Quotes about head
page 29

“There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Guardian [UK] (28 July 1989)

“[I believe in Oliver Cromwell] because he was a great fighting Dissenter. He was perhaps the first statesman to recognize that as soon as the Government became a democracy the Churches became directly responsible for any misgovernment. His great idea was to make Christ's law the law of the land, and any obstacle to this he ruthlessly swept away. How he would have dealt with Romish practices now! He said to the priest who babbled his Paternosters in Peterborough Cathedral, "Leave off your fooling and come down, sir." There was the man for the Ritualists (cheers)— worth a wagon-load of Bishops. How he would have dealt with the House of Lords! From the House of Commons he would have removed many a bauble, and he would have shaken his head and said, "The Lord deliver us from Joseph Chamberlain."”

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

Speech to the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches at the City Temple, London (25 April 1899) for the 300th anniversary of Oliver Cromwell's birth, quoted in The Times (26 April 1899), p. 12.
Backbench MP

Law, Fools, Democracy, Idea

“There must be opportunities for judgment to mature. When, therefore, you increase your business to a very great extent, and the multitude of problems increase with its growth, you will find, in the first place, that the man at the head has a diminishing knowledge of the facts and, in the second place, a diminishing opportunity of exercising a careful judgment upon them.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Testimony before the United States Senate, Committee On Interstate Commerce (December 14, 1911).
Extra-judicial writings

Exercises, Business, Knowledge, Problem

“We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in V karǐni zdiǐsnenoǐ mriǐ (1979) by IE IU Kastelli, p. 54

Women, War, Courage, Time

“The same critics who spend hundreds of pages discussing various peculiarities of the author's supposed nature often devote none to that much more significant person, the reader for whom he wrote. […] It is a failure that disqualifies a great deal of head-scratching and hypothesizing. It amounts to saying that the letter is more important than its recipient, the signal more important than the changing image created from it, the bait more important than the fish.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Endangered Species (1989), Introduction
Nonfiction

Failure, Nature, Fish, Change

“After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from his favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left-back. I would love him to save me a place in his team - George Best that is, not God.”

Eric Cantona (1966) French actor and association football player

Quotes of the week, BBC News, 6 December 2005, 2007-04-18 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/4498894.stm,

Love, God, Training

“If I went to the pub lunch and cleared my head with a pint surely there would be an insight, a flash of inspiration. Surely. My money went over the bar. The pint came back. Nothing else.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Money

“When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched.
And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

This last line has often been paraphrased: "You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them."
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer (1966)

Happiness, Dogs, Dreams, Sense

“I don't like to play above or below people's heads. Basically, I just like to get up in front of a crowd and rip it up.”

Angus Young (1955) Scottish Australian guitarist

Interview with NME magazine in October 1976

People

“Nefertiti is like Athena born from the brow of Zeus, a head-heavy armored goddess. She is beautiful but desexed.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 71

Beauty

“When I was a little boy and played Liebestraum, my father used to hit me on the head with a newspaper every time I slopped the cadenza... I hate Liebestraum.”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

From the obit in The Independent.
Quotations from Borge's performances

Hate, Boy, Time

“You better beware, my friends all told me
When they saw that I was falling for you.
You better beware they told me that girl ain't gonna be true.
She'll have you walking with your head in the air,
Have you thinking that she really, really care.
Then-a, then she'll let you down, she'll really let you down.
She's a girl with no understanding.
And when she's getting tired of you hanging around,
She'll let you drop and say… have a happy landing”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

happy landing
Happy Landing, written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White (1962)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Happiness, Girl, Understanding, Thinking

“The generally accepted computation is that 2½ acres of land are required to provide a minimum adequate diet for each person, by Western standards anyhow. On a vegetarian diet it has been estimated that 1½ acres per head may provide enough. The reason for this difference is that animals grazed for meat-eating purposes require about 15 times more land than is necessary to raise an equivalent amount of nutrition in the form of grains, vegetables and fruit for human consumption. This means that India, on a vegetarian diet, is living far more wisely within its own land resources than are the meat-eating peoples.”

Richard Gregg (social philosopher)

Which Way Lies Hope? An Examination of Capitalism, Communism, Socialism and Gandhiji's Programme (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1952), p. 8 https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.54786/2015.54786.Which-Way-Lies-Hope#page/n15/mode/2up.

