Quotes about head
page 30

“Man's own form in space – his body – was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery – because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Willem de Kooning, MOMA Bull, pp. 7,6; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 135.
1980's

Home, Night

“Today, many of us picked up our newspapers, and we were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees, with their hands on their heads. In that State of the Union, President Obama didn't so much as mention the 10 sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama's preparing to send $100 billion or more to the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I'll tell you, it was heartbreaking. But the good news is the next commander-in-chief is standing on this stage. And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Sixth Republican Presidential Debate http://time.com/4182096/republican-debate-charleston-transcript-full-text/ (January 14, 2016) 2010s

Men, Feeling, Fight

“Katie Couric: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign-policy experience. What did you mean by that?Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada. It, it's funny that a comment like that was — kind of made to — cari— I don't know. You know. Reporters —Couric: Mocked?Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.Couric: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.Palin: Well, it certainly does because our— our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia—Couric: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?Palin: We have trade missions back and forth. We— we do— it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where— where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is— from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to— to our state.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview with Katie Couric http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/25/eveningnews/main4479062.shtml, CBS Evening News () [Christine Lagorio, New Sarah Palin Clip: Keeping An Eye On Putin, http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/25/couricandco/entry4478088.shtml, Couric & Co., CBS News, September 25, 2008, 2008-09-25] Referring to ABC News interview with Charlie Gibson (see above). 2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Parting, Country

“Schnabel said that Beethoven's late piano sonatas are music better than could be played. Larkin's best poems are poetry better than can be said, but sayability they sumptuously offer. Larkin demands to be read aloud. His big, intricately formed stanzas, often bridging from one to the next, defeat the single breath but always invite it. As you read, the ideal human voice speaks in your head. It isn't his: as his gramophone records prove, he sounded like someone who expects to be interrupted. It isn't yours, either. It's ours.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Philip Larkin: Somewhere becoming rain'
Essays and reviews, The Dreaming Swimmer (1993)

Music, Reading

“I was in a sushi bar over a year ago, and it was just one of those moments that it dawned on me — it hit me over the head — how could I just discriminate between a cow [and] a fish? Both had a consciousness, and what right did I have to discriminate between the two?”

Carré Otis (1968) American actress and model

About her vegetarianism, launching PETA's campaign " Try to Relate to Who’s on Your Plate https://www.peta.org/media/psa/type/print/?category_name=vegan#foobox-1/70/otis_try_to_relate.jpg?20151027075109". Quoted in Tales from the Left Coast: True Stories of Hollywood Stars and Their Outrageous Politics by Hirsen James (Crown Publishing Group, 2003), p. 139 https://books.google.it/books?id=7Q3QE-n8q4UC&pg=PA139.

Fish

“It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Learning

“He falsely asserted that Jews hated Christians so much that they never met them without ejaculating curses on their heads, thus pretending that the bigotry and intolerance of the Jews was equal to those qualities inherent in the breasts of Dominican friars.”

Elias Hiam Lindo

Of Dominican friar Nicholas de Valencia
The Jews of Spain and Portugal (1848) pp57-8

Hate, Falseness

“Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–1866) Scottish writer

Journal entry (16 July 1858).

Sense, Parting

“Mr. Burke talked in very high terms of Dr. Adam Smith; praised the clearness and depth of his understanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast accession that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from these exertions, and described his heart as being equally good with his head and his manners as peculiarly pleasing. Mr. Smith, he said, told him, after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man, who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke. Volume II (London: G. Cawthorn, 1800), pp. 428-9
Undated

Communication, Literature, Understanding, Learning

“He knelt him down on the new-raised mound,
His face was bowed on the cold damp ground,
He raised his head, his tears were done,
The father had prayed o'er his only son!”

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

The Soldier's Funeral from The London Literary Gazette (16th November 1822)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Tear

“On the other hand, many Muslim historians of medieval India have left for posterity some very detailed, many a time day-to-day, accounts of what happened during the endless encounters between Hindus and Muslims. The dominant theme in these accounts is of mu’mins (Muslims) martyred; of kãfirs (Hindus infidels) despatched to hell; of cities and citadels sacked; of citizens massacred; of Brahmins killed or forced to eat beef; of temples razed to the ground and mosques raised on their sites; of idols broken and their pieces taken to imperial headquarters for being trodden underfoot by the faithful on the steps of the main mosque; of booty captured and carried away on elephants, camels, horses, bullock carts, on the backs of sheep and goats, and even on the heads of Hindu prisoners of war; of beautiful Hindu maidens presented to the sultans and distributed among Muslim generals and nobles; of Hindu men, women and children sold into slavery in markets all over the Islamic world; and of kãfirs converted to the true faith at the point of the sword. The Muslim historians treat every war waged against the Hindus as a jihãd as enjoined by the Prophet and the Pious Caliphs.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women, Men, War, Children

“In the summer of 2011, just after I'd finished my second year of university, I was diagnosed with a relatively rare illness called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS. It's a very strange illness and even now my closest family and friends can't quite get their heads around it. The syndrome effectively breaks down your autonomic nervous system: the system that controls everything that is meant to happen automatically in the body—your heartbeat, digestion, circulation, immune system etc. As you can imagine this had a pretty devastating effect on my life—I literally couldn't walk down the street, I slept for sixteen hours a day, was in chronic pain, had blackouts, never-ending heart palpitations, unbearable stomach issues, constant headaches and the list goes on. It was anything but fun and I was bedridden 95 percent of the time.”

