Quotes about hearing
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“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Love, Death, Art, Feeling

“When we win, nothing hurts; when we lose, everything hurts. And the only time you hear someone use the phrase its only a game is when that person is losing.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Game, Time, Hurt, Personality

“I hear there are people who actually enjoy moving. Sounds like a disease to me - they must be unstable. Though it does have it’s poetry, I’ll allow that. When an old dwelling starts looking desolate, a mixture of regret and anxiety comes over us and we feel like we are leaving a safe harbor for the rolling sea. As for the new place, it looks on us with alien eyes, it has nothing to say to us, it is cold.”

Jan Neruda (1834–1891) Czech poet, theater reviewer, publicist and writer

People, Disease, Feeling, Sea

“Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

Night

“This age above all ages is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women. The love shown in Christ by our God to mankind should constrain all of us who are followers and disciples of Christ to do all in our power to see to it that the Message of Salvation is carried to those of our fellows for whom Christ Our Saviour was sacrificed but who have not had the benefit of hearing the good news. Since nobody can interfere in the realm of God we should tolerate and live side by side with those of other faiths.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the World Evangelical Congress in Berlin (28 October 1966)

Love, Women, Men, God

“It is unfortunate to hear about the shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. Is this the lifestyle and management the United States leadership wants to introduce to the world?”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Twitter Aug 5, 2019
2019

World

“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Life, Stupidity, Feeling, Silence

“Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful? "Why Women Aren’t Funny" https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/, Vanity Fair, (January 1, 2007). 2000s, 2007

Love, Death, Women, Men

“Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing, and atonement.”

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) British classical scholar, linguist and feminist

p. 1 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3939906;view=1up;seq=31 Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion (1903)

God, Religion, Way, Confidence

“No Continental country has ever been able to understand the temper of the British people, but, while I give them a note of warning of our foreign critics, let me say what is more to the point to my own friends, that unless they bestir themselves Great Britain will be in a position of peril which it has not known in the memory of their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers, and if that position of peril should issue in some great catastrophe...this country will not again easily arise. (Hear, hear.) I do not believe there is going to be war between this country and any great foreign Power. (Hear, hear.) Heaven knows I do not desire it, but I do not believe it. Please remember the absolutely only way in which you can secure the peace which you all desire is that you shall be sure of victory if war takes place.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Cheers.
Speech in Hanley (4 January 1910), quoted in The Times (5 January 1910), p. 7
Leader of the Opposition

War, People, Peace, Way

“I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and the lessons reed, before. I think I now begin to see a little into the nature of modulation and the introduction of flats and sharps ; and when we meet you shall hear me play extempore..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

his friend William Jackson of Exeter was composer and organist letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 4 June 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 385 (Appendix A - Letter VIII) 1760s

Nature, Thinking

“Venetian Memories. Jane has agreed to have copied in her brain some of Paul’s memory-traces. After she recovers consciousness in the post-surgery room, she has a new set of vivid apparent memories. She seems to remember walking on the marble paving of a square, hearing the flapping of flying pigeons and the cries of gulls, and seeing light sparkling on green water. One apparent memory is very clear. She seems to remember looking across the water to an island, where a white Palladian church stood out brilliantly against a dark thundercloud.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 220

Light, Water, Memory, Flying

“Probably there is no single doctrine of the Esoteric Tradition which makes so instant an appeal as does the idea of the present existence in the world of great sages or seers. In most minds there lies an intuition that there must be in the world human beings of far loftier spiritual capacity and of immensely more developed intellectual power than the ordinary run of men. Those who hear of this for the first time instantly turn to those luminous figures, such as Gautama the Buddha, Jesus the Syrian avatara, Apollonius of Tyana, Lao-Tse, Krishna, Sankaracharya, etc. and, among many, the first reaction is: if such great figures have already existed in the world, why should they not exist again?”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 19

Men, World, Making love, Idea

“Call me either Colonel or Doctor. Hearing both titles gives me a split personality, the two philosophies differing so widely. It is medicine’s philosophy that lives should be saved, of all sorts. It is our military’s philosophy that as long as a few cells are kept alive, actual lives may be dispensed with. A few inches of gut in a bottle is not, to my mind, a life, no matter what theological contortions one puts oneself through.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav in Ch. 30 : dismé and the doctor, p. 256
The Visitor (2002)

Life, Personality

“I don’t like to hear people speaking in my work. I like reading it, and I marvel at people who can do it well. And there’s something when you see it done well. It’s just so terrific. But I’m not able to do it.”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On the lack of dialogue in her works in “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid” https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-jamaica-kincaid/ in The Believer (2003 Jul 1)

People, Reading

“Brooklyn born, Bronx bred… I felt like the dreamer/day tripper of the neighborhood with a vivid imagination and a longing to transcend the mundane through my love of the arts. My mother inspired me a lot. I can remember growing up hearing her voice in the background on the phone urging others to stop putting up with abuse and to stand up for themselves in order to better their lot in life. She was always helping people – mostly other women – liberate themselves from oppressive relationships whether it was at home or work.”