People, Time, Animals, Personality

“A chance remark by Ardini, an Italian master carver whom I met there [in Rome], that 'marble changes colour under different people's hands' made me decide immediately that it was not dominance which one had to attain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all greater co-ordination between head and hand. This thought has recurred again and again ever since - and has developed my greatest interests; the reason why people both move differently and stand differently in direct response to changed surroundings; the unconscious grouping of people when they are working together, producing a spatial movement which approximates to the structure of spirals in shells or rhythms in crystal structure; the meaning of the spaces between forms, or the shape of the displacement of forms in space, which in themselves have a most precise significance. All these responses spring from a factual and tactile approach to the object.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, (from Chapter 1: The excitement of discovering the nature of carving, 1903-1930), with an introduction by Herbert Read, London, 1952
1947 - 1960

People, Spring, Understanding, Change

“Thanks to the plan and clear vision, we managed to bring this people from dictatorship into democracy, without any bloodshed. Thanks to the plan and firm vision, we may show this country a way out form the biggest economic misery ever suffered by a European county, and into economic prosperity. But the vision is vital at all times. You should always ask yourself where you are heading to. Not only whether I am running fast, or spending energy, but whether I know which the goal I want to achieve is.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

From Zoran Djindjic's speech at Democratic Party's Assembly, 04.10.2001.

People, Way, Democracy, Suffering

“You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Letter to Monica Jones, 22 October 1967

Life, Training

“Convinced republican that I am, and foe of the prince who talks to plants and wants to be crowned "head of all faiths" as well as the etiolated Church of England, I find myself pierced by a pang of sympathy. Not much of a life, is it, growing old and stale with no real job except waiting for the news of Mummy's death? Some British people claim actually to "love" their rather dumpy Hanoverian ruling house. This love takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Christopher Hitchens, Beware the In-Laws: Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this?, Slate, April. 18, 2011
About

Love, Life, Death, People

“Anyone who says human nature can’t be changed is out of his head. To make it stick, he’s got to define human nature—and he can’t.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

The Warriors (p. 142)
Short fiction, Tales of Known Space (1975)

Nature, Change

“Wisdom lies in thinking. The spear-head of thinking is rationalism”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quoted in Collected works of Thanthai Periyar E.V. Ramasami [sic http://books.google.co.in/books?id=edx4AAAAIAAJ, Volumes 1-11], p. 49. Rationalism

Wisdom, Thinking

“When you strike a blow, do not let your mind dally on it, not concerning yourself with whether or not it is a telling blow; you should strike again and again, over and over, even four or five times. The thing is not to let your opponent even raise his head.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

A Hereditary Book on the Art of War (1632)

Time

“Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Instigations of Ezra Pound (1920), p. 109

Learning

“All of us here are servants of the reading public. I am the head of the servants and I must show that I know better than any of the servants where the materials are found. I want to show that our service here is efficient and that we are really working to serve.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As quoted in Filipinos in History, Vol. 2 (1989) by National Historical Institute of the Philippines.
ULOL

Reading

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Women, Men, Art, Music

“When you’re so lonely lying in bed,
Night’s closed it’s eyes but you can’t rest your head.
Everyone’s sleeping all through the house,
You wish you could dream but forgot to somehow.

Sing this lullaby to yourself.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Lullaby.
Song lyrics, Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (2006)

Dreams, Lying, Sleep, Singing

““I don’t trust you.”
“Of course you don’t. I know I wouldn’t. And I’m not asking you to. I’m not putting you in a situation in which your trust of me is even remotely relevant. I’m just pointing a gun to your head and giving you orders.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 26 (p. 424).

“If you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs, it's just possible that you haven't grasped the situation.”

Jean Kerr book Please Don't Eat the Daisies

"Introduction"
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957)

“Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Pain, People, Water, Chance

“I gave a LOT of unnecessary head. And I know that guys are going to argue with me about this. "Oh, Margaret, there's no such thing as unnecessary head! All head is necessary! All head is wanted and needed in the world. I run a home for unnecessary head."”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

World, Guy, Home

“It's all going to go sometime. You can't take it with you. I'm not saying you should wake up every day with sunshine streaming out of your head. If I could get one day a month, I would be very grateful. But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I'm just figuring certain things out. It's taken me a while, and some things I could probably do without knowing.”