Ella Woodward (1991) British blogger

Deliciously Ella (2015)

Life, Pain, Family, Imagination

“"Oh indeed!" exclaimed the King. Then he turned to his servants and said: "Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs."”

L. Frank Baum book The Emerald City of Oz

The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Ch. 4 : How The Nome King Planned Revenge
Later Oz novels

Dogs

“The war with the Soviet Union began in June 1941, I think. And I believe it was two months later, or maybe three, that Heydrich sent for me. I reported. He said to me: "The Führer has ordered physical extermination." These were his words. And as though wanting to test their effect on me, he made a long pause, which was not at all his way. I can still remember that. In the first moment, I didn't grasp the implications, because he chose his words so carefully. But then I understood. I didn't say anything, what could I say? Because I'd never thought of a … of such a thing, of that sort of violent solution. … Anyway, Heydrich said: "Go and see Globocnik, the Führer has already given him instructions. Take a look and see how he's getting on with his program. I believe he's using Russian anti-tank trenches for exterminating the Jews." As ordered, I went to Lublin, located the headquarters of SS and Police Commander Globocnik, and reported to the Gruppenführer. I told him Heydrich had sent me, because the Führer had ordered the physical extermination of the Jews. … Globocnik sent for a certain Sturmbannführer Höfle, who must have been a member of his staff. We went from Lublin to, I don't remember what the place was called, I get them mixed up, I couldn't say if it was Treblinka or some other place. There were patches of woods, sort of, and the road passed through — a Polish highway. On the right side of the road there was an ordinary house, that's where the men who worked there lived. A captain of the Ordnungspolizei welcomed us. A few workmen were still there. The captain, which surprised me, had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, somehow he seemed to have joined in the work. They were building little wooden shacks, two, maybe three of them; they looked like two- or three-room cottages. Höfle told the police captain to explain the installation to me. And then he started in. He had a, well, let's say, a vulgar, uncultivated voice. Maybe he drank. He spoke some dialect from the southwestern corner of Germany, and he told me how he had made everything airtight. It seems they were going to hook up a Russian submarine engine and pipe the exhaust into the houses and the Jews inside would be poisoned.
I was horrified. My nerves aren't strong enough … I can't listen to such things… such things, without their affecting me. Even today, if I see someone with a deep cut, I have to look away. I could never have been a doctor. I still remember how I visualized the scene and began to tremble, as if I'd been through something, some terrible experience. The kind of thing that happens sometimes and afterwards you start to shake. Then I went to Berlin and reported to the head of the Security Police.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Source: Eichmann Interrogated (1983), p. 75 - 76.

Men, War, Way, Thinking

“She twirls herself, turns round, twirls once more,
posing, smiling, laughing, beckoning airily,
drifts off, only to turn back beckoning, offering,
repulsing, coolly firm, and then turns away,
so that you think, well, it’s hopeless, when she glances back
lightly, sidelong, her eyes opening, pupils wide,
and wider yet, and she’s laughing at you, at you alone,
laughing gaily, and you freeze, astonished,
your throat constricting, as she hovers lovely
and out of reach, out of reach and lovely,
smiling at you, her head inclined aside,
her hair brushing one cheek, there she is and yet not,
unbelievable and simply gorgeous, and your heart tightens
as she stands there so lovely, and out of reach.”

András Petőcz (1959) Hungarian writer

EUROPE, METAPHORICALLY http://www.c3.hu/~mediumar/PETVERS1.HTM (1990). András Petőcz: In Praise of the Sea (1999, ISBN 963 9101 51 6). Poems

Love, Smile, Thinking, Heart

“I came and knelt at the king's feet, and when he put the crown on my head, I felt that he had just honoured all the women of Iran. Only four years earlier we had been in the same category of the mentally handicapped: we did not even have the basic right of choosing our representatives. The crown wiped out centuries of humiliation; more surely than any law, it solemnly affirmed the equality of men and women.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Page 157
Publications, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (2004)

Women, Men, Law

“My girl has gone, and said goodbye.
Don't you cry, hold your head up high.
Don't give up, give love one more try,
'Cause there's a right girl for every guy.”