Esai Morales (1962) American actor

On how activism was present in his upbringing in “Mr. Morales is currently running for SAG-AFTRA President” https://www.latinheat.com/spotlight-news/the-essential-esai-morales-interview/ in Latin Heat Entertainment (2013 Jul 31)

Love, Life, Women, People

“When I find myself not knowing what to do, that’s when I do nothing and wait until I can hear that voice again, and suddenly, things are clicking again, and I am in that FLOW!”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

When asked about listening to yourself. Company Rules Interview https://companyrules.home.blog/2019/05/27/welcome-guest-dj-antonio-fresco/ (2019)

Waiting

“The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in New York City (28 August 1952)

Music, Democracy

“If there be any party which is more pledged than another to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. (Cheers.) But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech in Oxford town hall (30 December 1872), quoted in The Times (31 December 1872), p. 5

People, World, Making love, Thinking

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Paraphrasing a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Making love, Religion, Angels, Search

“It seems to me that untold histories that come from a very pure place of suffering and survival contain truth. Everything else is subject to question, really. Anything that comes to us through an official source—especially an official source attached to a national or religious agenda, or any of those other identity politics that seem to bedevil the world at the moment—is questioned. I felt that the voices I was hearing, the places from which these stories came to me, were genuine and, therefore, very precious. The stories in themselves contained both the questions and the answers about identity, or about what borders do to people and how they survive.”

Kapka Kassabova (1973) author

On the authenticity of “untold stories” in “Mouths Full of Earth: An Interview with Kapka Kassabova” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/12/mouths-full-of-earth-an-interview-with-kapka-kassabova/ in The Paris Review (2017 Sep 12)

People, Truth, World, History

“Men were the gatekeepers. They ran all the equipment and the labels … I was tired of being the girlfriend of the guy in the band, I was tired of hearing that my musical tastes suck.”

Liz Phair (1967) American musician

On the catalyst for launching her own music career in “'You could not have given us a bigger middle finger': Liz Phair on how Trump changed her music for ever” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/03/liz-phair-trump-change-her-music-exile-in-guyville-25-years in The Guardian (2018 May 3)

Men, Music, Guy

“Your highness shall know your fate, since your blindness drives you to it... Let her hear, for since she wanted to know, know she shall!”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

Fate

“In attitude towards poverty, there is a considerable double standard. America more or less expects the Negro to be poor (and is convinced that things are getting better, a point to be dealt with in a later chapter). There is no emotional shock when people hear of the experience of these human beings in Chicago. The mind and the feelings, even of good-willed individuals, are so suffused with an unconscious racism that misery is overlooked.”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 2

People, Feeling

“If you tell stories about a really cool kid that you can relate to, and then you hear about kids being mean to that kid, then you feel what it is like to walk in his shoes. And you think, that is not right. I think the best way to write is to want to build empathy for your characters. You want the readers to feel the things they are feeling.”

R. J. Palacio (1963) American author

On thinking about kids who are different in “Author R.J. Palacio talks to LI kids” https://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/family/kidsday/rj-palacio-wonder-author-interview-1.20364470 in Newsday (2018 Aug 8)

Shoe, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope and pride. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Disputed, Give me liberty, or give me death! (1775)

Men, Pain, Truth, Hope

“I’ve been through a lot of hearings about one damn thing and another. Most of the time they’re exercises in ass covering. If the unvarnished truth ever came out at one, it would be because someone screwed up.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 9 (pp. 93-94)

Truth, Exercises, Time

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth, Home, Time, Personality

“For by the life of God, it doth even take my wits from me to think on it. Here is such controversy between the sailors and gentlemen, and such stomaching between the gentlemen and sailors, it doth make me mad to hear it. But, my masters, I must have it left. For I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman. What! let us show ourselves to be of a company and let us not give occasion to the enemy to rejoice at our decay and overthrow. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope, but I know there is not any such here...”