Mark Wahlberg (1971) American actor, television producer and rap musician

Chris Heath, The making of Mark, The Observer, Sunday 27 February 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/feb/27/1

“What I did was mild compared to what Durocher did to Conlan. I don't see how what I did can be called more serious than the Durocher incident. I had good reason to lose my head. That was the second time they call me out on a play I thought I had beat. That's enough to make anybody mad.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Fined, Suspended: Clemente Hit Hard By Giles" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (June 8, 1963), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1963</big>

Time, Madness

“Analogously to Arnulf Rainer′s ‘overpaintings’, and extending thse with my own actionistic resources, the artist′s head should be in the picture, should become one with the picture, and disappear in it.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 12 (Gunter Brus inDie Schastrommel.Organ der österreichischen Exilregierung.Bolzano:ed. Gunter Brus,June 1972,no.8a, p. 57.)

“It has been an unrelenting, but, I have to accept, at least partly successful campaign to persuade Britain that Europe is a conspiracy aimed at us, rather than a partnership designed for us and others to pursue our national interest properly in a modern, interdependent world. It is right to confront this campaign head on. Provided that the treaty embodies the essential British positions, we shall agree to it as a Government. Once agreed – either at the June Council, which is our preference, or subsequently – Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it. Then, let the people have the final say.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040420/debtext/40420-06.htm#40420-06_spmin0, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 420, col. 157. House of Commons Statement on the publication White Paper on Europe, 20 April 2004. 2000s

People, World, Success, Partnership

“You’re falling all over me I’m losing myself in your mystery
I’m afraid of loving you, I’m afraid of losing me
I’m over my head and I’m seeing red
But I’m waiting right here for you in my bed”

Michelle Lambert (1985) American singer-songwriter and violinist

"I'm Just a Girl" (2015)

Love, Waiting

“I have frozen in the mountains in rain and in hail – and slept out under the stars – and cooked and burned on the desert so that riding through Kansas on the train when everyone is wilting about me seems nothing at all for heat – my nose has peeled and all my bones have been sore from riding – I drove with friends through Arizona – Utah – Colorado – New Mexico till the thought of a wheel under me makes me want to hold my head.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Source: 1920s, Letter to Ettie Stettheimer' (August 1929), pp. 226-227

Mountain, Star, Training, Cooking

“If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate.
Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring.
This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Ho Ho Ho, Merry Imus!" (11 April 2007).
2007

Women, Men, Flowers, Kiss

“Click. The spare camera was now focussed and working. The lead mare—Barb Nose's—saw the drop. She cut her stride and wheeled and ran along the dangerous edge. Barb Nose ran in the vanguard, protecting the rear, driving the foals ahead of him. Blaze Face had long since cut and run, taking his beaten stallion flesh off to be nursed, to wait for another day, another elder to challenge. The other mares expertly and instinctively followed the leader as she rimmed the mesa, heading for the foothills of the El Gatos. One foal, too, made the cut, on stick-like legs, frightened but blindly following. The second foal had truly been blinded by panic. He strode to the drop-off and never stopped. He was a wild horse, and he had to run, and now he would run free forever. Plunging headlong over the drop, body whirling, his legs still flailing, as he fell through the desert air and past the serrated rock walls of the mesa, he knew nothing of time. He knew nothing of the eons that had gone before him, building this mesa of bluff and sandstone and archean rock. He fell through layers of time, to timelessness, a living thing for so little time. Once a living work of art, now a broken artifact. One foal. Dead. Murdered by man. Murdered by time. The drumbeat of the earth was lessened by one horse's tiny hooves. And all of us were lessened by this new silence. Click.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild, pp. 14-15
Other Topics

Art, Silence, Time, Waiting

“I was in a bar a few nights ago, moving from stool to stool, trying to get lucky… But there was no gum under any of them. And I hear giggling behind me. At first I don't mind, but the giggling continues… Finally, I thought "What's so amusing?" I turn around, and these two guys, for the last, oh, half hour or so, have been throwing darts into my head. It's a good thing I heard them! I said, "Look, you bums," 'cause I was angry now, "As soon as this game is over, hit the road!"”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

