Quotes about hold (4041 quotes, page 14)

“As our faces and bodies drew nearer, gravity was not helping us at all. It took minor struggle to come together, and we had to hold on in an effort to keep our lips aligned.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Source: Zero Gravity interview (2006), p. 29

Effort , Help

“I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality.
We are … all aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday-Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing ("real") should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow "exist" independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend the type of measurement carried out in the part of space A; it should also be independent of whether or not a measurement is made in A.
If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I don't see at all what physics is supposed to be describing. For what is thought to be a "system" is after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about parts.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"What must be an essential feature of any future fundamental physics?" Letter to Max Born (March 1948); published in Albert Einstein-Hedwig und Max Born (1969) "Briefwechsel 1916-55", and in Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance: Quantum Mechanical Studies for Abner Shimony, Volume Two edited by Robert Cohen, Michael Horn, and John Stachel (1997), p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=DsNoIcQemTsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false
1940s

World , Reality , Sense , Change

“Now I don't know what it always was with us.
We chose the words, and yeah, we drew the lines.
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us.
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Independence Day"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Way , Housing

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men , Books , Search , Business

“It is extremely unlikely that I will ever be one of the richest people in the world. Almost all rich people were born rich, and almost all of them marry other rich people, and almost all of them hold onto almost all of their money, to pass on to their kids. Money doesn't appear out of nowhere—the more they have, the less for me. Life is a "zero sum game," and I am the zero.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

November 1
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Life , Money , People , World

“Every day, thought Stone, is a revelation. At night it seems that you will never see it again, that it has been lost in the darkness. But with the sun, you hold your breath and look, and there it is. Just as it was; as you could never quite remember it.”

Christopher Wood (writer) (1935–2015) English writer

Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 8)

Sun , Night

“To go from the point that I didn’t imagine meeting these people to the point where someday I hold a medal myself — I just couldn’t imagine that this would come true.”

Caucher Birkar (1978) Kurdish mathematician

"An innovator who brings order to an infinitude of equations" Quanta Magazine (2018)

People , Imagination

“Tell me some of your chief difficulties that prevent you and your countrymen from openly following Christ, and when I write to you I shall do my best to explain how I and many who agree with me have met them and solved them… From my point of view, India, at least the best part of it, is already converted to Christianity. You want no persuasion to become a follower of Christ. Then make up your mind to act for yourselves. Unite your flock, and put up a few folds to hold them together. The bridge has been built by you for those who came before you. Step boldly forward, it will not break under you, and you will find many friends to welcome you on the other shore, and among them none more delighted that you old friend and fellow labourer.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Letter to Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, author of The Oriental Christ (1883); published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller, Vol. II., Ch. XXXIV

Christ , Parting

“And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers…”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Desolation Row

Flowers , Fight

“You say this is horrid. I know it is horrid. I know it is horrid to hold men in slavery. I know it is horrid to doom four million human beings to condition of chattels.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA198 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 198
1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Men

“Do not be worried about the events and earthquakes that have occurred. Know that God created this world as a test … The supreme leader holds a great many of the blessings God has given us and at a time of such uncertainties our eyes must turn to him.”

Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi (1934) Member of Iran's Assembly of Experts

"Discontented Muslim clergy challenge Iran's supreme leader behind scenes" by Bill Meyer in World News at Cleveland.com (8 July 2009) http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2009/07/discontented_muslim_clergy_cha.html

God , World , Time

“When you're big you don't need a reason to sweat. You don't, right? My friends cannot grab a hold of this concept. They come up to me all the time like "Jeez! What have you been doing? What are ya jumpin rope in the attic?!" "Well, I peeled an orange.. about an hour ago. Why, what's up?"”

Kevin James (1965) American actor and comedian

Sweat the Small Stuff (2001)

Time

“He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,
Where the hills are twice as steep, and twice as rough;
Where the horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flintstones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.”

Andrew Paterson (1877–1948) Scottish photographer

"The Man From Snowy River", the poem which inspired the movies by the same name.