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

My Girl Has Gone, written by Smokey Robinson, Ronald White, Pete Moore, and Marvin Tarplin (1965)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Love, Guy, Girl, Cry

“Years go by
Will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by
If I'm stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds
Raining in head
Years go by
Will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we're too easy Easy Easy”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Silent All These Years".
Songs

Beauty, Understanding, Tear, Waiting

“So hopelessly incapable was I of understanding better folk that I did not even know how to keep a servile tongue in my head. In a flash there appeared before my mind the difference between the two worlds in which we lived, this woman and I; although I was staying under her roof we were such poles apart from one another that it was only with half justification possible to classify us together as human beings; we were both vertebrates, certainly, even mammals, but there all resemblance ended; any human society of which both of us were members was merely an empty phrase.</b”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

World, Understanding, Appearance

“My mother took me to town with her, and made me pass, as if by accident, through the yard of a slaughter-house. I saw some men, their arms naked and besmeared with blood, knocking a bull in the head; others cutting the throats of calves and sheep, and separating their still heaving limbs. Streams of smoking gore ran along the pavement. An intense feeling of pity, mingled with horror, seized upon me. I asked to be led away quickly. The thought of these scenes, the necessary preliminaries of one of those dishes of meat which I had so often seen on the table, made me take a disgust to animal food and inspired me with a horror for butchers.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book IV, Note VIII, p. 61
Les confidences (1849)

Men, Food, Feeling, Animals

“When there are fish heads and blood in the water, you don’t need to see the silverpike to know they are there.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Siuan Sanche
(15 October 1991)

Fish, Water

“You say it's all in my head
And the things I think just don't make sense
So where you been then? Don't go all coy
Don't turn it round on me like it's my fault
See I can see that look in your eyes
The one that shoots me each and every time.
You grace me with your cold shoulder
Whenever you look at me I wish I was her.
You shower me with words made of knives
Whenever you look at me I wish I was her.”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Cold Shoulder, written by Adele and Sacha Skarbek
Song lyrics, 19 (2008)

Thinking, Sense, Time

“It's real simple. Basically, their message is to stop warring on each other and to stop warring on the planet to be kind to each other and the planet, because we're headed for major environmental collapse. And they've also expressed deep concern about the leadership of the planet. They've made it very clear: You're being led by the oil industry and the war industry.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James explaining one of the messages he says he receives from the extraterrestrials.

War

“"I'm no gaun to let naebody see the letter," sobbed the boy, "till I gie't to Mr. Lovel, for I am a faithfu' servant o' the office—if it werena for the powny."
"Very right, my little man," said Ochiltree, turning the reluctant pony's head towards Monkbarns; "but we'll guide him atween us." …
[They met Lovel on the way, ] and Davie, who insisted upon a literal execution of his commission by going on to Monkbarns, was with difficulty prevailed upon to surrender the packet to its proper owner, although he met him a mile nearer than the place he had been directed to. "But my minnie said, I maun be sure to get twenty shillings and five shillings for the postage, and ten shillings and sixpence for the express—there's the paper."
"Let me see—let me see," said Oldbuck, putting on his spectacles, and examining the crumpled copy of regulations to which Davie appealed. "Express, per man and horse, one day, not to exceed ten shillings and sixpence. One day? why, it's not an hour—Man and horse? why, 'tis a monkey on a starved cat!"”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

Vol. I, Ch.15.
The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Way, Boy, Cats, Horse

“I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn't lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under.
I did not resurface.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan, p. 84
Twilight series, New Moon (2006)

Pain, Hope, Disappointment

“They wander in deep woods, in mournful light,
Amid long reeds and drowsy headed poppies
And lakes where no wave laps, and voiceless streams,
Upon whose banks in the dim light grow old
Flowers that were once bewailèd names of kings.”
Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos, quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna
inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver
et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos,
quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent
fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.
"Cupido Cruciator", line 5; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics ([1929] 1943) p. 31.

Flowers, Light

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Down, Wanton, Down!," lines 1-4, from Poems 1930-1933 (1933).
Poems

Love, Beauty

“In fact, their contempt for the native converts was deeper than that for their Hindu subjects. They had all along looked down upon the native converts as Ajlãf (low-born) and Arzãl (base-born) as compared to the Ashrãf (exalted) which distinctive designation they had reserved for themselves….. It was at this critical juncture that the frustrated fraternity of foreign Muslims took a very strategic step. They started swearing by a solidarity with the native Muslims whom they had despised so far. They let loose on the native Muslims an army of mercenary Mullahs recruited, mostly from their own ranks. These Mullahs went about broadcasting the message that ‘Islam was in danger’, and that ‘Hindus were out to enslave and exploit the Muslim minority’. It was in this manner that the residues of Islamic imperialism managed to ‘merge’ themselves with the native converts, and to present themselves at the head of a strong phalanx pitted against whatever historical forces threatened their unjust privileges. Hitherto, the haughty Ashrãf had stood strictly aloof from the abject Ajlãf and the despised Arzãl. Now all of a sudden the latter became the former’s ‘brothers in faith’. This was a tremendous transformation of the political scene in the second decade of the 20th century. … The British never attached more than a nuisance value to this noisy fraternity which had to be befriended or ignored according to the needs of British policy at any time. It was the national leadership which was impressed by this mobilisation of the ‘Muslim masses’ and the pathos of ‘Muslim plight’. They accepted not only separate electorates but also weightages for the ‘Muslim minority’ in many provinces.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Faith, Strong, Time

“[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 31–2

Men, World, Way, Nature

“India will have to hang down her head in shame if even one person is left who is said in any way to be untouchable.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Way, Personality

“My dear Theo, Sincere wishes for your good health and serenity on your birthday. I would like to have sent you the painting of the potato eaters for this day, but although it's coming along well, it's not quite finished yet. Although I'll have painted the actual painting in a relatively short time, and largely from memory, it's taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands. And as for the few days in which I've painted it now - it's consequently been a formidable fight, but one for which I have great enthusiasm. Although at times I feared that it wouldn't come off. But painting is also 'act and create.”