But as I left that bar, one thing stuck in my mind...
E=MO² (1985)

Guy, Game, Night

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Women, Men, War, Children

“It was getting rather alarming. I realised one day that in twenty four hours I had slept with three different men. And one morning I was in bed with somebody while over his head I talked on the telephone with somebody else…I did not feel promiscuous. Maybe no-one does. And maybe more girls sleep with more men than you would ever think to look at them.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938 (1992), Ch. 2

Men, Feeling, Girl, Thinking

“When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won, in the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the entire factory and industrial proletariat. This party had won that position even before the revolution of 1905. It is the party that was at the head of the workers in 1905 and which since then — even at the time of the reaction after 1905 when the working-class movement was rehabilitated with such difficulty under the Stolypin Duma — merged with the working class and it alone could lead that class to a profound, fundamental change in the old society.”

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

“Speech to the First All-Russia Congress of Workers in Education and Socialist Culture” (30 July 1919) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/05.htm Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 535. 1910s

Change, Time

“I have never had any desire to play a maid, a liquor store owner kicking a black person out of my store, a rude and harried waitress, a worldly-wise acupuncturist, an early-rising, loose black cotton pants wearing elderly woman practicing tai chi in the park, a manicurist, a prostitute, a student in an English as a Second Language course, a purveyor of exotic mushrooms and ginseng, an exchange student, a newscaster covering gang warfare in Chinatown, a woman drowning my newborn baby in a bowl, a daughter crying with my mom over our constant battle between East and West yet finally coming together over a particularly intense game of mahjong…a young girl being raped and killed by GIs in the Killing Fields, a woman balancing a basket of any kind on my head…committing suicide because my white lover did not come back to Japan after the war, or having him come back for me and fooling him successfully for years and years thinking I am a woman when really I'm a dude, as if my race castrates me so much this deception is completely feasible…”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, PIGEONHOLING PEOPLE

War, Fools, Girl, Game

“In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Cross of Snow http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/19251 (1879).

Light, Night, Dead

“The true love wherewith God loves other spirits is not the outpouring upon them of graces which are the unearned gift of his miraculous power; it is the love, on the contrary, which holds the individuality, the personal initiative, of its object sacred. As the true father desires that the son who, after him, is to be the head of the family shall have a method and policy of his own, by which the honours of the line shall be increased by new contributions, so he who is the Father of Spirits will have his image brought forth in every one of his offspring by the thought and conviction of each soul itself.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.257

Love, God, Family, Soul

“I love you more than the world can contain
in its lonely and ramshackle head.”

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

"John My Beloved"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Love, World

“If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100 … you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods… that's where we're headed.”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

"Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow" in The Wall Street Journal (9 March 2012) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239852155894014.html

God

“This book — amber-clear, cool and with a good head — deserves a thoughtful swig even from people who never drink.”

John Wain (1925–1994) British writer

As given in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) p. 301

People, Books, Drink

“For towards the close of my father’s reign,… availing himself of the influence which by some means or other he had acquired, he [Abul Fazzel] so wrought upon the mind of his master [that is, Akbar], as to instil into him the belief that the seal and asylum of prophecy, to whom the devotion of a thousand lives such as mine would be a sacrifice too inadequate to speak of, was no more to be thought of than as an Arab of singular eloquence, and that the sacred inspirations recorded in the Koran were nothing else but fabrications invented by the ever-blessed Mahommed…. Actuated by these reasons it was that I employed the man who killed Abul Fazzel and brought his head to me, and for this it was that I incurred my father’s deep displeasure.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir, written by himself; and translated from a Persian manuscript, by Major David Price (Oriental Translation Committee, 1829), Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

“It's a funny thing this celebrity. If you don't wave back you're a miserable bugger, if you do wave back you're a big-headed bugger. I don't know.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

“As I understand it, George Peppard later became a nice guy, a gentleman, but when we worked together back then, he was pretentious, egotistical, a brat, and an asshole—and that’s just for starters! He pretended he was seven years younger than he was; he even claimed to be a bachelor and denied he was married—in front of me (I knew better), he denied their existence. The role of Jonas Cord in The Carpetbaggers really went to his big head. He acquired delusions of grandeur—thought he was God’s gift to women and the movies! His attitude towards me was very bizarre—he acted as though we’d never met! Or that I had a husband!”