Francis Drake (1540–1596) English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era

Speech to his crew off of Puerto San Julian, Argentina, prior to entering the Strait of Magellan (May 1578)

Life, God, Making love, Thinking

“I hear so many complaints to the effect that Negroes do not take advantage of the educational opportunities offered them. Well, one of the reasons why more of my race do not go in for higher education is that as soon as one of us gets his head above the crowd there are millions of feet ready to crush it back again to that dead level of commonplace thus creating a racial deadline of culture in our Republic. For how am I to compete with other American artists if I am not to be given the same opportunity?”

Augusta Savage (1892–1962) American sculptor

On being denied a scholarship due to her race in “Sculptor Augusta Savage’s Towering Impact on the Harlem Renaissance” https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-sculptor-augusta-savages-towering-impact-harlem-renaissance in Artnet (2019 Apr 5)

Education, Dead

“A great man is the unbelieving man; he is without spiritual sight or spiritual hearing; his glory is in understanding his own understanding. It is he who subdues the forest, tames the beasts of the field to service. He goes alone in the dark, unafraid. He follows no man’s course, but, searches for himself; the priests cannot make him believe, nor the angels of heaven; none can subdue his judgment. He says: why permit others even priests, to you think for you? Stand on your own feet – be a man. Through his arm are tyrants and evil kings overthrown. Through him are doctrines and religions sifted to the bottom and the falsehood and evil in them cast aside. Who but the Creator could have created so great a man as the unbeliever?”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Kenneth Arnold's paraphrasing of a section from Oahspe: A New Bible by John Ballou Newbrough (1828–1891), p. 361, which he handed out as his " philosophy card http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2017/03/ufos-kenneth-arnold-and-american-bible.html".

Making love, Religion, Angels, Search

“Oral tradition is really how Chicano literature came to be. I was not exposed to the written word, but I had the greatest teacher. I always tell people that my mother was my inspiration because she was the best chismosa, and she had the best stories. And if anyone taught me about drama, it was my mother because she knew how to tell a story. And my grandfather also told stories. One of the reasons why I waned to be a writer was because I was fascinated by stories of La Llorona, supernatural stories and things like that and I love hearing chisme (gossip)…”

Josefina Lopez (1969) American playwright

On her earliest influences in “JOSEFINA LÓPEZ – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-theater/josefina-lopez/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

Love, People, Making love, Literature

“My mother used to say that my tones are all crooked: it’s like hearing a song sung out of tune.”

Madeleine Thien (1974) Canadian writer

On her limited Cantonese skills in “Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/08/madeleine-thien-interview-do-not-say-we-have-nothing in The Guardian (2016 Oct 8)

“Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me?”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Beloved (1987)

Love, Making love, Faith, Sister

“Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear the danger of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence, in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God, that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness, and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven, liberty, peace, and good-will to man!”

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

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

God, Happiness, Peace, Nature

“Jack Chick was a graphic artist who lived his delusional life in lies, prejudice and paranoia, promoting racist, sexist credo-specific bigotry against everyone smarter than him, or who understood things better than he did: which is pretty much everyone since he was really impressively fucking stupid -even compared to other creationists. He was so bad that Chick Publications is recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So now I hear that this creepy old dogmatic fucktard has finally stopped breathing at 92 years old. I’m unapologetically glad about that. His death makes our world a better place. I think that everyone who believes the way that he did should show solidarity by burying their faces in the sand and holding their breath until Jack Chick breathes again. Because our world just doesn’t need anyone like that -making life irritating for everyone capable of rational or compassionate thought.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"Rest in oblivion, Jack Chick" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/10/25/rest-oblivion-jack-chick/, Patheos (October 25, 2016) Patheos

Life, Death, Hate, Bad luck

“People are much more aware of one another in England, super-aware. They are focused on others in a seemingly detached and abstract way. This was very different from India. In India you could do anything and people would see you but not see you, hear you but not hear you.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

On how society differs in England versus India in “Life sentences” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/14/fiction in The Guardian (2009 Mar 13) Excerpts from interviews

People, Way

“Everybody takes his or her reality for granted. Everybody takes for granted the reality we see, we hear. That’s true for life as well as poetry. We grow up in certain circumstances, in a certain environment, and we understand that this is the way the world works. Sometimes we have to unlearn that truth, learn that there is a different or broader reality. I’m always open to that, and I’m certainly transformed any number of times during my life. And then I regress. We all do it…”

Martín Espada (1957) Puerto Rican poet

On how people shape their own sense of reality in “The Writer’s Block Transcripts: A Q&A with Martin Espada” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2015/12/11/the-writers-block-transcripts-a-qa-with-martin-espada/ in Sampsonia Way (2015 Dec 11)

