said, "Oh, 'vast there!… I've seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur'osities, and study 'em, and have men a purpose to go and get 'em… He'll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he'll be head of the college. Then, by and by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him he'll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That's the way they do it. This old covery knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over 'em, and come 'way out here where nobody's ever been afore, and where they'll never think of coming."”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. Nuttall's credit, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 267

Men, Truth, World, Way

“Believe me, I work, I drudge, I grind all day long and I do so with pleasure, but I should get very much discouraged if I could not go on working as hard or even harder... I feel, Theo, that there is a power within me, and I do what I can to bring it out and free it. It is hard enough, all the worry and bother with my drawings, and if I had too many other cares and could not pay the models I should lose my head.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Jan. 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 20 (letter 171) 1880s, 1882

Pleasure, Feeling, Drawing

“When I come along [to the landlord] and say, "Here, gentlemen, you have escaped long enough, it is your turn now, I want you to pay just 5 per cent. on the £10,000 odd," they reply:—"Five per cent? You are a thief; you are worse, you are an attorney; worst of all, you are a Welshman." That always is the crowning epithet. I do not apologize, and I do not mind telling you that if I could, I would not; I am proud of the little land among the hills…Whenever they hurl my nationality at my head, I say to them, "You Unionists, you hypocrites, Pharisees, you are the people who in every peroration…always talk about our being one kith and kin throughout the Empire…and yet if any man dares to aspire to any position, if he does not belong to the particular nationality which they have dignified by choosing their parents from, they have no use for him."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Well, they have got to stand the Welshman now.
Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Parent

“Oh would I were dead now,
Or up in my bed now,
To cover my head now,
And have a good cry!”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

A Table of Errata; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Cry, Dead

“Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than heaven;
And if there be a human tear
From passion's dross refined and clear,
A tear so limpid and so meek
It would not stain an angel's cheek,
'Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a duteous daughter's head!”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto II, stanza 22. The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Angels, Feeling, Tear, Passion

“Three years later in the contest for Kansas, the administration headed by James Buchanan tried to railroad through a constitution called the Lecompton Constitution, which would have made Kansas a slave state, but on the basis of a phony vote. Douglas stuck to his popular-sovereignty doctrine, which meant that the people of the territory, in a fair vote, would decide for or against slavery. That was the way in which he replaced the Missouri Compromise restriction. It opened slavery, but it said that the decision in each territory would be made by the people in that territory on the basis of their preferences.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

People, Way, Decision

“Is it life? I would rather be without it, for there is quare small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night's porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed jars and foreign bacon. Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, be the hokey he takes to his bed and dies. He dies like a poisoned sheepdog. There is nothing so dangerous you can't smoke it, nobody will give you tuppence halfpenny for the half of it, and it kills you in the wind-up. It is a quare contraption, very dangerous, a certain death-trap.”

Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer

Page 165
The Various Lives Of Keats And Chapman (2010)

Life, Death, Drink, Understanding

“I am busy on a portrait of my self and my aunt and my two cousins, I will show it to you when you get back. I am doing it as if I were doing a picture. I've got to do it well, because I want to leave it as a momento... The older one is really a lovely thing, the younger one has the devil in her as well as the kindness of an angel. I am doing them with their black dresses and little white pinafores which suit them delightfully. I have ideas for the picture's background running through my head. I would like a certain gracefulness with a nobleness of feeling that I don't know how to describe.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote in a letter (27 November, 1858) to Degas' friend and painter Gustave Moreau; as quoted in More unpublished Letters of Degas, Theodore Reff, Art Bulletin LI, No. 3., Sept. 1969, pp. 282-283
1855 - 1875

Love, Angels, Feeling, Idea

“On the nationalist-conservative Right… Hitler was portrayed for the most part as intransigent and irresponsible, a wild and vulgar demagogue, not a statesman, an obstacle to political recovery, the head of an extreme movement with menacing socialistic tendencies.”