Carroll Baker (1931) American actress

On co-star George Peppard, interview http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/carrollbaker_interview.shtml with Mike Fitzgerald, Western Clippings

Women, God, Guy, Understanding

“When discussing a Florida woman denied a drivers license for refusing to remove her Burka and head covering- You know, I think they should give her the license, but then, it should only be good for flying carpets.”

Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian

Just For Laughs

Thinking, Flying

“All these threatening storms, which, like impregnate Clouds, hover o'er our heads, will (when they once are grasp'd but by the eye of reason) melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Physician, Act II, sc. i
The Rehearsal (1671)

People

“…So I wasn't death to this guy, I was just a one-way ticket home. Now I don't know if you've ever stuck a.38 in somebody's navel, but if they look at you and say "Praise the Lord," I guarantee you one thing, it'll separate your head from your shoulders!”

Mike Warnke (1946) Evangelical Christian minister

Alive (album) (1975)

Death, Way, Guy, Home

“Through most of colonial history, inhabitants of the 13 colonies were loyal subjects of the British crown — resourceful, dedicated and as the Third Duchess of Kent… was fond of saying, "Some tea-drinkin' motherfuckahs." In fact, whenever the subject of the New World was mentioned, the Duchess could always be counted on for a wistful head-shake and a hearty "Motherfuckahs love that motherfuckin' tea."”

Jon Stewart book America

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004)

Love, World, History, Tea

“Can you let your son's body become the same temperature as your son's head before you turn this into a political campaign against the president? Could you do that?”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2004-05-14
Comment on Michael Berg, the father of murdered American businessman Nicholas Berg
2000s

“Eyes—the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. A blind person is like a city abandoned by the authorities. On sad days they cry. In these carefree times they weep only from tender emotions.”

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

A Brief Human Anatomy (1883)

Sadness, Time, Personality, Cry

“Usual messages from the heads of the establishment. The Queen from Windsor, the Pope from Rome: Pilate and Caiaphas celebrating the birth of Christ.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Sunday 25 December 1966 (p. 38)
The Orton Diaries (1986)

Birth, Christ

“Oh I haven't got a clue what to do with you,
Jesus all the things my head is going through.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

How Peculiar
Escapology (2002)

“The word addiction is used far too liberally in our society and I shy away from it. If I have any addiction, it would be nicotine. I would say alcohol is more of a compulsive habit for me. I have used different narcotics for roughly 20 years and I have always used them socially, sporadically and usually sparingly. I use cocaine occasionally and sometimes medicinally - before a third show Saturday, a bump of coke can make the difference between a strong performance and just phoning it in - and I've never developed any type of habit, never craved it the next day. I will use hallucinogens a few times a year as well, always in a safe environment. So far as an "early grave," I'm more concerned with quality of life. No sense in having a mint condition classic car if you're afraid to take it out of the garage. I look as sadly at people awash in hand-sanitizer and surgical masks in elevators as they might see me when I'm pouring booze down my head on stage.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

On his drug use. Doug Stanhope interview http://markprindle.com/stanhope-i.htm, MarkPrindle.com, 2007 Miscellaneous

Life, People, Alcohol, Cars

“Bob Hope: Put your head back through there, or I'll start handing out baseballs to the audience.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Hope

“In a paper belonging to the Spectator there is a short description of a country wake. "I found," says the author, "a ring of cudgel-players, who were breaking one another's heads in order to make some impression on their mistresses' hearts."…to this he adds another curious pastime, as a kind of Christmas gambol, which he had seen also; that is, a yawning match for a Cheshire cheese; the sport began about midnight, when the whole company were disposed to be drowsy; and he that yawned the widest, and at the same time most naturally, so as to produce the greatest number of yawns from the spectators, obtained the cheese.”