Life, Truth, World, Way

“I used to sit on the stairs outside the courtroom and scratch out poems on legal pads while I was waiting for our cases to be called. There were juvenile hearings prior to the housing cases, and of course given their right to privacy we were not allowed inside the courtroom while that was going on. Everyone was in the hallway or on the stairs. I sat there. I didn’t have an office there, and I wrote poems. It was not as crazy as it might sound because whether I was working or am working as a lawyer or a poet, I am an advocate…”

Martín Espada (1957) Puerto Rican poet

On composing poems while practicing as an attorney in “The Writer’s Block Transcripts: A Q&A with Martin Espada” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2015/12/11/the-writers-block-transcripts-a-qa-with-martin-espada/ in Sampsonia Way (2015 Dec 11)

Waiting, Housing

“I think what happened was the language settled in me much deeper than it settled into people who just can read something once and absorb what they absorb of it. I feel like what I was absorbing was not by any means superficial. And I think I was - from a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for this deep understanding of the literature not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page…”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

On how she processed literature differently at an early age in “Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers” https://www.npr.org/2016/10/14/497953254/jacqueline-woodson-on-growing-up-coming-out-and-saying-hi-to-strangers in NPR (2016 Oct 14)

People, Age, Feeling, Literature

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[Morgan, Forrest, Shakespeare—the Man, published in the Prospective Review, July 1853, The works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 1, 1891, Hartford, Connecticut, Travelers Insurance Company, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064786716;view=1up;seq=373, 265–266 of 255–302]
Shakespeare—the Man (1853)

Life, People, Books, Way

“I am a vegetarian, therefore, because cannibalism is unnecessarily. I can live just as well and be just as happy without drinking the blood of my fellows and why should I slay them? Why should I not live and let live—especially when I can do it just as well as not? It is not necessary that ten thousand creatures should give up their lives in order that I may keep mine, and if I make any pretensions to morality why should I require them to do it? If you say such a thing is necessary in your case, I say to you it is not—and further, that if it were, it would be your duty as an ethical being to call on your undertaker. There is no sense in carnivora talking about ethics and justice and mercy, for their very existence is a travesty on such things. It makes me indignant and sad when I hear men deplore sin and prate about justice and love and mercy when the very energy they expend in preaching justice and mercy is obtained from the skeletons and sensibilities of their fellows. It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels—man, the remorseless glutton, going about with a tongue and a knife, with his tongue preaching peace, mercy, and love, and with his knife making the very earth sodden with blood.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895), pp. 39–40

Love, Men, Happiness, Sadness

“Only the news concerning Black people made any impact at all on me. And it seemed that each year the news got worse. The first of the really bad news that i remember was Montgomery, Alabama. That was when i first heard of Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white woman. The Black people boycotted the buses. It was a nasty struggle. Black people were harassed and attacked and, if i remember correctly, Martin Luther King’s house was bombed. Then came Little Rock. I can still remember those ugly, terrifying white mobs attacking those little children who were close to my own age. When the news about Little Rock came on, you could hear a pin drop at my house. We would all sit there horrified. Sometimes, afterward, somebody would say something, but usually we would just sit there lost in our own thoughts. I guess there was nothing to say. And each year i would sit in front of that box, watching my people being attacked by white mobs, being bitten by dogs, beaten and water-hosed by police, arrested and murdered. Then the news seemed too real.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 73

Bad luck, Children, People, Age

“Proponents of doctrinal religions—ones in which a particular body of belief is prized and infidels scorned—will be threatened by the courageous pursuit of knowledge. We hear from such people that it may be dangerous to probe too deeply. Many people have inherited their religion like their eye color: they consider it not a thing to think very deeply about, and in any case beyond our control. But those with a set of beliefs they profess to feel deeply about, which they have selected without an unbiased sifting through the facts and the alternatives, will feel uncomfortably challenged by searching questions. Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (pp. 339-340)

People, Religion, Color, Feeling

“In dialogue, I’m dealing with the sounds I’ve heard. One of the reasons I often write from first person or multiple points of view is to hear the voices of different characters. Omniscient narration becomes a problem because, for me, the omniscient is my own voice narrating the story and then bringing in characters for dialogue.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On how he handled dialogue in his works in “An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-ernest-j-gaines/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Dec 1)