Ian Kershaw (1943) British historian

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 412

Parting

“"You yourself created this Town. You made everything here. The Wall, the River, the Woods, the Library, the Gate, everything. Even this Pool. I've known all along."
"Then why did you not tell me sooner?"
"Because you'd only have left me here like this. Because your rightful world is there outside." My shadow sits down in the snow and shakes his head from side to side. "But you won't listen, will you?"
"I have responsibilities," I say. "I cannot forsake the people and places and things I have created. I know I do you a terrible wrong. And yes, perhaps I wrong myself, too. But I must see out the consequences of my own doings. This is my world. The Wall is here to hold me in, the River flows through me, the smoke is me burning. I must know why."”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 40, Birds

People, World

“Here Chopin has the conviction that he has lost his power of expression. With the determination to discover whether his brain can still originate ideas, he strikes his head with a hammer (here the sixteenths and thirty-seconds are to be carried out in exact time, indicating a double stroke of the hammer). In the third and fourth measures on can hear the blood trickle (trills in the left hand). He is desperate at finding no inspiration (fifth measure); he strikes again with the hammer and with greater force (thirty-second notes twice in succession during the crescendo). In the key of A flat he finds his powers again. Appeased, he seeks his former key and closes contentedly.”

Hans von Bülow (1830–1894) German musician

On Chopin's E major Prelude Op.28 No.9, quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists.

Idea, Time, Success

“War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Recalling War," lines 31–34, from Collected Poems 1938 (1938).
Poems

War, Happiness, World, Faith

“In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it shows that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men—so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses—learning to understand each other, and not to fight each other…we are moving forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer going to be? No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see…it has got to be a form of pretty close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at. And it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this party or that. It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals. There are few men fitted to judge, to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed. There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill. I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, who themselves know exactly the points where the shoe pinches, who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925). 1925

Men, Hope, Shoe, Understanding

“No honest mind can exclude doubt, or ignore criticism, or shut its ears against reason. And if we could do these things we should be left, not with faith, but with a head-in-the-sand superstition.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.225

Faith

“"Use yer heads! A barnyard goose tastes better 'an a wild one cause it don't use its muscles. The same oughta hold true for a giant's brains!"—Bruenor Battlehammer, explaining his new recipe in response to Drizzt's and Wulfgar's expressions of horror and disgust.”

R. A. Salvatore book The Crystal Shard

The Crystal Shard

“The results of this study are presented under three general headings. The first, and most extensive, section consists of data relating to the factors that lead to positive and negative attitudes toward the job. It will be recalled that the major question this study set out to investigate was whether different kinds of factors were responsible for bringing about job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 57

Question, Study

“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

“It is our pride that the Great Satan (U. S.) and the head of despotism, corruption and arrogance in modern times considers us as an enemy that should be listed in the terrorism list.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

United Press International. November 4, 2001 Quote, 2001 Source: Camera: Hassan Nasrallah: In His Own Words http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1158.

Time

“Early on, presenter Mark Evans observes that a snake is essentially just "one massive tube with a head at the end", which, coincidentally, is also how he might describe his genitals to an audience of blind women in a hypothetical situation I've just invented in which hen nights for the visually impaired are held in special strip clubs where naked men describe their bodies in time to disco music. For what it's worth, I don't know what I'm going on about, either”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Discussing Inside Nature's Giants 12 jUNE 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jun/12/charlie-brooker-screen-burn Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Women, Men, Music, Time

“I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.”

Langdon Smith Evolution

Evolution (1895; 1909)

“There's confusion in my head as I depart
but a singing, ringing, soaring in my heart
for beyond all time and space and doubt
I know
I've lived here before
long ago.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"I've Lived Here Before" (co-written with Liam Ó Maonlaí)
Universal Hall (2003)

Singing, Time, Heart

“If the people wanted my head I would bow without demur. If I had lost the confidence or respect of the people I would not want to live. The tragedy of the drama is that the very opposite is true.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Letter to his attorney, Yahya Bakhtiar, after his death sentence, as quoted in My Dearest Daughter : A letter from the Death Cell (2007).

People, Confidence

“If the BSP leader is not satisfied, I am ready to behead myself and lay my head at your feet.”

Smriti Irani (1972) Indian politician

Addressing Mayawati, on the handling of the Suicide of Rohith Vemula, as quoted in " Smriti Irani, Mayawati feud rocks Rajya Sabha http://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/250216/smriti-irani-mayawati-feud-rocks-rajya-sabha.html" Deccan Chronicle (25 February 2016)

“Dialogue in Hell:
Ninth Dialogue

Machiavelli: And where have you ever seen that a constitution, really worthy of the name, really durable, has ever been the result of popular deliberation? A constitution must come forth fully armed from the head of one man alone, or it is nothing but a work condemned to oblivion. Without homogeneity, without linking of parties, without practical strength, it will necessarily bear the imprint of all the weaknesses of sight that have presided at its composition….