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

pg. 369
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Country wakes

Nature, Sport, Time, Heart

“It was and still is fundamental: to begin the work with the same tools with which it will be ended, without making a preliminary drawing. on the wood, stone, or metal. Sketches and drawings done in advance clarify the intention, and with it ready in the head, the requisite tool realizes the idea.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

Buchheim, Künstlergemeinschaft Brücke, p. 304; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 54

Idea, Drawing

“Out on bail work on the scale, put some change on your head, boy you on sale”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Tunechi's back
Official Mix tapes, Sorry 4 the Wait (2011)

Boy, Change

“And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The image (shadow) being inverted depends on there being an aperture at the cross-over and the image (shadow) being distant. The explanation lies in the aperture.
The image (shadow): The light reaches the person shining like an arrow. The lowest [light] that reaches the person is the highest [in the image] and the highest [light] that reaches the person is the lowest [in the image]. The feet conceal the lowest light and therefore become the image (shadow) at the top. The head conceals the highest light and therefore becomes the image (shadow) at the bottom.”

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

Book 10: Exposition of Canon II; this is the earliest known description of the inverted image produced by a camera obscura,; as translated in by Ian Jonston in The Mozi (2010), p. 489

Light, Distant, Dependency, Personality

“"I have often wished in vain," said she, "for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it."
"That," replied I, "is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us."”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. VII : The Excursion; Helen and Gilbert

Life, Idea, Evil

“I had a hard time watching Wolf Creek. It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wolf-creek-2005 of Wolf Creek (23 December 2005) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Women, Wolf, Time

“Warning. It is usual to read into the law of large numbers things which it definitely does not imply. If Peter and Paul toss a perfect coin 10,000 times, it is customary to expect that Peter will be in the lead roughly half the time. This is not true. In a large number of different coin-tossing games it is reasonable to expect that any fixed moment heads will be in the lead in roughly half of all cases. But it is quiet likely that the player who ends at the winning side has been in the lead for practically the whole duration of the game. Thus, contrary to widespread belief, the time average for any individual game has nothing to do with the ensemble average at any given moment.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VI, The Binomial And The Poisson Distributions, p. 152-153.

Law, Game, Time, Reading

“On March 5, I will behead Rafael dos Anjos. I will drag his head through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, through a parade of people I'd imagine. It will become a national holiday also I would imagine.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

"UFC 197 press conference" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75xAdA3uVeY (January 2016), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC 2010s, 2016

People, Imagination, Holiday

“In my opinion a system of operations, to be efficient and successful, should be such as to give to the principal and responsible head of the running department a complete daily history of details in all their minutiae. Without such supervision, the procurement of a satisfactory annual statement must be regarded as extremely problematical. The fact that dividends are earned without such control, does not disprove the position, as in many cases the extraordinarily remunerative nature of an enterprise may ensure satisfactory returns under the most loose and inefficient management.
It may be proper here to remark, that in consequence of that want of adaptation before alluded to, we cannot avail ourselves to any great extent of the plan of organization of shorter lines in framing one for this, nor have we any precedent or experience upon which we can fully rely in doing so. Under these circumstances, it will scarcely be expected that we can at once adopt any plan of operations which will not require amendment and a reasonable time to prove its worth. A few general principles, however, may be regarded as settled and necessary in its formation, amongst which are:”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

History, Nature, Time, Success

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

Pleasure, Tear

“[Have you ever visited the factory farms? ] Well, I have seen them. I've seen the chicken ones, which are quite horrifying. And I have put my head in others. But the whole thing nauseates me more than I can tell you. To see meat produced in that way made it impossible for me to eat meat.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Interview with Rynn Berry

Way

“I met Beckett at my brother’s [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head… This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

About his contact with Beckett in Paris, before and during World War 2.
1970's
Source: article "Schilder Bram van Velde in Dordrecht," in: NRC Handelsblad by Paul Groot, 1979 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

Life, Friendship, War, Way

“This Sunday, for some reason, I had not gone to Church. All the rest of the house-party had gone and there was no one in the house but myself and the servants. I was sitting in the drawing-room reading. The door opened and in walked a tall man dressed in European clothes (very well cut, I remember) but with a turban on his head. He came in and sat down beside me. I was so petrified at the sight of the turban that I could not make a sound or ask what he was doing there. Then he started to talk. He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail my changing my disposition very considerably; I would have to give up being such an unpleasant little girl and must try and get some measure of self-control. My future usefulness to Him and to the world was dependent upon how I handled myself and the changes I could manage to make. He said that if I could achieve real self-control I could then be trusted and that I would travel all over the world and visit many countries, "doing your Master's work all the time." Those words have rung in my ears ever since. He emphasised that it all depended upon me…”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 2