Problem, Personality

“If we refuse…what are the prospects? Repression, and nothing but repression, and it is a very uncomfortable repression; a kind of repression from which we shall get neither credit nor success. It is the repression of the masses of the people, the great proportion of these masses being women and children. It is the repression not of organisations and not of bodies; it will develop into the repression of the whole of the population. … If, on the other hand, you wish to bind India to you by bonds of confidence, to make her happy within your Empire and Commonwealth, if you wish to hear her praise you in gratitude and remain with you in pride, then accept the work that has been done by the Conference, and instruct the Government to proceed with it to a complete conclusion.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1931-01-26/debates/8a5b21f7-05dc-4c09-b195-075ec6261125/CommonsChamber in the House of Commons (26 January 1931) on Indian constitutional reform 1930s

Women, Happiness, Children, People

“That happens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate. Each of the speakers expresses himself imperfectly: no one of them hears much that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind of each; and the audience, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wisely and superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the debaters to his own affair. Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. When I meet a pure intellectual force, or a generosity of affection, I believe, here then is man; and am presently mortified by the discovery, that this individual is no more available to his own or to the general ends, than his companions; because the power which drew my respect, is not supported by the total symphony of his talents.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Men, World, Support

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Men, Beauty, Music, Nature

“I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore. (…) When you suffer from fear you die before death comes to you. That is not glorious. I will not feel sorry if I hear that people in the Punjab have died not as cowards but as brave men. (…) I cannot be forced to salute any flag. If in that act I am murdered I would bear no ill will against anyone and would rather pray for better sense for the person or persons who murder me.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

6 August 1947,. (Hindustan Times, 8-8-1947, CWoMG, vol. LXXXIX, p. 11) Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2018). Why I killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's defence. New Delhi : Rupa, 2018. App. 4
1940s

Death, Men, People, Fear

“Extinction Rebellion are carrying a message we all need to hear. They won’t be silenced by a police crackdown, nor should they be in a free democratic society.”

Caroline Lucas (1960) British politician, MP of the Green Party for Brighton Pavilion and former MEP for South-East England

Cited in "Extinction Rebellion begins legal challenge against protest ban" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/24/extinction-rebellion-begin-legal-challenge-against-protest-ban, The Guardian, 24 October 2019. 2019

Silence

“A lot more can happen in the world of singer-songwriters that I appreciate. This storytelling where you have the ability to sit and listen to it because you don’t have other distractions -- you’re not listening to what the bass part is doing, there isn’t an elaborate instrumental arrangement that’s taking you into Middle Earth and back.. For me just as a singer I think you’re able to hear aspects of my voice and my singing and what it conveys in ways you’re not going to on a Soundgarden or an Audioslave record.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell Talks Missing Andrew Wood, Writing Songs In the Bathroom: Unpublished 2015 Interview Excerpts, Billboard, 19 May 2017 https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7801053/chris-cornell-2015-interview-higher-truth, On songwriting

World, Way, Thinking, Singing

“What I hear in my brain (brain radio) dictates the beginning of any attempt at a new song.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell: The American Songwriter Twitterview, American Songwriter, November 1, 2011 https://americansongwriter.com/2011/11/chris-cornell-the-american-songwriter-twitterview/, Soundgarden Era

“In hearing of these different possibilities, people sometimes exclaim rashly that there could of course be no thought in a Master’s mind of choosing any but that course which most helps humanity - a remark which greater knowledge would have prevented them from making. We should never forget that there are other evolutions in the solar system besides our own, and no doubt it is necessary for the carrying out of the vast plan of the Logos that there should be adepts working on all the seven lines to which we have referred. Surely the choice of the Master would be to go wherever his work was most needed - to place his services with absolute selflessness at the disposal of the Powers in charge of this part of the great scheme of evolution.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

People, Making love, Knowledge, Help

“For the purpose of this treatise we may, perhaps, define it as the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. It will be as well to premise that it is very frequently (though by no means always) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one will suffice.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater book Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (1903), Chapter One

“The neophyte is never in greater danger of falling a victim to delusion than when he has subjected his grosser passions and begun to develop his psychic sight, hearing, and touch. He is like the newborn babe getting its first lessons of cisuterine life, grasping at the pretty silver moon, clutching at fire and lamp, miscalculating distances, tottering upon its feeble legs.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)

Life, Passion

“I can see the evidence of that when I listen to music or hear young artists talk and they’re not shy at all about telling me thank you for the things I’ve contributed to them.”