Montesquieu: …One would say, to hear you, that you are going to draw a people out of chaos or out of the deep night of their first origins….

Machiavelli: I do not say no: therefore you will see that I need not destroy your institutions from top to bottom to arrive at my goal. It will suffice me to modify the arrangements and to change the methods.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

People, Hell, Change, Drawing

“Remember yourself.
You've got a Full House in your head tonight…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

"Remember yourself" was a motto of G. I. Gurdjieff, whose ideas were an early influence on Bush.
Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Housing

“Animals can also be ‘hypnotised’. Flip a rabbit on its back, hold it firmly in position with its head back for a couple of minutes, and you’ll find it will become perfectly motionless and unresponsive, until you clap your hands loudly above its head.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV recordings of stage shows, Svengali (2012), Svengali tour brochure

Animals

“Republicans sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives regarding the SCHIP bill, October 18, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsGaNR9dVPM

Money, War, Children, People

“The United Nations is an organization of extraordinary potential. As the United Nations rebuilds its headquarters, it must also open the door to a new age of transparency, accountability, and seriousness of purpose. With determination and clear purpose, the United Nations can be a powerful force for good as we head into the 21st century. It can affirm the great promise of its founding.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Age

“It is commonly said that seeing is believing, but feeling is the very truth. I shall, therefore, give the result of my experience of hypnotism in my own person. In the middle of September, 1844, I suffered from a most severe attack of rheumatism, implicating the left side of the neck and chest, and the left arm. At first the pain was moderately severe, and I took some medicine to remove it; but, instead of this, it became more and more violent, and had tormented me for three days, and was so excruciating, that it entirely deprived me of sleep for three nights successively, and on the last of the three nights I could not remain in any one posture for five minutes, from the severity of the pain. On the forenoon of the next day, whilst visiting my patients, every jolt of the carriage I could only compare to several sharp instruments being thrust through my shoulder, neck, and chest. A full inspiration was attended with stabbing pain, such as is experienced in pleurisy. When I returned home for dinner I could neither turn my head, lift my arm, nor draw a breath, without suffering extreme pain. In this condition I resolved to try the effects of hypnotism. I requested two friends, who were present, and who both understood the system, to watch the effects, and arouse me when I had passed sufficiently into the condition; and, with their assurance that they would give strict attention to their charge, I sat down and hypnotised myself, extending the extremities. At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease. I say agreeably surprised, on this account; I had seen like results with many patients; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it. My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely as myself on that occasion; and, therefore, I merely expected a mitigation, so that I was truly agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain. I continued quite easy all the afternoon, slept comfortably all night, and the following morning felt a little stiffness, but no pain. A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I removed by hypnotising myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

In “The First Account of Self-Hypnosis Quoted in “The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis)”.

Pain, Truth, Way, Feeling

“It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man’s head, will sometimes act like an obstruction … in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

"How to make our ideas clear,” Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878)

Idea

“With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Creation, st. 10.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

God

“It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,—a practice which has now passed into a proverb. It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms…. Under these circumstances, they say that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one latchet too few. The next day, the shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticise the leg; upon which Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion beyond the shoes, —a piece of advice which has equally passed into a proverbial saying.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book XXXV, sec. 84.
Naturalis Historia

Shoe, Error, Exercises, Business

“Two or three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. Dawn is breaking. Down there, a little way off, they slaughtered cattle, cows bellowed, and I painted them. I used to sit up like that all night long. It's already a week since the studio was cleaned out. Frames, eggshells, empty two-sou soup tins lie about higgledy-piggledy... On the shelves, reproductions of El Greco and Cézanne lay next tot the remains of a herring I had cut in two, the head for the first day, the tail for the next, and Thank God, a few crusts of bread.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, pp. 29-30
Chagall describes a morning in his studio in Paris, c. 1911, in 'La Ruche' an old factory where many artists as Soutine, Archipenko, Léger and Modigliani had their studio
1920's, My life (1922)

God, Lie, Way, Painting

“A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it as well - she did this and then she did that; there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote by Barbara Rose, in Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85
1970s - 1980s

Beauty, Art, Thinking, Effort

“Old friend and true companion! soothing Sleep,
Yes fly, like other friends. How easily
Did your sweet influence fall on my free head,
Cool like a lovely crown of myrtle boughs.
Beloved Sleep! amid the clash of arms,
On the rough torrent of unquiet life,
I rested, breathing lightly as a child,
Weary and cradled in your mother arms.
When the storm swept the leaves from off the bough,
And rushed thro' crashing branches, yet my heart
Was in its depths untroubled, — and I slept.”