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

Quote in his letter to Theo, from Amsterdam, 30 April 1885, letter 497 - vangoghletters online http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let497/letter.html Vincent refers to his famous painting 'Potato Eaters' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Vincent_van_Gogh_-_The_potato_eaters_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg 1880s, 1885

Health, Fear, Birthday, Study

“Remember how Democrats were complaining that Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic, because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn’t even exist. It exists in Obama’s head. It’s whatever he thinks. He wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is gonna be.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Fox News Special Report, February 12, 2014 : panel discussion http://www.mediaite.com/tv/krauthammer-obama-now-just-%e2%80%98decides-what-the-law-is-going-to-be%e2%80%99-every-morning/ ; video clip at mediaite.com. 2010s, 2014

Law, Thinking

“Two hats, we grant, may be better than one; yet is one enough at a time. It is so with the head. It should be sole and self-relying. We like to wear ours in single blessedness on our own shoulders, and not let it hanker after a place on other people's.”

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

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

People, Time

“I thought it was normal, that’s the thing. When you’re little you think everything is normal. If your mother had a pointed head and green ears you’d think it’s normal. Only when you grow up do you realise that not everybody is like that. Gradually you can even come to learn that the time you are living in is strange too, that it hasn’t always been like this. The more you feel uncomfortable and unconfident and want to find a way to be like everyone else and fit in, the more normality runs away from you because there isn’t any such thing. Or if there is, you have to find someone else who’ll agree with you what it is. Which I seem singularly unable to do.”

Jane Rogers book The Testament of Jessie Lamb

Source: The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2011), Chapter 1 (pp. 6-7)

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Learning

“On Christmas Day I'll head off for a couple of laps around the Serpentine, or a trek around the whole of Hyde Park. Or I'll walk right across town, with Curtis, my son Jamie's bull mastiff”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

"My Christmas" http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/08/christmas-saving-money-celebrities, The Guardian, (2008-12-08). On how she spends Christmas Day.

Christmas

“I need you to pray for me; I need you to care for me. I need you to want me to win. I need to know where I'm heading, because I know where I've been.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

Don't Push Me
Song lyrics, Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003)

“What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Garden (1650-1652)

Life, Flowers, Grass, Wine

“Rolf Halbritter coughed from the dust the retreating convoy kicked up. He shook his head in wonder not far from awe. The Amis were really and truly going- no, really and truly gone. Which meant… He had a badge pinned on the underside of his collar, where it didn't show. Now he could wear it openly agian. It was round, with a red outer ring that carried a legend in bronze letters: NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI. The white inner circle held a black swastika. Every Party member had one just like it. Pretty soon, they'd all be showing it, too.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 528

“My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.”

John Davidson (1857–1909) Scottish poet

I felt the World a-spinning on its Nave, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It may be that the Greeks had it easy, with their light and their mountains and their plains and their islands waiting around for tourists. It was easy for them to believe that man fit in rather well. This fittingness may have given them the idea that we are seemlier than other evidence suggests. The heads of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and, for that matter, the skyscrapers of New York, have another idea of man. So do the artifacts of Albert Speer. It is depressing to wonder whether the Greeks just happened to be lucky, and the dream they left us is a lie about ourselves.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"The Caryatid" (p. 208)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Lie, Dreams, Mountain, Idea

“The conglomerate heads may be business geniuses, but as far as movies are concerned they have virgin instincts; ideas that are new to them and take them by storm may have failed grotesquely dozens of times. But they feel that they are creative people — how else could they have made so much money and be in a position to advise artists what to do? Who is to tell them no?”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Taking It All In (1983), Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers (1980-06-23)

Money, People, Feeling, Idea

“I can not draw or paint worth a damn, because I can't see it in my head before I do it. I can sculpt and I do crafts but I can not draw. When it comes to music I can hear it before it happens, which most people can't do.”

Blackie Lawless (1956) musician, songwriter and actor

Music America Interview

People, Music, Drawing, Painting

“What defines a leader is his preoccupation with the future. In his head he carries a vivid image of what the future could be, and this image drives him on.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Source: The One Thing You Need to Know (2005), p. 59

Future

“You would have to sit at the board and sweat and feel the fear of defeat or the nearness of victory to understand what goes through a player's head … If you think it's that easy, switch off the computer and try and figure out a few moves on your own.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

Game of thrones with world chess champion Viswanathan Anand

Fear, Feeling, Understanding, Thinking

“Power is mostly the illusion of power. The Pentagon demanded we destroy our publications. We kept publishing. Clinton denounced us and said we were an attack on the entire "international community". We kept publishing. I was put in prison and under house arrest. We kept publishing. We went head to head with the NSA getting Edward Snowden out of Hong Kong, we won and got him asylum. Clinton tried to destroy us and was herself destroyed. Elephants, it seems, can be brought down with string. Perhaps there are no elephants.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

Repubblica.it interview, 23 Dec 2016 link http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/12/23/news/assange_wikileaks-154754000/

Communication, Housing

“She leant her head upon her hand : “I know not which to choose—
Alas! whichever choice I make, the other I must lose.””