Erykah Badu (1971) American neo-soul singer

On her influence on younger artists in “'I'm not sorry I said it': Erykah Badu on music, motherhood and wildly unpopular opinions” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/24/erykah-badu-interview in The Guardian (2018 May 24)

Music

“Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation — and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future. We owe it to those who were ripped from their homes those many years ago an ocean away; we owe it to the millions of Americans- yes they were Americans – who were born into bondage, knew a life of servitude, and died anonymous deaths, as prisoners of this system. We owe it to the millions of descendants of these slaves, for they are the heirs to a society of inequities and indignities that naturally filled the vacuum after slavery was formally abolished 154 years ago. Today represents the first time in history that the House of Representatives will host a hearing on H. R. 40.”

Sheila Jackson Lee (1950) American politician

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Statement on the Historic Hearing on H.R. 40 - a Bill to Establish a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans (19 June 2019)

Life, Death, Hope, Home

“I am well aware, that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 441

Love, Men, Making love

“Politics is in my bones. I grew up hearing my parents hollering at the TV.”

Pete Buttigieg (1982) American politician

2 December 2004
Rhodes Scholars announced
Ken Gewertz
The Harvard Gazette
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/12/rhodes-scholars-announced-2/
2004

Parent

“Most intelligent people of the eighties had developed a type of radio deafness which enabled them not to hear a human voice coming from a loud-speaker, although they could hear and enjoy the then infrequent intervals of music between announcements. In an age when advertising competition was so keen that there was scarcely a bare wall or an unbillboarded lot within miles of a population center, discriminating people could retain normal outlooks on life only by carefully cultivated partial blindness and partial deafness which enabled them to ignore the bulk of that concerted assault upon their senses.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

Pi in the Sky (p. 242)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

Life, People, Age, Music

“Yes, it was swell to sleep when you were looking forward to something. Time flies by and you don’t even hear the rustle of its wings.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

The Angelic Angleworm (p. 70)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

Sleep, Time

“I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable. And so was Bastogne. And so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any dangerous spot is tenable if men--brave men--will make it so.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Berlin Crisis speech

Men, Making love

“Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Money

“Never mind what others may say, or think, or do. Stand erect in the majesty of your own manhood. Listen for just once to the throbbing of your own heart, and you will hear that it is beating quickstep marches to Camp Freedom. Stand erect! Lift your bowed form from the earth! The dust has long enough borne the impress of your knees. Stand up and see how long a shadow you cast in the sunlight! Hold up your head and avow your convictions, and then accept, as becomes a man, the consequences of your acts!”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

"Industrial Unionism" (1905), Eugene Debs Speaks

Thinking, Freedom, Heart

“He…made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) … But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud and prolonged cheers.
Speech in St James's Hall, Piccadilly, London (4 December 1866), quoted in The Times (5 December 1866), p. 7
1860s

Life, Men, Pain, People

“They are saying now that Vasyl Slipak was a Ukrainian patriot, a nationalist… He undoubtedly was, but not in the sense that dominates in our society! I’ve never seen him show a prejudicial attitude to other peoples. It would have been absurd to hear this from his mouth. A European person, he performed both in Europe and in Africa and received a warm welcome everywhere.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017 Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother

People, Sense, Personality

“The child’s desire to have distinctions made in his ideas grew stronger every day. Having learned that things had names, he wished to hear the name of every thing supposing that there could be nothing which his father did not know. He often teased him with his questions, and caused him to inquire concerning objects which, but for this, he would have passed without notice. Our innate tendency to pry into the origin and end of things was likewise soon developed in the boy. When he asked whence came the wind, and whither went the flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limitation of his own powers, and wished to understand how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what things he may hope ever to give account of to himself or others. The anger of the child, when he saw injustice done to any living thing, was extremely grateful to the father, as the symptom of a generous heart. Felix once struck fiercely at the cook for cutting up some pigeons. The fine impression this produced on Wilhelm was, indeed, erelong disturbed, when he found the boy unmercifully tearing sparrows in pieces and beating frogs to death. This trait reminded him of many men, who appear so scrupulously just when without passion, and witnessing the proceedings of other men. The pleasant feeling, that the boy was producing so fine and wholesome an influence on his being, was, in a short time, troubled for a moment, when our friend observed, that in truth the boy was educating him more than he the boy.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Book VIII – Chapter 1
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Death, Men, Truth, Education

“NATO foreign ministers met several days ago to support the US position. According to media reports, they did this after Washington presented certain irrefutable documents confirming that the treaty was violated. If this is so, we have not received any such documents from the US side. This is what we have been asking the US to do for a long time. We are still ready for a serious and professional discussion. Instead, the Americans resort to unfounded accusations, and again and again, from high rostrums, make allegations for the entire international community to hear about things that should first be clarified with the other party to the treaty. This would be a more appropriate, polite and correct approach.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