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

Translations, From the German

Love, Life, Sleep, Heart

“Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? — No — no, ‘tis your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Book III, ch. 2 This derives from a statement by William Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar where Caesar declares: Knickerbocker's History of New York http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13042 (1809)

Men, Communication

“The first-century church in Jerusalem clearly had it. And they didn't have any fancy accoutrements. So it can't possibly be stained-glass windows, hand-carved cherubs, custom silk tapestries, gold-inlaid hymnals, thousand-pipe organs, marble floors, mile-high steeples, hand-painted ceilings, mahogany pews, giant cast-iron bells, and a three-piece, thousand dollar suit. It doesn't stick any better to a young, hip, shaved-headed pastor with rimmed glasses, a goatee, and tattoos than it does to an older, stately gentleman in a robe. Nor is it spotlights and lasers, video production, satellite dishes, fog machines, shiny gauze backdrops, four-color glossy brochures, sexy billboards, loud "contemporary" music, free donuts, coffee shops, hip bookstores, break dancing or acrobatics, sermon series named after television shows, a retro-modern matching chair and table onstage, or blue jeans and Heelys. It is not being on television, being on the Internet, or being on book and magazine covers. It is real. It is genuine.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Books, Music, Color, Coffee

“Every employee in an undertaking — workman, foreman, shop manager, head of division, head of department, manager, and if it is a state enterprise the series extends to the minister or head of a state department — takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. By administrative knowledge we mean planning, organization, command, coordination, and control: it can be elementary for the workman, but must be very wide in the case of employees of high rank, especially managers of big concerns. Everyone has some need of administrative knowledge.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Industrial and General Administration, 1916, p. 10; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 4-5

Knowledge

“I enjoy living a plant-based diet because it makes me feel clear headed and strong, not to mention my genetically high cholesterol dropped more than 100 points. That was all the motivation I needed.”

Bob Harper (personal trainer) (1965) American personal trainer

"Bob Harper Goes Vegan" https://vegnews.com/2010/6/bob-harper-goes-vegan, interview with VegNews (June 14, 2010).

Feeling, Motivation, Strong

“I'm down here in Mexico, sick as a dog.
My head is poundin' in this border town fog.
Down to my last dime and comin' apart at the seams.
I've messed up in Mexico, livin' on refried dreams.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Refried Dreams
Song lyrics, Not a Moment Too Soon (1994)

Dogs, Dreams

“The presidency is seemingly bound by law, but in practice it can do just about anything it pleases. It can order up troops anywhere in the world, just as Clinton bragged in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. It can plow up a religious community in Texas and bury its members because they got on somebody’s nerves at the Justice Department. It can tap our phones, read our mail, watch our bank accounts, and tell us what we can and cannot eat, drink, and smoke.
The presidency can break up businesses, shut down airlines, void drilling leases, bribe foreign heads of state or arrest them and try them in kangaroo courts, nationalize land, engage in germ warfare, firebomb crops in Colombia, overthrow any government anywhere, erect tariffs, round up and discredit any public or private assembly it chooses, grab our guns, tax our incomes and our inheritances, steal our land, centrally plan the national and world economy, and impose embargoes on anything anytime. No prince or pope ever had this ability.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
1990s

World, Justice, Law, Communication

“What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

People

“For twenty years programming languages have been steadily progressing toward their present condition of obesity; as a result, the study and invention of programming languages has lost much of its excitement. Instead, it is now the province of those who prefer to work with thick compendia of details rather than wrestle with new ideas. Discussions about programming languages often resemble medieval debates about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin instead of exciting contests between fundamentally differing concepts. Many creative computer scientists have retreated from inventing languages to inventing tools for describing them. Unfortunately, they have been largely content to apply their elegant new tools to studying the warts and moles of existing languages.”

John Backus (1924–2007) American computer scientist

"Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?" http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1283933&type=pdf, 1977 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 21 (8), (August 1978): p. 614

Angels, Idea, Study, Dance

“I do not wish to be melodramatic, but at some point I have to say it. If something bad should happen to me, I want you to know that my commitment to what I am doing has been freely contracted, with the joy of knowing that this is precisely what I should be doing at this moment. Fear is constantly present in each one of us, because none of us are movie heroes. But we refuse to accept that fear must condition our actions and prevent us from doing what with a cool head and fervent heart we understand should be done.”