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

The Choice
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“The book begins with the clang of a cell door closing in a GPU prison. It ends with a shot in the back of the head in a murky passageway of the prison cellar. It moves with the speed, directness, precision and some of the impact of a bullet.”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

"Brightest in Dungeons," May 26, 1941
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

Books, Speed

“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears — as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

“Earth”
The Living City (1958)

Love, Happiness, Bird, Tree

“Immigration security, we need to protect American jobs. We need to protect American safety. We're going to build a wall folks, don't worry, we're going to build a wall. That wall will go up so fast, your heads will spin. And you'll say, "you know, know he meant it!" And you know what else I mean? Mexico is going to pay for the wall.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

On immigration at a rally in Akron, Ohio (22 August 2016)
2010s, 2016, August

“On the way home from school, I’d go two blocks out of my way to pass by Lopez’ Pool Hall to look for cigarette butts that the veteranos had flicked to the sidewalk. They had G. I. hair cuts, their old, spit-shined paratrooper boots and the same khaki uniforms they wore to fight the Japs. I’d pretend not to notice them leaning against the building. With my head down, I’d walk along the gutter and just casually push the longer butts with my toe as if I were kicking a can or a rock … just a barefoot boy with cheek humhumming along the road on a hot summer day in his Huckleberry Finn strides, oh yes!”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 91.

School, Way, Home, Boy

““Can I drive you down to your house?”
The man flicked an expressive glance along the car’s length and shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll walk. There’s still a law of averages.”
And you can take that phrase and carve it on Humanity’s headstone, Fay thought bitterly, but did not reply.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

The End of Summer, p. 14 (originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1954)
The Unexpected Dimension (1960)

Law, Cars, Housing

“The lesson is clear: estimates of causes of death are warped by media coverage. […] The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 13, "Availability, emotion, and risk", page 138 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Death, World, Reality

“The position of prayers with respect to religion is similar to that of the head with respect to the body.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 18972
Shi'ite Hadith

Religion

“At every level, all the servants — even human bodies — need a leader. Look at human beings. If they lacked a head, they would lack everything. Rather, they only exist because they have a head. Since they have a head, it requires that they have other organs, just as in the limbs of the body. In their outer being [i. e. society, ], command rests with ministers and a vizier, which are analogous to the inner heart and breast, and other organs. This saying involves a number of sublime matters, but this one is sufficient.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Treatise on Kingship

Heart

“Thought is just not something objective in our heads. Thought is power – real, objective power. Moreover, the thoughts we create have a life of their own. They have a kind of material reality that affects other people for good or ill – hence our responsibility to chose.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Power of Thought: A Twenty-First Century Adaptation of Annie Besant's http://books.google.co.in/books?id=SVKqq0dTdSMC&printsec=frontcover, p. backcover

Life, People, Reality

“The bourgeois never included the ownership of capital as one of the social restraints that should be abolished, for the simple reason that it was not to him a restraint at all. It never therefore entered his head to regard it as such, and he saw nothing inconsistent in calling for the abolition of privilege, monopoly, and so forth, while hanging on to his capital.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

“There isn't any division of time to express the marrow of our lives, the time between the explosion of lead from the muzzle and the meat impact, between the impact and the darkness. There's only barren instant replay that shows nothing new. I shot her; she fell; and there was an indescribable moment of silence, an infinite duration of time, and we all stepped back, watching the ball go around and around, ticking, bouncing, lighting for an instant, going on, heads and tails, red and black, odd and even…I think that moment ended. I really do. But sometimes, in the dark, I think that hideous random moment is still going on, that the wheel is even yet in spin, and I dreamed all the rest. What must it be like for a suicide coming down from a high ledge? I'm sure it must be a very sane feeling. That's probably why they scream all the way down.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Dreams, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 218.

Happiness, Peace, Faith, Home

“You talk like a fellow with some education, like someone who knows how to use his head. If you wanted to lead a decent and proper life, there are all sorts of things you could do. Why do you choose to steal?"
"Sir, I know this is a perilous occupation, and I am familiar with many a way to earn an honest bit of money. But the world wouldn't let me live in peace, so that's why I naturally turned to crime."
"What a strange way to talk!"
"That is so, sir, but it's true. I went to live with people, but they didn't take care of me. I learned to do things, and people gave me no chance to do them. Every family I met treated me badly. People weren't nice to me, so I became an enemy of the people. Now I force people to give me what I need in my life.”

Nguyễn Công Hoan (1903–1977)

Abandonment (1937), as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, pp. 158–159

Life, Money, People, World

“If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution-then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Wanted, A New Pleasure
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

Life, Pleasure, World, Beauty

“Here at Adbusters, we decided to tackle the issue head on and came up with a carefully researched list of who appear to be the 50 most influential neocons in the US (see above). Deciding who exactly is a neocon is difficult since some neocons reject the term while others embrace it. Some shape policy from within the White House, while others are more peripheral, exacting influence indirectly as journalists, academics and think tank policy wonks. What they all share is the view that the US is a benevolent hyper power that must protect itself by reshaping the rest of the world into its morally superior image. And half of them are Jewish.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Why won't anyone say they are Jewish? http://web.archive.org/web/20040223012106/http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/52/articles/jewish.html. Adbusters (March/April 2004).