Home , Mountain , Horse

“The lovers, appearing happy,
walk, holding hands.
Though it appears everything is perfect,
only they know the truth.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Appears
Lyrics, Loveppears

Truth , Lovers , Appearance , Perfection

“334. When you are an anvill, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Who knows what the new century holds for music? I predict that we will bury most of the musical modernism of the 20th, with its need to shock and cause distress.”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

American Record Guide, March/April 2000, quoted in Ashby, Arved, ed. (2004). The Pleasure of Modernist Music. ISBN 1580461433.

Music

“The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

World , Intelligence , Knowledge , Learning

“Whether or not Trump himself or anyone in his orbit personally colluded or conspired with the Russians about their interference is something Mueller will no doubt disclose at some point, but there remains one incontrovertible truth: In 2016, Russia, a hostile foreign adversary, attacked the United States of America. We know that they did it. We have proof. The F. B. I. is trying to hold people accountable for it. And yet Trump, the president whom the Constitution establishes as the commander in chief, has repeatedly waffled on whether Russia conducted the attack and has refused to forcefully rebuke them for it, let alone punish them for it. … Instead, Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigation as a witch hunt.”

Charles M. Blow (1970) American journalist

Trump, Treasonous Traitor https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/opinion/trump-russia-investigation-putin.html (July 15, 2018), The New York Times.
Quote

Hostility , People , Truth , Personality

“The public pay for and elect the government and it is only by the people’s will that those in public office hold power. Public servants’ primary responsibility is to serve the people and we have a right to know what they are doing in our name and with our money. Public accountability does not end the day after an election.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Newsletter (UK) http://www.newsletter.co.uk/community/columnists/maurice-neill-upholding-our-right-to-accountability-1-3856967 "MAURICE NEILL: Upholding our right to accountability", 18 May 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Money , People

“Whoever came up with "hold the shift key for eight seconds to turn on 'your keyboard is buggered' mode" should be shot.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linus Torvalds - Google+, Torvalds, Linus, 2013-06-23, 2013-10-12 https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/e4vnEUdB5kn,
2010s, 2013

“While this day was legally established many years ago as an occasion to be devoted to the memory of our country's dead, it can not but each year refresh the sentiment of respect and honor in which our country holds their living comrades. Of those great armies that maintained the long struggle from 1861 to 1865, which ranked in size with any the world had ever before seen, but a few shattered ranks now remain. The old valor yet lives. The old devotion to country, the old loyalty to the flag remain: But the youth and physical vigor which caused them to be characterized as the boys in blue are gone from these heroes of a former generation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Youth , World , Boy , Memory

“Muslims had two more advantages in addition to their aggressiveness and superiority in the art of warfare. “During this long period of Indian resistance”, observes Dr. Misra, “the infiltration of Arabs, and later on the Turks, continued almost unabated into India, both through armed invasions as well as through peaceful migration from Central Asia. The Hindus, true to their catholicity of religious outlook and rich tradition of tolerance, never obstructed the peaceful immigrants and even zealously granted them security and full religious freedom… The greatest Chishti saint of India, Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, came to Ajmer just before the battles of Tarain and was able to attract a number of devoted followers… It is all the more remarkable that this Hindu tolerance towards the Muslim merchants and mystics should have continued even after the invasions of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni… As Professor Habib points out, ‘the far-flung campaigns of Sultan Mahmud would have been impossible without an accurate knowledge of trade routes and local resources, which was probably obtained from Muslim merchants.’ The same can be said to hold good about the invasions of Muhammad Ghori or Qutbuddin Aibak.””

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

The sufis were working not only as the spies of Islamic imperialism but also as deceivers of gullible Hindu masses.
Quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Peace , Art , Knowledge , Freedom

“Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished.

Men , Nature , Memory , Time

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate , Fate , Truth , Justice

“Conservatives have, on the whole, accepted nationality as a sphere of local duties and loyalties, defining an inheritance and a community that has a right to pass on its values from generation to generation. The nation may indeed be the best that we now have, by way of a society linking the dead to the unborn, in the manner extolled by Burke. And for this very reason it arouses the hostility of liberals, who are constantly searching for a place outside loyalty and obedience, from which all human claims can be judged. Hence, in the conflicts of our times, while conservatives leap to the defense of the nation and its interests, wishing to maintain its integrity and to enforce its law, liberals advocate transnational initiatives, international courts, and doctrines of universal rights, all of which, they believe, should stand in judgment over the nation and hold it to account.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"The Limits of Liberty," http://spectator.org/42528_back-basics/ The American Spectator (December 2008).