Antonio Llidó (1936–1974) Spanish priest

From the last letter received by his family on September 1974 http://www.memoriayjusticia.cl/english/en_focus-llido.html.

Fear, Understanding, Heart, Joy

“We have to be aggressive when those we stick up for have no voice. I don't consider it radical to say cruelty is wrong and that animals should be respected. I consider it radical to eat corpses, put electrodes in animals' heads, make elephants live in chains in the circus, and poison animals we consider a nuisance.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Veg Family, March, 2003 http://www.vegfamily.com/interviews/ingrid-newkirk.htm

Animals

“Our economic order is tightly woven around the exploitation of animals, and while it may seem easy to dismiss concern about animals as the soft-headed mental masturbation of people who really don't understand oppression and the depths of actual human misery, I hope to get you to think differently about suffering and pain, to convince you that animals matter, and to argue that anyone serious about ending domination and hierarchy needs to think critically about bringing animals into consideration.”

Bob Torres American podcaster

Source: Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (2007), p. 20

Pain, People, Hope, Understanding

“The absolute scholar is in fact a rather uncanny being. He is instinct with Nietzsche's finding that to be interested in something, to be totally interested in it, is a libidinal thrust more powerful than love or hatred, more tenacious than faith or friendship — not infrequently, indeed, more compelling than personal life itself. Archimedes does not flee from his killers, he does not even turn his head to acknowledge their rush into his garden when he is immersed in the algebra of conic sections.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason".
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Love, Life, Friendship, Faith

“I had to be the head of the household really for the first time and say okay, I have to actually make a rule that we’re going to live by here. And I decided what it was is that the family comes over the work always. I mean, with the kids it’s a priority. Because I wanted them to have a feeling like they could count on me like I was really there, I wasn’t just visiting. I didn’t want one of these moments like, “Jeez, honey, I’m sorry I’m not going to see you this week or this month or whatever because I’m going to LA.” I got some offers early that go out to LA and do parts on sitcoms and I said no, because it meant going and being away for a month.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/22/louis-ck-interview-part-1-fatherhood-and-fear/#ixzz2LfKg3gu2

Family, Feeling, Time, Parting

“You have to grow all the time," I said. "Not necessarily get bigger. But inside your head you have to grow, kid-boy. For us human-type people, that’s what’s important. And that kind of growing never stops. At least, it shouldn’t. You can grow, kid-boy, or you can die. That’s the choice you've got, and it goes on all of your life.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

The Star Pit (1967)

Life, People, Boy, Time

“I don't want to sneer, but old habits die hard. It's the resentment. Not even anger. Just resentment. I shake my head over the things that concern them, that middle-class stuff, it's too hot, it's too cold and this is not the toothpaste I like. Here am I after three decades in America still happy to be able to turn on the electric light or reach for a towel after the shower.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Happiness, Light, Anger

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

War, Children, Age, Way

“And now Marat
now I see where
this revolution is heading
To the withering of the individual man
and a slow merging into uniformity
to the death of choice
to self denial
to deadly weakness
in a state
which has no contract with individuals
but which is impregnable”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Sade, act 1, scene 20 (p. 49)
Marat/Sade (1963)

Death

“Everybody loves you when you're dead. Everyone is suddenly your dearest friend. Nobody talks no dirt about you. But life, it just goes on above your head, when you're dead.”

Tod A (1965) American musician

"Everybody Loves You (When You're Dead)", Ask Questions Later (March 30, 1993).
Lyrics, Cop Shoot Cop

Love, Life, Dead

“Tunis. My head is full of the impressions of last night's walk. Art-Nature-Self. Went to work at once and painted in watercolour in the Arab quarter. Began the synthesis of urban architecture and pictorial architecture. Not yet pure, but quite attractive, somewhat too much of the mood, the enthusiasm of traveling in it-the Self, in a word. Things will no doubt get more objective later, once the intoxication has worn off a bit.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; # 926-f; as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html The evening of their arrival, Dr. Jaggi took the 3 artists Klee, August Macke and Louis Moilliet on 'a nocturnal walk through the Arab city' Tunis. Klee wrote this note next day. 1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Art, Travel, Mood, Nature

“We have reached the age, those of us to whom fortune has assigned a post in life's struggle, when, beaten and smashed and biffed by the lashings of the dragon's tail, we begin to appreciate that the old man was not such a damned fool after all. We saw our parents wrestling with that same dragon, and we thought, though we never spoke the thought aloud, 'Why don't he hit him on the head?' Alas, comrades, we know now. We have hit the dragon on the head and we have seen the dragon smile.”