News conference following the 25th OSCE Ministerial Council, Milan, Italy (7 December 2018)

Making love, Communication, Support, Time

“If there is any party in the State which, by its traditions and its history, is entitled to put in the forefront of its work and its programme the betterment of the conditions of life of the working classes, it is our party. (Hear, hear.) We were fighting the battle of the factory hand long before he had a vote; and when the Liberals were tied up in the shackles of laissez faire we were speaking in favour of the combination of working men, long before the Liberals had thought of the subject. It is more than 50 years ago that Disraeli was calling the attention of the country to housing and health questions, and they mocked him with the policy of sewage. The sanitation, or let me say the spiritual sanitation, of our people should have the first call on the historic Tory Party. It is just in the measure as we can convince the country, by the service we give the country, that we are as genuinely interested in these questions and as generally prepared to sacrifice ourselves in solving these questions as any member of the Labour Party, that the country will trust us and that the country will return us again into power.”

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

Speech to a meeting of the Unionist Party at the Hotel Cecil (11 February 1924), quoted in The Times (12 February 1924), p. 17
1924

Life, Men, People, Health

“Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Kiss, Silence, Time, Waiting

“Idea or Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such as taste, hearing, etc.; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the forms which pass before us in dreams. Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book Address to the German Nation

The Chief Difference Between The Germans And The Other Peoples Of Teutonic Descent p. 59
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) 1808, Fourth Address

Dreams, Feeling, Idea, Sense

“Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear these doleful sounds?”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 28.

Death, Women, Men, Way

“Sometimes I wonder if MacKinnon has simply been driven mad by all the sick things people do to one another. I, too, recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his coworkers, raped his daughter, or slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon" http://susiebright.blogs.com/Old_Static_Site_Files/Prime_Of_Kitty_MacKinnon.pdf, by Susie Bright, East Bay Express, October 1993.

Men, Pain, People, Reading

“As an immigrant, I am constantly surprised by how much I hear racism talked about and how little I actually see it.”

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

Even fewer are the incidents in which I have experienced it directly.
Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 4: The Reparations Fallacy

“The years passed, and sometimes just before I … I awoke, I’d hear music going on inside my head. I’d lie perfectly still, not moving, not waking, and the music would spread all through my body, just as it had done at the pyramids outside Mexico City. Finally I’d leap out of bed and start writing like a madman. Ten, twelve, fifteen hours a day. It was just pouring out of me. It was limitless!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Lie, Music

“I was TORTURED by teachers! You hear me, TORTURED!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

I yelled, jerking the whole podium off the floor. “Hell, I flunked the third grade twice because—BECAUSE—” I was crying so hard that I had to wipe the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand, but this wasn’t going to stop me. I was all guts up front now. I was in that smooth-feeling, all-true place that I got into when I’d go to my room and start writing each morning before daybreak…with all my heart and soul.
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Teachers

“Then afterwards, when victory is yours, we too-all of us Bengalis-will share in the honour and the glory. We do not need to understand what is it that you have done. Or to have given you any thought, time or money, but the moment we hear the chorus or praises in The Times from the lips of the Englishmen we shall lap it up. Some important news papers in our country will observe we are not inferior men; and another paper will observe we are making discovery after discovery in science. Earlier we shall not have felt an iota of responsibility towards you, but when victory has been won and you return home bearing a crop of records, then you will be one of us. Soughing and ploughing you will do alone; reaping we shall do together. The victory you will find will be more ours than yours.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

After his recognition by the west Rabindranath Tagore wrote to Bose. Quoted in "Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930", pages=107-08

Men, Money, Making love, Home

“Whenever I go to south India, I hear the songs of Saint Thyagaraja.”

Tyagaraja (1767–1847) Carnatic musician and composer

Mahatma Gandhi quoted in [Bossy, Michel-Andre, Brothers, Thomas, John C., Artists, Writers, and Musicians, http://books.google.com/books?id=r0SOzr_0Ya4C&pg=PA185, 2001, Greenwood Publishing Group, 978-1-57356-154-9, 185]

“Even if Subbalakshmi merely recited the words of her songs without singing them, he would prefer to hear them than anybody else.”

M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004) singer,Carnatic vocalist

Mahatma Gandhi quoted here.[Johri, Meera, Greatness of Spirit: Profiles of Indian Magsaysay Award Winners, http://books.google.com/books?id=j1iegDJAYakC&pg=PA55, 2010, Rajpal & Sons, 978-81-7028-858-9, 58]
About M.S.