Hostility , Law , Way , Search

“6 A wall is called isodomum when all the courses are of equal height; pseudisodomum, when the rows of courses do not match but run unequally. Both kinds are strong: first, because the rubble itself is of close texture and solid, unable to suck the moisture out of the mortar, but keeping it in its moist condition for a very long period; secondly, because the beds of the stones, being laid smooth and level to begin with, keep the mortar from falling, and, as they are bonded throughout the entire thickness of the wall, they hold together for a very long period.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 6

Strong

“A celebrity has just as much right to speak out as people who hold real jobs. This is America, after all, and you should not be precluded from voicing your opinions just because you sing songs, mouth other peoples' words on a sitcom or, for that matter, spin a giant multi-colored wheel on a game show.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

2005 column about celebrities and politics, cited in: " Sajak says... http://ex-donkey.new.mu.nu/?page=111," at ;;ex-donkey.new. posted by: Gary at 04:33 PM.
2000s

People , Color , Game , Singing

“This business will never hold water.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not, Act IV (1703).

Business , Water

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way , Personality

“For I had expected always
Some brightness to hold in trust,
Some final innocence
To save from dust”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"What I Expected Was" (l. 25–28). . .

“In order to win this war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track bearing with them the swords of justice.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (9 February 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1009
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Men , Hate , War , World

“[It is anomalous] to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Writing for the court, Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952). The unanimous decision reversed the conviction of an alleged drug addict because evidence was obtained by forced stomach pumping.
Judicial opinions

“Nobody supports what happened last Saturday in London. But what about stopping it happening? As long as we are in Ireland, people will be letting off bombs in London. I can see that we are a colonial power holding down a colony. For the rest of the time violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland. People in Northern Ireland see themselves as subject peoples. If they were just criminals or psychopaths they could be crushed. But they have a motive force which they think is good.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Referring to the IRA's Chelsea Barracks bomb of 10 October 1981, in a speech to the Cambridge University Tory Reform Group (12 October 1981), quoted in The Times (13 October 1981).

People , Motivation , Support , Thinking

“Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth.”

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

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

Truth , Nature , Effort

“To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

Imagination , Past , Sea

“…classic philosophy maintained that change, and consequently time, are marks of inferior reality, holding that true and ultimate reality is immutable and eternal. Human reasons, all too human, have given birth to the idea that over and beyond the lower realm of things that shift like the sands on the seashore there is the kingdom of the unchanging, of the complete, the perfect. The grounds for the belief are couched in the technical language of philosophy, but the grounds for the cause is the heart's desire for surcease from change, struggle, and uncertainty. The eternal and immutable is the consummation of mortal man's quest for certainty.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea , Birth , Reality , Change

“She didn't hide what she was thinking, she didn't try to impress him, nor was she swayed by anything he'd accomplished in the past. Instead she seemed to evaluate him as he was today, right now, without holding either the past or the future against him.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Jeremy Marsh, Chapter 9, p. 159
2000s, True Believer (2005)

Thinking , Past , Future

“Bend low, O dusky Night,
And give my spirit rest,
Hold me to your deep breast,
And put old cares to flight.
Give back the lost delight
That once my soul possest,
When Love was loveliest.”

Louise Chandler Moulton (1835–1908) American poet, story-writer and critic

To-night.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Soul , Night

“I think I only needed something to hold on to. It has never been about depravity. It's always been about melody. But melody and I met in many depraved situations. Meeting melody is the victory of the empty spiralling nightmare.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Extract from Prison Diaries, published in The Guardian, 2006
Music and politics

Thinking , Victory

“There were certain basic things, perhaps—the very earth, itself—which existed through every point in time, holding a sort of limited eternity to provide a solid matrix. And the dead—the dead and fabricated—stayed in the past as ghosts. The fence posts and the wire strung on them, the dead trees, the farm buildings, and the bridge were shadows of the present persisting in the past. Persisting, perhaps, reluctantly, because since they had no life they could not move along. They were bound in time and stretched through time and they were long, long shadows.
He was, he realized with a shock, the only living thing existing in this moment on this earth. He and nothing else.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Life , Tree , Time , Past

“One can be a true believer in anything: psychic ability, Christianity or, as Bertrand Russell classically suggested (with irony), in the fact there is a teapot orbiting the earth. I could believe any of those things with total conviction. But my conviction doesn't make them true. Indeed, it is something of an insult to the very truth I might hold dear to say that something is true just because I believe it is.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Truth

“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” … “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”… “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

[The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”
James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

People , Age , Religion , Art

“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961).