Ernest Thayer (1863–1940) American poet

Spoken at Thayer's tenth anniversary reunion at Harvard, 1895, as quoted in "American Heritage," (December 1968).

Life, Age, Smile, Fools

“De Mille's bang-them-on-the-head-with-wild-orgies-and-imperilled-virginity style is at its ripest; the film is just about irresistible.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Sign of the Cross," p. 680.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

“There’s no forgiveness built into the system. I told Barbara so, dozens of times. She was always marching off to save the whales, save the trees, save some goddamn thing. It was endearing. But in the back of my head I always heard Dad’s voice: ‘This is only a holding action. Nothing is ever really saved.’ Barbara thought the greenhouse effect was like a virus, something you could stop if you came up with the right vaccine. I told her it was a cancer—the cancer of humanity on the vital organs of the earth. You can’t stop that by marching.”
“Isn’t that a little like giving up?”
“I think it’s called acceptance.”
Archer stood and walked to the door, where his silhouette obscured the motion of the trees.
“Very bleak attitude, Tom.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

“Experience bears it out.”
Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 3 (pp. 52-53)

Forgiveness, Thinking, Tree, Time

“When I used to speak of the lunatic fringe, I didn’t know I was going to be head of it.”

Oscar Levant book The Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)

“One is that we are all responsible for our actions, our behavior, and our words, and we must take responsibility for everything we say and do. When you get your head wrapped around that, you can no longer think of life as a series of random events - you participate in life in a way you didn't previously. I am the architect of my destiny. I am in charge. I bring that to me, or I push that away. You can no longer blame other people for things that happened to you. The other is that there is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonnarama!, Vanity Fair, 2008-05-01 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/05/madonna200805, About Kabbalah

Life, People, World, Way

“I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that.”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

Interview with Martin Bashir on BBC Panorama (20 November 1995)

Books, Understanding, Heart

“The only book that I have read that really struck home with me giving a possible explanation for UFOs was […] The Cosmic Conspiracy by Stan Deyo. […] Deyo, a Christian, is a genius who wrote the book way over my head. […] He says that Satan has always used that mode of transportation to get around because the devil can only be at one place at one time […] I do not know if it is true, but it is an interesting theory.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Books, Way, Home, Time

“I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also, who have no alternative but to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords, known as 'officers of justice' or 'Victorian Police' who some call honest gentlemen but I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Men, Justice, Business, Sister

“Don't you love it when people in school are like, "I'm a bad test taker?" You mean, you're stupid. Oh, you struggle with that part where we find out what you know? Oh. No, no, I can totally relate. See, because I'm a brilliant painter, minus my God-awful brushstrokes. Oh, how the masterpiece is crystal up here[points to head], but once paint hits canvas, I develop Parkinson's. I apologize if there's a Parkinson's painter in the audience. I assume your best work is in the A. M. Probably gets a bit abstract by noon.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Love, God, People, Stupidity

“When he was dead I raised myself to my feet and I looked about me. Everything was still. A loneliness had come upon my soul.
There was darkness everywhere now but in the forest. And even here there were wisps of grey, as if evil crept in.
I lifted my head to the sky and I shook my fist. “Oh, I reject you. I reject your Heaven and I reject your Hell. Do as you wish with me, but know that your desires are petty and your ambitions have no meaning!””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.

Chapter 15 (p. 154)
The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)

Soul, Hell, Universe, Evil

“Fear is proverbially a poor adviser for human action; for a party it is destruction. Fear of the labor movement and socialism has caused the political downfall of the German bourgeoisie; and the days of the Social Democracy are numbered as soon as the cry of fear finds a response in us. We should not challenge, but we should not sound the alarm and be misled by fear into taking steps that do not accord with the principles, the nature and the honor of our party. One does not disarm an enemy through timidity and gentleness; one simply emboldens him. Not that we should seek to run our heads through a wall. We wish to be and must be “practical.””