World, Thinking, Appearance, Housing

“It seemed even the smallest exercise of arbitrary authority could go to one’s head like wine. I told myself to remember this when I was older.”

John C. Wright book Orphans of Chaos

Source: Orphans of Chaos (2005), Chapter 4, “Headmaster Boggin” Section 1 (p. 64)

Exercises, Wine

“Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body
Close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blow softly against my window
Make believe you love me
One more time
For the good times
For the good times..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

For the Good Times
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

Love, Time

“"What kind of parent would want their children to have servants?" he asks, disgusted by the idea. "The moment a child thinks it is entitled to anything, they think they deserve everything. Why do you think the Core is such a Babylon? Because it's never been told no.
"Look at the Institute you attended. Sexual slavery, murder, cannibalism of fellow Golds?" He shakes his head. "Barbaric. It's not what the Ancestors intended. But the Coreworlders are so desensitized to violence they've forgotten it's to have a purpose. Violence is a tool. It is meant to shock. To change. Instead, they normalize and celebrate it. And create a culture of exploitation where they are so entitled to sex and power that when they are told no, they pull a sword and do as they like."”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 41: The Moon Lord

Children, Sex, Idea, Thinking

“It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace."”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This was what was frightening.
Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter III, p. 22

Peace, Country

“Many a head that down had lain,
Impatient with its twelve hours' pain,
And wishing that the bed it prest,
Were, as the grave's, a long last rest,
Has sprung again at morning's call,
Forgiving, or forgetting all;
Lighting the weary weight of thought
With colours from the day-break brought,
Reading new promise in the sky,
And hearing Hope, the lark on high.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pain, Hope, Forgiveness, Light

“Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director, and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from Let's Make the Hero a MacArthur
Books

Star

“With all the efforts now to disassociate President Bush from conservatism, I am starting to believe that conservatism itself — not the political machine, mind you, but the ideology — is heading toward that misty land-over-the-ocean where ideologies go after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Sort of like the way post-Stalinist lefties used to say, "You can't say Communism's failed. It's just never really been tried."But as it was with Communism, so with conservatism. When all the people who call themselves conservatives get together and run the government, they're on the line for it. Conservative president. Conservative House. Conservative Senate.What we appear to be in for now is the emergence of this phantom conservatism existing out in the ether, wholly cut loose from any connection to the actual people who are universally identified as the conservatives and who claim the label for themselves.We can even go a bit beyond this though. The big claim now is that President Bush isn't a conservative because he hasn't shrunk the size of government and he's a reckless deficit spender.But let's be honest: Balanced budgets and shrinking the size of government hasn't been part of conservatism — or to be more precise, Movement Conservatism — for going on thirty years. The conservative movement and the Republican party are the movement and party of deficit spending. And neither has any claim to any real association with limited or small government. Just isn't borne out by any factual record or political agenda. Not in the Reagan presidency, the Bush presidency or the second Bush presidency. The intervening period of fiscal restraint comes under Clinton.”

Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo

Talking Points Memo (2006-06-13) http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008733.php

People, Way, Communication, Effort

“The heads of these divisions, like barons in a feudal system weakened at the top by mutual suspicion and jealousy between king and prince, were constantly at odds if not at war…For the most part the barons were knowledgeable people performing in a way the times had completely outdated, a fact of which they were quite unaware.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

War, People, Jealousy, Way

“Inspiration: A miasma originating in the head that pollutes the body and irritates good sense.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Sense

“It’s weird because here I am, an actress, representing—at least in some sense—an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me. You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.”

Ellen Page (1987) Canadian actress

Coming Out Speech (2014)

Life, Hate, People, Beauty

“In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de' Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped the shame which ought to cover her name… Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine, the two Balafrés, and the two Condés, against the queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking fire of the Calvinist press.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

En France, et dans la partie la plus grave de l'histoire moderne, aucune femme, si ce n'est Brunehault ou Frédégonde, n'a plus souffert des erreurs populaires que Catherine de Médicis; tandis que Marie de Médicis, dont toutes les actions on été préjudiciables à la France, échappe à la honte qui devrait couvrir son nom... Catherine de Médicis, au contraire, a sauvé la couronne de France; elle a maintenu l'authorité royale dans des des circonstances au milieur desquelles plus d'un grand prince aurait succombé.Ayant en tête des factieux et des ambitions comme celles des Guise et de la maison de Bourbon, des hommes commes les deux cardinaux de Lorraine et comme les deux Balafrés, les deux princes de Condé, la reine Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, le connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, les Coligny, Théodore de Bèze, il lui a fallu déployer les plus rares qualités, les plus précieux dons de l'homme d'État, sous le feu des railleries de la presse calviniste.
About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Introduction

Men, Error, History, Suffering

“Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance.”

Hale Boggs (1914–1972) American politician

Speech before Congress (April 22, 1971)

People, Secret

“The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.”