Water

“It is perilous to separate thinking rightly from acting rightly. He is already half false who speculates on truth and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done. Life is an action — not a thought. And the penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes a falsehood.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 606.

Life , Truth , Penalty , Thinking

“Almost 2000 years ago, the Roman architect Vitruvius recorded what makes a design good: durability (firmitas), utility (utilitas), and charm (venustas). These quality requirements still hold, for buildings as well as software systems. A well-designed system is easy to implement, is understandable and reliable, and allows for smooth evolution. Badly-designed systems may work at first, but they are hard to maintain, difficult to test, and unreliable.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 2007, p. 279

Understanding

“With all the confidence I have
It seems I could go forever
But forever has no rest-stops
And my endurance sometimes fails Hold me, hold me, hold me in your arms
Can you tell me how I'm gonna make it”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Hold Me" - Live performance at the Tin Angel (10 May 1996) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcXOiiyHE_c
Building the Colossus (1994)

Confidence

“It is these two thoughts of union and peace which appear to me to be especially appropriate for our consideration on this day. Like all else in human experience, they are not things which can be set apart and have an independent existence. They exist by reason of the concrete actions of men and women. It is the men and women whose actions between 1861 and 1865 gave us union and peace that we are met here this day to commemorate. When we seek for the chief characteristic of those actions, we come back to the word which I have already uttered — renunciation. They gave up ease and home and safety and braved every impending danger and mortal peril that they might accomplish these ends. They thereby became in this Republic a body of citizens set apart and marked for every honor so long as our Nation shall endure. Here on this wooded eminence, overlooking the Capital of the country for which they fought, many of them repose, officers of high rank and privates mingling in a common dust, holding the common veneration of a grateful people. The heroes of other wars lie with them, and in a place of great preeminence lies one whose identity is unknown, save that he was a soldier of this Republic who fought that its ideals, its institutions, its liberties, might be perpetuated among men. A grateful country holds all these services as her most priceless heritage, to be cherished forevermore.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Women , Men , War , People

“It's a bad business. There is no firm front. We have separate strongpoints in which our units are holding off the attacks of superior enemy forces. Communications with them are weak.”

Kliment Voroshilov (1881–1969) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad" - Page 182 - by Harrison E. Salisbury - History - 2003

Communication , Business

“Possibly I can explain my own procedure more easily. When I begin a sculpture I'm not always sure how it is going to end. In a way it has a relationship to the work before, it is in continuity with the previous work — it often holds a promise or a gesture toward the one to follow.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1950s, Tradition and Identity' (1959)

Way

“After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man or woman who has completed a full course of education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 percent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate. But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth: in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Speech in New York (12 February 1904), as quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell in the House of Representatives https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (4 April 1904)
1900s

Life , Women , Men , War

“There’s a law,” Chuck said, “which I call Rittersdorf’s Third Law of Diminished Returns, which states that proportional to how long you hold a job you imagine that it has progressively less and less importance in the scheme of things.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 47)

Law , Imagination

“For people like us it is necessary to be a bit stronger, more self-critical, more observant than the usual run. Whether we happen to come already enhanced with these qualities, as some have claimed, or whether our situation invests them in us, we have traditionally - and we do have a long and proud tradition - been a little finer, a little firmer, more sensitive and flexible than others… There will be times when only your own spine can support you, moments when only your own wit can inspire you, days when nothing but exacting self-control can raise you from bed, nights when nothing but your word can impel you into society. But of all these disciplines, there is nothing you must hold to more sternly than to be kind and sympathetic. The easiest armor to put on is always cruelty. That armor will, indeed, see you through everything. Vicious condescension toward those without your strength can make you feel momentarily superior. But that easy armor must be forgone. Don't ever curdle that creamy brow with lines of easy disdain, or curl those lips with a popular sneer. Of all the models available, the one of gentleman in our late war is most succinct: Face what you have to face with humor, dignity, and style; protect yourself with knightly grace; have contempt for your own weakness and never encourage it in others; but never, Ralph, never for an instant permit yourself to feel anything other than pity and deepest sympathy for unfortunate comrades who have, after all, fallen in the same battle.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