Singing

“Don’t believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“You inflict eternal punishment on people,” Julie countered.
“Merely because it’s our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 9 (p. 162)

Hell, Time

“Mr. Chairman, I was deeply disturbed that you rejected our request to hear from a woman, a third year student at Georgetown law school named Sandra Fluke.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney. Representative Carolyn Maloney opening statement at US Congress contraception hearing (2012 February 16). Opening statement of Representative Carolyn Maloney on February 16, 2012 to U.S. Congress hearing on contraception. Source: democrats.oversight.house.gov http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5624:the-voice-the-gop-didnt-want-you-to-hear&catid=3:press-releases&Itemid=49, alternate link http://maloney.house.gov/press-release/rep-maloneys-opening-statement-oversight-hearing-separation-church-and-state About, U.S. House of Representatives

School, Law

“Rufus Wainwright has as true a voice as you can hear and as sweet and acute a sensibility as you can imagine. His musicianship combined with his poetic, intelligent and humane outlook on life make for one of the great performers of our day. I adore his singing, his song-writing, everything about him…”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

Stephen Fry, [July 28, 2011, http://www.digster.co.uk/playlists/rufus-wainwright-by-stephen-fry/, Rufus by Stephen Fry]

Life, Making love, Imagination, Intelligence

“You read a lot of crap about photographic craftsmanship in those days, and technique; but you didnt hear shit about vision. I knew that I had an eye, a gift for seeing where the ripped edges of the world begin to peel away and something else shows through.”

Elizabeth Hand book Generation Loss

Source: Generation Loss (2007), Ch. 1

World, Reading

“Reading in the third millennium B. C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 182
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Sense, Reading

“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

Truth, Idea, Sense, Madness

“The magic that you hear in tales and things was all based around the Celtic mythology of England, which is Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

I just drain from that source. I just drain everything. So the magic is there.
Interview in Rolling Stone (9 November 1967)

“He is a powerful fellow, with a bull neck and a huge voice - a born leader…if there is trouble, mark my words! You will hear more of Bevin!”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

David Lloyd George in conversation with Lord Riddell (1 March 1919), quoted in J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 258.

“But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Men, Hate, Pleasure

“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!”

Matthew Arnold Thyrsis

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.
St. 18
Thyrsis (1866)

Tree

“You’d be alone in the kitchen and twilight would be dwindling, and you could hear the far off cries of the other children playing nearby. You’d be alone in the kitchen because it was your special treat time, where the jelly would come out just for you, and your mother would appear at your side just as a vision of Laura Ashley print dress, smelling of magnolias and biscuits and put the jelly in front of you, and you would pull your chair in. Then the old fashioned bar of ice cream would come down, the one that had to be cut with a breadknife before the two sides were flanked with wafers. You would lift your little spoon up excitedly and winkle out that first divet of black jelly… AND THEN THE CAGE COMES DOWN! The cage with the Japanese fighting spiders inside, your mother strikes a match off her forearm and tells you to dance in the front room for money… You, you never forget that shit, I mean it never goes away.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Money, Children, Fashion, Appearance

“People my age all flocked to see Jeff, you know. Because we were so, just to hear that voice again. He would have been so pissed off with it by now. All these old toothless hags hanging around the stage door you know. He was just shit hot, I gotta say.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Chrissie Hynde from the BBC Documentary "Everybody Here Wants You"

People, Age

“Television is to news as a bumper sticker is to Shakespeare. I remember hearing an analogy once that went something like that. Your typical nightly, 35-minute TV news broadcast is a headline service with pictures. Five minutes of police-blotter reporting - fires, murders, car accidents, etc.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

five minutes of human-interest stories and small talk, five minutes of weather, five minutes of sports, ten minutes of commercials, and maybe a minute or two for business, science, politics, and affairs of the world.
July 3, 1998 Denver Post column

Cars

“We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”

Karl Rove (1950) American political consultant and policy advisor

Ron Suskind, Esquire, January 2003 http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html

“Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen. If your organization goes out and tells the colored people of the country that it is a humiliation, they will so regard it, but if you do not tell them so, and regard it rather as a benefit, they will regard it the same. The only harm that will come will be if you cause them to think it is a humiliation… If this organization is ever to have another hearing before me it must have another spokesman. Your manner offends me…”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Defending the re-segregation of federal offices, in Conference with members of the National Association for Equal Rights https://web.archive.org/web/20150315002852/http://friesian.com/presiden.htm#43 (November 1914) 1910s

People, Color, Thinking, Country