Quotes about herring
page 95

Aga Khan III photo

“It is for the Indian patriot to recognise that Persia, Afghanistan and possibly Arabia must sooner or later come within the orbit of some Continental Power — such as Germany, or what may grow out of the break up of Russia — or must throw in their lot with that of the Indian Empire, with which they have so much more genuine affinity. The world forces that move small States into closer contact with powerful neighbours, though so far most visible in Europe, will inevitably make themselves felt in Asia. Unless she is willing to accept the prospect of having powerful and possibly inimical neighbours to watch, and the heavy military burdens thereby entailed, India cannot afford to neglect to draw her Mahomedan neighbour States to herself by the ties of mutual interest and goodwill … In a word, the path of beneficent and growing union must be based on a federal India, with every member exercising her individual rights, her historic peculiarities and natural interests, yet protected by a common defensive system and customs union from external danger and economic exploitation by stronger forces. Such a federal India would promptly bring Ceylon to the bosom of her natural mother, and the further developments we have indicated would follow. We can build a great South Asiatic Federation by now laying the foundations wide and deep on justice, on liberty, and on recognition for every race, every religion, and every historical entity … A sincere policy of assisting both Persia and Afghanistan in the onward march which modem conditions demand, will raise two natural ramparts for India in the north-west that neither German nor Slav, Turk nor Mongol, can ever hope to destroy. They will be drawn of their own accord towards the Power which provides the object lesson of a healthy form of federalism in India, with real autonomy for each province, with the internal freedom of principalities assured, with a revived and liberalised kingdom of Hyderabad, including the Berars, under the Nizam. They would see in India freedom and order, autonomy and yet Imperial union, and would appreciate for themselves the advantages of a confederation assuring the continuance of internal self-government buttressed by goodwill, the immense and unlimited strength of that great Empire on which the sun never sets. The British position of Mesopotamia and Arabia also, whatever its nominal form may be, would be infinitely strengthened by the policy I have advocated.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

India in Transition (1918)

Ana Castillo photo
Derek Parfit photo
Esai Morales photo
Juan Felipe Herrera photo

“Poetry, with the breath of the poet, the heart of her life, joined by millions, pushes forth with the creative forces bestowed upon us. A wall is a plaything before the positive. It will take time. Change comes — rumbling with letters and caesuras, chants, odd-angled rhymes and earthy people power.”

Juan Felipe Herrera (1948) American writer

On the U.S.-Mexican border wall issue in “Poetry is Built for Compassion: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://thi.ucsc.edu/poetry-built-compassion-interview-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz; 2019 Feb 27)

Rupi Kaur photo

“I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student – but I knew I was never going to be picked up. All their writing was, you know, about the Canadian landscape or something. And my poem is about this woman with her legs spread open.”

Rupi Kaur (1992) Canadian poet

On how she felt that her poetic topics were unconventional when compared to other poetry submissions in “ The young ‘Instapoet’ Rupi Kaur: from social media star to bestselling writer” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/27/rupi-kaur-i-dont-fit-age-race-class-of-bestselling-poet-milk-and-honey in The Guardian (2017 May 27)

Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
John Pilger photo
Eliphas Levi photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Adlai Stevenson photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Madan Lal Dhingra photo

“I admit, the other day, I attempted to shed English blood as a humble revenge for the inhuman hangings and deportations of patriotic Indian youths. In this attempt I have consulted none but my own conscience; I have conspired with none but my own duty. I believe that a nation held in bondage with the help of foreign bayonets is in perpetual state of war. Since open battle is rendered impossible to a disarmed race, I attacked by surprise; since guns were denied to me, I drew forth my pistol and fired. As a Hindu, I feel that a wrong done to my country is an insult to God. Poor in health and intellect, a son like myself has nothing to offer to the Mother but his own blood, and so I have sacrificed the same on her altar. Her cause is the cause of Shri Rama. Her services are the services of Shri Krishna. This War of Independence will continue between India and England so long as the Hindu and the English races last (if this present unnatural relation does not cease). The only lesson required in India at present is to learn how to die and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. Therefore I die and glory to my martyrdom. My only prayer to God is: may I be reborn of the same Mother and may I re-die in the same sacred cause till the cause is successful and she stands free for the good of humanity and the glory of God. Vande Mataram!”