One of Those People
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

War , People , Feeling , Support

“Every man, noble and simple alike, should hold his land as a pledge of god behaviour. His duties, to King, lord, and neighbour, should be settled once and for all; and, if he failed in them, he should be turned out of his home and left to starve. It was a drastic scheme; but a conqueror holding a conquered country by the force of the sword cannot afford to be squeamish.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter III, Feudalism And Land Law, p. 27

God , Home , Country

“Imagine if you were attacked in the street just for holding hands with your partner. Imagine if your children were bullied or isolated at school just for who they are. Sadly, such experiences remain part of everyday life for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) citizens in Europe. Discrimination should have no place in our Union.”

Věra Jourová (1964) Czech politician

From ' List of actions by the Commission to advance LGBTI equality' http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/lgbti_actionlist_en.pdf, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, 2016.

Life , Children , School , Imagination

“Why, alas! is life decreed
Full of pain and full of sorrow?
All uncertain as it is,
Can we rest upon to-morrow?
Why should blessings yet in store,
Hold us still in expectation?
Leading thro' succeeding sorrows,
By some fond anticipation:
'Tis to give a tender interest
To the scenes in which we're moving:
While those hopes so often blasted,
Sensual pleasures are reproving.”

Elizabeth Bath (1776–1844) English poet

"An Effusion", from Poems, on Various Occasions (1806)

Life , Pain , Pleasure , Hope

“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President. Like many Americans, I’ve been conflicted by this election – I still haven’t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month. But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else – American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party – it is your duty.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

written Twitter statement reported 8 October 2016 article by Variety https://variety.com/2016/biz/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-i-will-not-vote-for-the-republican-candidate-for-president-1201882915/, released a day after the release of the Access Hollywood tape from 2005 of an interview of Trump by Billy Bush
2010s

Time , Country

“Dark are the paths which a higher hand allows us to traverse here… let us hold fast to the faith that a finer, more sublime solution of the enigmas of earthly life will be present, will become part of us.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

In his letter to Schumacher on February 9, 1823. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361

Life , Faith , Parting

“I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up, catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the knife and hold him for the security people. That was a good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning how to teleport.”

Michael Swanwick book Vacuum Flowers

Source: Vacuum Flowers (1987), Chapter 5, “People's Sheraton” (pp. 74-75)

People , Learning

“When you love someone so deeply they become your life,
it's easy to succumb to overwhelming fears inside,
blindly I imagined I could keep you under glass,
now I understand to hold you I must open my hands, and watch you rise.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Butterfly", Butterfly, 1997. Written from the perspective of Carey’s ex-husband, Tommy Mottola
Lyrics

Love , Life , Fear , Imagination

“Abélard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch today. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether Unity or Diversity is ultimate law; whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the Universe, if Universe there is; whether anything except phenomena exists. Even in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may have a different system. One court may hang, and another may acquit for the same crime, on the same day; and Science only repeats what the Church said to Abélard, that where we know so little, we had better hold our tongues.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Law , Problem , Universe , Science

“There is no Enlightenment, no evolutionary entrance into the truly Spiritual Condition of human existence, without ego-death, or transcendence of the mind. There must be the literal death of the separate and separative consciousness. In this moment, you are holding on to your sense of separate consciousness as if it were something tangible and material. You possess yourself through a great contraction of body and psyche. By virtue of this gesture, you have become rigid, mediocre, deluded, relatively loveless, self-possessed, and isolated. To be without an inner consciousness is, for you, unthinkable. To be incapable of feeling yourself as a separate consciousness is, for you, a terrifying prospect. Nevertheless, that is precisely the realization with which you must become completely comfortable.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

'Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!, p. 171

Death , God , Feeling , Sense

“But I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands–touching it with one's eyes–that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.”