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Fear, Democracy, Nature, Cry

“With bowed head and bended knee the poor learned to receive from the rich what was only their due, had they but known it. Years of poverty had ground the spirit of independence right out of them; these wives and mothers were tamed by poverty, they were cowed by it, as their parents had been before them in many cases, and the spirit of servitude was bred in their very bones. And the worst of it was the mischief did not stop at the women—it never does. They set an example of spiritless submission, which their children were only too inclined to follow. Follow it too many of them did, and they and their children are reaping the consequences and paying the price of it today.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), p. 18

Women, Children, Parent, Learning

“Mrs. May knows that with her current, slim majority in Parliament, she is at the behest of the hard Brexiteers who could easily mount a coup against her, defying the party whip, and may be even worse, if she demurs from her short-lived mantra of “Brexit means Brexit”. And you don’t need to fall for it or worry about it either. Look at the mathematics of a parliamentary election, before you head down into the comments and start screaming, “But Corbyn doesn’t want ANY Brexit! She’s our only hope!” The fact is you’re going to end up with her anyway. There’s no chance Corbyn and this fantasy “coalition of chaos” comes to pass, given the situation up and down the country. It’s a magnificent, though somewhat predictable, piece of Tory electioneering. But that’s all it is.”

Raheem Kassam (1986) British journalist and politician

Brexit Voters Cannot Afford to Give Theresa May a Massive Majority as She Plans Compromise on Free Movement http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/17/kassam-theresa-may-preparing-screw-brexit-voters-hard-youre-still-voting/ (May 17, 2017)

Hope, Mathematics, Chance, Country

“I get up, go out, and everything is changed. The blood drains from my head, the noise of things bursting, merging, avoiding one another, assails me on all sides, my eyes search in vain for two things alike, each pinpoint of skin screams a different message, I drown in the spray of phenomena.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

Search, Change

“And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Death, Men, God

“FYI: The Summer of Gay has been extended into the Year of the Queer. Another heads up: Mad Vow Disease, once limited to wholesome, unimpeachable gay couples earnestly seeking to take on the rights and responsibilities of marriage, has jumped the pen and crossed into the general population.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Marriage Mishegas http://progressive.org/?q=node/916 The Progressive, Unplugged

Marriage, Disease, Summer, Madness

“I paint from my head [about his move from rural Friesland to the city of Amsterdam]. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Gerrit Benner (1897–1981) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Gerrit Benner, in het Nederlands:) Schilderen doe ik uit mijn hoofd [over zijn verhuizing van landelijk Friesland naar de stad Amsterdam]. quoted by Hans Redeker (before 1967), in Gerrit Benner; Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1967; as cited by Susan van den Berg in 'Benner en Bregman', website 'de Moanne' http://www.demoanne.nl/benner-en-bregman/, 1 Sept. 2008, note xix 1950 - 1980

Painting

“They flattered the ambitious and all the ills came gradually to a head. Murder drowning everything was allowed. Intriguers monopolised all the offices. Good men could only mutter for if they spoke they were lost. Hatred vengeance everything was permitted and nobody dared open his mouth…”

Jacques-Louis Ménétra (1738–1812) glazier, tradesman

quoted in Warren Roberts (2000). Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Louis Prieur, Revolutionary. p. 321: About the French Revolution.

Men

“Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets Basili Bunting Poetry Archive, Durham University Library 190
I SUGGEST Advice to Young Poets

“It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book II, sec. 20.
Naturalis Historia

“She cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

“I'm all for Workers' Rights and stuff like that, that's fair enough. But imagine if you were working in a pub in some real rough-arse of inner-city North Dublin, …and you're built like, say, me. And you've got to go up to some bloke who looks like he's been lured down from a mountain with a hunk of meat, and he's just trying to enjoy his 'post-fight' cigarette, and you've got to tell him to put it out. Somewhere in the back of your head you're going to be thinking "Oh, thank you so much to the government for looking after my health."”

Ed Byrne (1972) Irish comedian

[pauses] Somewhere in the back of your head, where your nose is about to be.
On the 2004 Smoking Ban in the Republic of Ireland.
Pedantic & Whimsical (2006)

Health, Imagination, Mountain, Thinking

“Am I God? / I have accumulated so many great things in me! / My head aches to the point of bursting. / It has to hold an overview of power. / May you want (are you worthy of it?) / that it be born to you.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1905), # 690, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

God

“When has the world seen a phenomenon like this? — a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 56.

Life, Youth, Age, World

“If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care so long as they sang without dissonance.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 12.

Singing

Quotes about head page 25

Quotes about head
page 25