World, Travel, Girl, Change

“The New World Order (NWO) folks have already said they will make food the weapon in the next war. I think they will offer food IF you have a microchip and submit to their system. Those who refuse will have their head cut off”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Revelation 13:16; 20:4
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 129

War, World, Food, Thinking

“A people whom Providence hath cast together into one island or country are in effect one great body politic, consisting of head and members, in imitation of the body natural, as is excellently set forth in the statute of appeals, made 24 H. 8, c. 12, which stiles the King the supreme head, and the people a body politic (these are the very words), compact of all sorts and degrees of men, divided into spirituality and temporality. And this body never dies.”

Robert Atkyns (judge) (1621–1710) Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Lords

11 How. St. Tr. 1204.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

Men, People, Nature, Country

“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter IX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Pleasure, Youth, Girl, Freedom

“Sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I'm shot.
Sometimes I don't know how much more I've got.
Maybe I'm headed over the hill
Maybe I've set myself up for the kill.
Tell me how much do you think you can take
Until the heart in you is starting to break?
Sometimes it feels like it will.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

I Go to Extremes.
Song lyrics, Storm Front (1989)

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“Clearer and nearer still,' cried the Rat joyously. 'Now you must surely hear it! Ah — at last — I see you do!'
Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade's cheeks, and bowed his head and understood.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 7

Tear

“It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist

As quoted by William Hughes, Annual Editions: Western Civilization (1997) p. 64; about the beheading of his friend Antoine Lavoisier.

“We know that sacrifices lie before us and that we must pay a price for the heroic act of being a vanguard nation. We leaders know that we must pay a price for the right to say that we are at the head of a people, which is at the head of the Americas. Each and every one of us must pay his exact quota of sacrifice, conscious that he will get his reward in the satisfaction of fulfilling a duty, conscious that he will advance with all toward the image of the new man dimly visible on the horizon.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

People, Lie

“The Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and frankly, I would never want to see that repeated, maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet. … They're headed in that direction.”

Paul LePage (1948) American businessman, Republican Party politician, and the 74th Governor of Maine

As quoted by Seven Days. http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2012/07/maine-gov-paul-lepage-doubles-down-on-gestapo-comment-after-brock-fundraiser.html (July 12, 2012)

“If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus [always, everywhere, and by all], as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion.

Truth

“The head is borne towards the heavens and has two lights, as it were the sun and moon.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

As quoted by J. J. McEvoy, The philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (1982) p. 372.

Light, Sun

“Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking peguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dillemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

6/17 The Half Hour News Hour
The Buck Starts Here

War, People, World, Fear

“On the question of Israel, I talk about what I saw during his trip to Israel, how I saw his (Barack Obama) understanding of the relationship with Israel - he would describe it as a commitment of the head and heart. He looks at Israel and sees us as being two countries with common values. But he also looks at Israel and sees that whatever threatens Israel also happens to threaten the United States. So we have a [common] interest, because we end up facing the same threats.”

Dennis Ross (1948) American diplomat

Understanding, Question, Heart, Country

“Dhoni is a very smart man and intelligent captain and manages his resources perfectly. India is blessed to have someone as level-headed as him at the helm.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Shoaib Akhtar https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Intelligence

“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e. g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of — lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; — are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e. g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

New York 1907, p. 54, 55
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Men, God, People, Truth

“I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 206

Heart

“Remember what you are and who would deserve you. I hug you and kiss you on your hands and on the head. And I thank you and apologize for the very wonderful, hard five years that you spent with me. Your patience has a price inschaAllah. I am your prince and I will pick you up. Goodbye! Your man forever, Ziad Jarrah.”