Madan Lal Dhingra (1883–1909) Indian revolutionary

quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

Alessandro Cagliostro photo
Alessandro Cagliostro photo

“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)

Theodor Mommsen photo

“On the one hand this catastrophe had brought to light the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy, their incapacity, their coterie-policy, their leanings towards the Romans. On the other hand the seizure of Sardinia, and the threatening attitude which Rome on that occasion assumed, showed plainly even to the humblest that a declaration of war by Rome was constantly hanging like the sword of Damocles over Carthage, and that, if Carthage in her present circumstances went to war with Rome, the consequence must necessarily be the downfall of the Phoenician dominion in Libya. Probably there were in Carthage not a few who, despairing of the future of their country, counselled emigration to the islands of the Atlantic; who could blame them? But minds of the nobler order disdain to save themselves apart from their nation, and great natures enjoy the privilege of deriving enthusiasm from circumstances in which the multitude of good men despair. They accepted the new conditions just as Rome dictated them; no course was left but to submit and, adding fresh bitterness to their former hatred, carefully to cherish and husband resentment—that last resource of an injured nation. They then took steps towards a political reform.(1) They had become sufficiently convinced of the incorrigibleness of the party in power: the fact that the governing lords had even in the last war neither forgotten their spite nor learned greater wisdom, was shown by the effrontery bordering on simplicity with which they now instituted proceedings against Hamilcar as the originator of the mercenary war, because he had without full powers from the government made promises of money to his Sicilian soldiers. Had the club of officers and popular leaders desired to overthrow this rotten and wretched government, it would hardly have encountered much difficulty in Carthage itself; but it would have met with more formidable obstacles in Rome, with which the chiefs of the government in Carthage already maintained relations that bordered on treason. To all the other difficulties of the position there fell to be added the circumstance, that the means of saving their country had to be created without allowing either the Romans, or their own government with its Roman leanings, to become rightly aware of what was doing.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Maximilien Robespierre photo
Charles Stross photo

“And she actually looks—well, I’m not sure how to describe her. Scary is such an inadequate word, don’t you think?”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 11, “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” (p. 197)

Ruth Ozeki photo
Radosveta Vassileva photo
Krystal Ball photo
Krystal Ball photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“The truth was her version wasn’t any more or less a fantasy than his. No one would know for sure until everyone knew for sure.”

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

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 47 (p. 510)

Daniel Abraham photo
Ted Hughes photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Independence Day address (1821)

Sarojini Naidu photo

“But it is woven into her nature - to laud to the skies the person she admires. But apart from these defects, where would you find a woman like her who has given up her life and soul for India?”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Mahatma Gandhi, "Sarojini the Singer", 1 December 2013, MK Gandhi Organization http://www.mkgandhi.org/Selected%20Letters/Sarojini/singer.htm,

Sarojini Naidu photo

“Her work has a real beauty. Some of her lyrical work is likely, I think, to survive among the lasting things in English literature and by these, even if they are fine rather than great, she may take her rank among the immortals.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Aurobindo said on her poetry quoted in Critical Response To Indian Poetry In English, p123/xxxx

Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“I conclude, then, that so long as Fortune varies and men stand still, they will prosper while they suit the times, and fail when they do not. But I do feel this: that it is better to be rash than timid, for Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her. We see that she yields more often to men of this stripe than to those who come coldly toward her.”

Original: (it) Conchiudo adunque, che, variando la fortuna, e gli uomini stando nei loro modi ostinati, sono felici mentre concordano insieme, e come discordano sono infelici. Io giudico ben questo, che sia meglio essere impetuoso, che rispettivo, perchè la Fortuna è donna; ed è necessario, volendola tener sotto, batterla, ed urtarla; e si vede che la si lascia più vincere da questi che da quelli che freddamente procedono.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 25, as translated by RM Adams

Elizabeth Bibesco photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

This has often been attributed to de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but erroneously, according to "The Tocqueville Fraud" http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/the-tocqueville-fraud/article/8100 in The Weekly Standard (13 November 1995). This quote dates back to at least 1922 (Herald and Presbyter, September 6, 1922, p. 8 http://books.google.com/books?id=3sYpAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA3-PT21&vq=%22I+sought+for+the+greatness+and+genius+of+America+in+her+commodious%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=0_1)
There's an earlier variant, without the memorable ending, that dates back to at least 1886:
I went at your bidding, and passed along their thoroughfares of trade. I ascended their mountains and went down their valleys. I visited their manufactories, their commercial markets, and emporiums of trade. I entered their judicial courts and legislative halls. But I sought everywhere in vain for the secret of their success, until I entered the church. It was there, as I listened to the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the Gospel of Christ, as they fell from Sabbath to Sabbath upon the masses of the people, that I learned why America was great and free, and why France was a slave.
Empty Pews & Selections from Other Sermons on Timely Topics, Madison Clinton Peters; Zeising, 1886, p. 35 http://books.google.com/books?id=f54PAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA35&dq=de+tochneville&ei=w1YCSbS3JoTkygS2g_mvDQ
Misattributed

Eric Rücker Eddison photo
Theobald Wolfe Tone photo
Theobald Wolfe Tone photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“The Jews were the carriers of that Bolshevist infection which once threatened to destroy Europe. It was also they who incited the ranks of the plutocracies to war, and it is the Jews who have driven America to war against all her own interests, simply and solely from the Jewish capitalistic point of view.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“Speech to the Reichstag Assuming New Powers” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-to-the-reichstag-assuming-new-power-april-1942, (April 26, 1942)
1940s

Adolf Hitler photo
Toni Morrison photo
Toni Morrison photo
Toni Morrison photo
Toni Morrison photo
P. V. Narasimha Rao photo
Jeanine Áñez photo
Jeanine Áñez photo

“To me, they’re the greatest generation. My parents and their friends, to me, have qualities that I don’t have, my children don’t have. They’re very imaginative, hardworking people. They created so much. My mother could teach all day, and then she could come home and cook a perfect dinner, and her house always looked perfect. They had qualities, I think, that are just so admirable.”