Walter Pater (1839–1894) essayist, art and literature critic, fiction writer

On the Mona Lisa, in Leonardo da Vinci The Renaissance http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-1.html (1873)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“I don’t know the why of anything, even when I pretend most diligently I do. The truth is the last time I had any idea why or what I was supposed to do I was lying in a shell hole, looking up at the sky. My mind was filled with a Bach keyboard sonata, which was one of the last I’d learned, I forget which one now. I absolutely knew I was about to die and I was completely happy and at peace, in a way I never was before or since, not even with you, in our best moments. It was so easy, you see, a kind of absolute joy and peace, because I knew it was all done and I was all square with life. Nothing left to do but let things take their course. And when I didn’t die, I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’ll take my revolver, go out and blow a hole through my head. Only I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew, I just knew you couldn’t do it that way. You couldn’t make it happen, not if you wanted to find peace. So, I thought, then, a sniper can do it for me. But no matter how I tried to let them no sniper ever found me. And all the other times I went out and lay in shell holes in No Man’s Land it wasn’t the same, and I knew I wouldn’t die this time, and of course I never did. I had this mad feeling I’d become some sort of Wandering Jew. And everything for so long afterwards was about dragging this living corpse of myself around, giving it things to do, because here it was, alive. And nothing made any sense and I didn’t even hope it would. I followed paths that were there to be followed, I did what others said to do.”

Basil Rathbone (1892–1967) British actor

Letter https://thegreatbaz.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/fuller-text-of-letter-quoted-in-a-life-divided/

Life, Happiness, Truth, Peace

“Not long ago the head of what should be a strictly scientific department in one of the major universities commented on the odd (and ominous) phenomenon that persons who can claim to be scientists on the basis of the technical training that won them the degree of Ph. D. are now found certifying the authenticity of the painted rag that is called the "Turin Shroud" or adducing "scientific" arguments to support hoaxes about the "paranormal" or an antiquated religiosity. "You can hire a scientist [sic]," he said, "to prove anything." He did not adduce himself as proof of his generalization, but he did boast of his cleverness in confining his own research to areas in which the results would not perturb the Establishment or any vociferous gang of shyster-led fanatics. If such is indeed the status of science and scholarship in our darkling age, Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Price of the Head", Instauration magazine (March 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Age, Support, Universe, Science

“Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Men, Truth, World, Religion

“Oh bed! oh bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg. Her Dream http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/eop_hood_poetical_works_4.htm#146, st. 7. 1840s

“.. how the movement of the passers-by [in his Street scene painting of 191-14] is comprehended in the rhombus of the heads which is twice repeated. In this way life and movement arise from an original geometric form. [Kirchner designed a diagram together with this line in the letter]”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Karl Hagemann, 27 February 1937; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 81 - note 31
1930's

Life, Way, Painting

“Like Benito Mussolini, Armenians believe truth is an assertion at the head of a figurative bayonet.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Armenian crime amnesia? (2007)

Truth

“.. I did a great deal of work [in 1903, Normandy]. And I understood how to transfer nature into colors appropriate to the odor of my soul. I painted a large number of landscapes there, bushes and Breton heads from my window. The pictures were glowing with color. And my inner self was contended.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky, c. 1903; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 114
1900 - 1935

Color, Soul, Nature, Painting

“The moment I appeared the crowd started jeering and booing and shouting ‘faggot’ and spitting, I had hired a bodyguard and when the jeering started I turned to see where the bodyguard was, I could just see the back of his head as he was running out of the stadium.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

Describing the reaction of a 60,000 crowd of American Football fans and his bodyguard, while appearing as Bruno (the flamboyantly homosexual fashion journalist) at an NFL match http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2557633.html

Appearance

“I've got a lot of white associates. Elijah Muhammad, is the one who preached that the white man of America, number one, is the Devil. He's been preaching — he never mentioned England. England's people have never lynched us, raped us, castrated us, tarred and feathered us, burned us up, pulled our sockets apart, stick knives in pregnant women's stomachs, enslaved us, rob us of our names, our knowledge, our — Elijah Mohammad's been preaching that the white man of America – God taught him – is the blue-eyed, blond-headed Devil! No good in him, no justice, he's gonna be destroyed! His rule is over. He is the Devil!”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

interview with Michael Parkinson (1974), quoted in Adam Lusher, " 'The white man is the devil' – what the Nation of Islam taught Muhammad Ali https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/muhammad-ali-nation-of-islam-michael-parkinson-interview-who-were-elijah-muhammad-a7066301.html", _The Independent_ (June 5, 2016)

Women, God, People, Justice

“Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"Beasts Bounding Through Time" (1986)

Dogs, Light, Painting, Madness

“During the primary, I heard the audible voice of God. He said, 'Credibility.' It wasn't a thought in my head. I thought it meant I was going to win. But after the primary, I got credibility.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

interview with Wilmington News-Journal, November 12, 2006

2006 Delaware US Senate race

God

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Alcohol, Beauty, Cars

“Round-heads and Wooden-shoes are standing jokes.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

prologue, l. 8.
The Drummer (1716)

Shoe

“A word in the head is worth two in the book.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (May 7, 2007) http://wordsmith.org/words/stormy_petrel.html

Books

“The scientist tries to understand the origin of our solar system, the structure of the universe and the laws governing the atom. He has discovered X rays, the radioactive substances, and he has built cyclotrons. He has foreseen the existence of electromagnetic and electronic waves. Out of his thought has grown the technique of our century. But not until today has he begun to notice that the earth on which he moves is covered with sweat and with blood and that in the world in which he lives "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."”