Ziad Jarrah (1975–2001) September 11th hijacker

Letter to Aysel Şengün (2001)

Kiss, Patience

“If this property of complexity could somehow be transformed into visible brightness so that it would stand forth more clearly to our senses, the biological world would become a walking field of light compared to the physical world. The sun with its great eruptions would fade to a pale simplicity compared to a rose bush, an earth worm would be a beacon, a dog a city of light, and human beings would stand out like blazing suns of complexity, flashing bursts of meaning to each other through the dull night of the physical world between. We would hurt each other‘s eyes. Look at the haloed heads of your rare and complex companions. Is it not so?”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Cited in: Franklin Tugwell (1973) Search for alternatives: public policy and the study of the future. p.xv; cited by several times by Tony Buzan in 1978, 1991, 2006; and in multiple sources.
Source: The step to man, 1966, p.151

World, Dogs, Sense, Light

“I can't do it, I can't do it. I simply can't help turning a deaf ear to it and banging my head against the wall - yes - and all for an art that escapes me and will never know all the trouble I have taken on its behalf.”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) French painter

Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 80 - c. 1882-1883

Art, Help

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear.”

Maurice Jarre (1924–2009) French composer

This quote was actually crafted by University College Dublin student Shane Fitzgerald. Shortly after Jarre's death, Fitzgerald uploaded https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maurice_Jarre&type=revision&diff=280558491&oldid=280527998 the false quote to Wikipedia to test "how our globalised, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news," according to the Associated Press. "The sociology major's made-up quote…flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper websites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first. A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an email and the corrections began." The Guardian and The Herald "are among the only publications to make a public mea culpa," the Associated Press continues. See " Student hoaxes world's media with fake Wiki quote http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/student-hoaxes-worlds-media-with-fake-wiki-quote/2009/05/12/1241893953955.html," The Sydney Morning Herald (12 May 2009). Misattributed

Life, Music

“Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking! … I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Going on a Journey" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Feeling, Thinking, Silence, Heart

“I regretted I was not the head of a clan; however, though not possessed of such an hereditary advantage, I would always endeavour to make my tenants follow me.”

James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish lawyer, diarist and author

(31 August 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

“I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

Life, Books, Home, History

“In the center sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her son in her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of all men, and all women; including if you please, your homage and mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the child, who looks directly forward, repeating the mother's attitude, and raises his right hand to bless, while his left rests on the orb of empire. She and her child are one.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Women, Men, Question, Support

“Lincoln seemed to me to be familiar with the name, character, and reputation of every officer of rank in the army and navy, and appeared to understand them better than some whose business it was to do so; he had many a good story to tell of nearly all, and if he could have lived to write the anecdotes of the war, I am sure he would have furnished the most readable book of the century. To me he was one of the most interesting men I ever met; he had an originality about him which was peculiarly his own, and one felt, when with him, as if he could confide his dearest secret to him with absolute security against its betrayal. There, it might be said, was 'God's noblest work an honest man,' and such he was, all through. I have not a particle of the bump of veneration on my head, but I saw more to admire in this man, more to reverence, than I had believed possible; he had a load to bear that few men could carry, yet he traveled on with it, foot-sore and weary, but without complaint; rather; on the contrary, cheering those who would faint on the roadside. He was not a demonstrative man, so no one will ever know, amid all the trials he underwent, how much he had to contend with, and how often he was called upon to sacrifice his own opinions to those of others, who, he felt, did not know as much about matters at issue as he did himself. When he did surrender, it was always with a pleasant manner, winding up with a characteristic story.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 283

Men, God, War, Secret

“I am putting old heads on your young shoulders," Miss Brodie had told them at that time, "and all my pupils are the crème de la crème.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), P. 5

Time

“The Government's policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town…Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands. Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/feb/22/care-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (22 February 1984). 1980s

People, Health, Home, Support

“[He] would know many nights on which he would succumb to women whom a combination of over-eagerness and alcohol would make him think desirable, only to clutch his head in the morning on discovering that he had got into bed with some vast relative of Oliver Hardy's or with some flighty Bela Lugosi look-alike.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

Le quedaban por conocer muchas noches en las que sucumbiría a mujeres que su avidez y el alcohol le harían juzgar deseables, para llevarse a la mañana siguiente las manos a la cabeza al descubrir que se había metido en la cama con descomedidas parientes de Oliver Hardy o con casquivanas émulas de Bela Lugosi.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 1. Fiebre y lanza [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear] (2002), p. 59

Women, Alcohol, Thinking, Night

Quotes about head page 29

Quotes about head
page 29