Adrienne Kennedy (1931) African-American playwright

On her parents in “Unraveling the Landscape: A Conversation With Adrienne Kennedy” https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/04/unraveling-the-landscape-a-conversation-with-adrienne-kennedy/ in American Theatre (September 2019)

Alec Douglas-Home photo
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa photo
Alec Douglas-Home photo
Evo Morales photo

“Añez also faces a challenge to her legitimacy in Congress, where lawmakers loyal to Morales tried to hold new sessions that would undermine her claim to the presidency… Morales’ backers, who hold a two-thirds majority in Congress, boycotted the session that she called Tuesday night to formalize her claim to the presidency, preventing a quorum.”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

Bolivia caught in a power struggle between Añez at home and Morales in exile https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/bolivia-caught-in-a-power-struggle-between-anez-at-home-and-morales-in-exile, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), (14 November 2019)
About

Pope John Paul II photo
Alex Jones photo

“Is that maggot meant to dominate us!? Are we meant to be her slave!?”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

The Alex Jones Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HfKpomrL3A, Feb 10, 2014
2014

John Adams photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet choose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; … that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; and therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust or emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religions opinion, is depriving him injudiciously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow-citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emolumerits, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, … and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Chapter 82 (1779). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf, pp. 438–441. Comparison of Jefferson's proposed draft and the bill enacted http://web.archive.org/web/19990128135214/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/bill-act.htm
1770s

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Martín Espada photo
Nnedi Okorafor photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children’s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home.”

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

As quoted by Clara Zetkin in "Lenin on the Women’s Question", My Memorandum Book https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm, 1920.
Attributions

Hillary Clinton photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy photo

“If only one could … But it required strength. The romantic life had been too hard for her. In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak. The small state, racked by internal dissension, invites the foreign conqueror. Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.
First published in Harper's Bazaar (April 1942)
Source: The Company She Keeps (1942), Ch. 6 "Ghostly Father, I Confess", p. 184.

Mary McCarthy photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Assata Shakur photo
Assata Shakur photo

“I want to take poetry to walk other genres. I want poetry to walk through other genres. When I started writing, this was my main concern: get out of poetry. Let poetry walk the streets of New York. Make her cosmopolitan. See the world. Not in these estrofas, not in these stanzas, which are camisas de fuerza. I have to get out of poetry. I have to do what James Joyce did to the novel: he took the novel out of the novel…”

Giannina Braschi (1953) Puerto Rican writer

On how she hopes to change poetry by bringing it towards visual art in “A Graphic Revolution Talking Poetry & Politics with Giannina Braschi” https://www.academia.edu/36916781/A_Graphic_Revolution_Talking_Poetry_and_Politics_with_Giannina_Braschi in Chiricú Journal (2018)

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo
Kevin D. Williamson photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Edwidge Danticat photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“You teacher is a leftist? Tell her to read the book The Suffocated Truth.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Just read it. There are facts, not the blah blah blah of the left.
Telling students to read a book by Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, dictatorship-era torturer, in Brasília, on 30 September 2019. Bolsonaro tells students to read book by dictatorship-era torturer https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/30/bolsonaro-tells-students-to-read-book-by-dictatorship-era-torturer. The Guardian (30 September 2019).

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk photo

“The torch that the Turkish nation holds in her hand and in her mind, while marching on the road of progress and civilisation, is positive sciences.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Speech on the tenth anniversary of the Republic, 1933 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk%27s_Tenth_Year_Speech

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex photo
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex photo

“We should protect her privacy and not reveal too much of that.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

About the mutual friend who introduced them
Engagement interview (November 2017)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Larry Niven photo

“Suddenly Corbell missed Mirabelle terribly. He mourned her, not because she was dead, but because she was gone.”

Source: A World Out of Time (1976), Chapter 5 Stealing Youth, Section 3 (p. 126)

William Quan Judge photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Bhagwan Das photo
Enoch Powell photo
Michael Moorcock photo

“Destiny can contain a few extra threads in her design and still accomplish her original aims.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3, Chapter 4 “Two Black Swords” (p. 114)
The Elric Cycle, Elric of Melniboné (1972)