Leopold Infeld (1898–1968) Polish physicist

Quest: An Autobiography [1941] (second edition, 1980), Book III, "Search and Research", p. 338

World, Law, Understanding, Universe

“As in the case of the individual, not all the information which is available to the race at one time is accessible without special effort. There is a well-known tendency of libraries to become clogged by their own volume; of the sciences to develop such a degree of specialization that the expert is often illiterate outside his own minute specialty. Dr. Vannevar Bush has suggested the use of mechanical aids for the searching through vast bodies of material. These probably have their uses, but they are limited by the impossibility of classifying a book under an unfamiliar heading unless some particular person has already recognized the relevance of that heading for that particular book. In the case where two subjects have the same technique and intellectual content but belong to widely separated fields, this still requires some individual with an almost Leibnizian catholicity of interest.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 158.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Books, Search, Effort, Science

“The moonlight shown upon her as she lay back in my bed.
It was the kind of scene I only had imagined in my head.
I just could not believe it, to think that she was real.
And as I tried to tell her she said "Shhh.. I know just how you feel.
And if you want to come here with me, then that's all right with me.
'Cause I've been oh so lonely, lovin' someone is a better way to be.
anywhere's a better way to be."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Thinking

“Never eat anything bigger than your head.”

B. Kliban (1935–1990) American cartoonist

Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head & Other Drawings http://books.google.com/books?id=tUCpngEACAAJ (1976)

“Most of the world's people have been robbed of their freedom by tyrants… In the last century alone, 272,000,000 were shot, burned, stabbed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, blasted to death, buried alive, or whatever other ways of murdering their slaves these thugs could imagine. This horrific and evil toll of bodies could head-to-toe circle the earth more than ten times. It is as though a catastrophic nuclear war had happened, but its mountain of deaths spread over each day of the last century”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 11

Death, War, People, World

“Do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else. One night I dreamed that invisible enemies had me tied to a dead cypress. Long red arrows were sticking into me from my head to my feet, and the blood was flowing. On my head they had placed a crown of thorns, and intertwined with the thorns were fiery letters which said: "Saint Blasphemer." I am Saint Blasphemer, Rabbi Simeon. So you'd better not ask me anything else, or I'll start my blasphemies.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 10

Dreams, Night, Dead

“I always look at everything with the eyes of a child. I feel enthusiastic for things today fort he same reasons as I was enthusiastic about them as a child... I remember one summer morning when I was twelve years old [1888], I was with my father. We were following a road which crossed the plain from Rueil to Croissy. The whole plain was a solid field of corn and the ears stood higher than my head. I still retain today the impression of the vast expanse, spangled with flowers and filled with the drone of insects. Often, later on, I have tried to recapture, to fix firmly in my mind once again, the impression of that world around me, of the sun which burns my face and hands... Every time a see a field of corn I an reminded of that morning.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 18-19

World, Feeling, Flowers, Time

“Under the old constitution, a secretary of the treasury for instance, had no opportunity, save by his annual reports, of presenting any scheme or plan of finance or other matter. He had no opportunity of explaining, expounding, enforcing, or defending his views of policy; his only resort was through the medium of an organ. In the British parliament, the premier brings in his budget and stands before the nation responsible for its every item. If it is indefensible, he falls before the attacks upon it, as he ought to. This will now be the case to a limited extent under our system. In the new constitution, provision has been made by which our heads of departments can speak for themselves and the administration, in behalf of its entire policy, without resorting to the indirect and highly objectionable medium of a newspaper. It is to be greatly hoped that under our system we shall never have what is known as a government organ.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Hope

“I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker's journal
Dracula (1897)

Light, Housing

“I told him (Zhang Zhijun) that this (daily massive protest) is pretty much what we (Republic of China government) experience in our daily lives. We are used to it. Now that he is head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, he has to understand Taiwan more.”

Wang Yu-chi (1969) Taiwanese politician

Wang Yu-chi (2014) cited in " CROSSING THE STRAIT: Protesters hurl paint at Chinese official’s convoy http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2014/06/29/2003593937" on Taipei Times, 29 June 2014

Understanding

“The asshole doesn’t need to be ashamed of being the asshole. The feet don’t have any reason to go on strike just because they’re only feet. The head isn’t the most important of all, and the navel doesn’t need to imagine he’s the father of all things. It’s strange though that people look at the prime minister as an especially important person. The nose can’t replace the eyes, and the mouth can’t replace the ears. Everything has its own identity, which is unsurpassable in the whole universe.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)

People, Imagination, Universe, Personality

“”Farewell count without a head”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

Williams last words to his friend Lamoral of Egmont after he said to him; „Farewell prince without a land”, as written in ‚Uilenspiegel’ by Charles de Coster

Quotes about head page 30

Quotes about head
page 30