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

Source: The house on the hill (1949), Chapter 23, p. 176

Men , Fate , War , Fear

“And know that if I knew
all of the answers I would
Not hold them from you. You'd
Know all the things that I'd know
We told each other, there is no other way.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

No Other Way.
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

Way

“Warlocks and witches debate to determine how to make their broomsticks fly again. But how shall they ever come together in strength? Even if your ideas had any truth, they’re so frequently, by their very character, at odds. Each claims to hold the key to the only wisdom. That’s where natural philosophers, who do not impose what they need to believe (or at least not so readily!) upon the world, but analyze what they see, have the strong advantage.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 310)

Wisdom , Truth , World , Idea

“Like those dreams that have pleased us. They escape us and we vainly try to hold onto them.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Dreams

“The means determine the goal. If lies and violence are the means, the results cannot be good…. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [i. e. since the 1917 Balfour Declaration without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people…. I believe that it will be possible for us to hold Palestine and continue to grow for a long time. This will be done first with British aid and then later with the help of our own bayonets -- shamefully called Haganah [defense] -- clearly because we have no faith in our own policy. But by that time we will not be able to do without the bayonets. The means will have determined the goal. Jewish Palestine will no longer have anything of that Zion for which I once put myself on the line.”

Hans Kohn (1891–1971) American historian

Hans Kohn (1929), "Kohn’s letter of farewell to Zionism," as quoted in: Anthony G. Bing. Israeli Pacifist, The Life of Joseph Abileah, 1990.

People , Faith , Time , Help

“12 principles for a 21st century conservatism.
1. The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid.
2. Peaceful social being is preferable to isolation and to war. In consequence, it justly and rightly demands some sacrifice of individual impulse and idiosyncrasy.
3. Hierarchies of competence are desirable and should be promoted.
4. Borders are reasonable. Likewise, limits on immigration are reasonable. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that citizens of societies that have not evolved functional individual-rights predicated polities will hold values in keeping with such polities.
5. People should be paid so that they are able and willing to perform socially useful and desirable duties.
6. Citizens have the inalienable right to benefit from the result of their own honest labor.
7. It is more noble to teach young people about responsibilities than about rights.
8. It is better to do what everyone has always done, unless you have some extraordinarily valid reason to do otherwise.
9. Radical change should be viewed with suspicion, particularly in a time of radical change.
10. The government, local and distant, should leave people to their own devices as much as possible.
11. Intact heterosexual two-parent families constitute the necessary bedrock for a stable polity.
12. We should judge our political system in comparison to other actual political systems and not to hypothetical utopias.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Speech of Jordan Peterson at Carleton Place for the Conservative Party of Ontario <nowiki>[12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0</nowiki>]
Concepts

War , People , Family , Peace

“I use the example of the rainbow and of the phenomena connected with it, of which sort are the circle around the sun and the stars, likewise the rod lying at the side of the sun or of a star which appears to the eye in a straight line… called the rod by Seneca, and the circle is called the corona, which often has the colors of the rainbow. But neither Aristotle nor Avicenna, in their Natural Histories, has given us knowledge of things of this sort, nor has Seneca, who composed a special book on them. But Experimental Science makes certain of them. [The experimenter] considers rowers and he finds the same colors in the falling drops dripping from the raised oars when the solar rays penetrate drops of this sort. It is the same with waters falling from the wheels of a mill; and when a man sees the drops of dew in summer of a morning lying on the grass in the meadow or the field, he will see the colors. And in the same way when it rains, if he stands in a shady place and if the rays beyond it pass through dripping moisture, then the colors will appear in the shadow nearby; and very frequently of a night colors appear around the wax candle. Moreover, if a man in summer, when he rises from sleep and while his eyes are yet only partly opened, looks suddenly toward an aperture through which a ray of the sun enters, he will see colors. And if, while seated beyond the sun, he extend his hat before his eyes, he will see colors; and in the same way if he closes his eye, the same thing happens under the shade of the eyebrow; and again, the same phenomenon occurs through a glass vessel filled with water, placed in the rays of the sun. Or similarly if any one holding water in his mouth sprinkles it vigorously into the rays and stands to the side of the rays; and if rays in the proper position pass through an oil lamp hanging in the air, so that the light falls on the surface of the oil, colors will be produced. And so in an infinite number of ways, as well natural as artificial, colors of this sort appear, as the careful experimenter is able to discover.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

6th part Experimental Science, Ch.2 Tr. Richard McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers Vol.2 Roger Bacon to William of Ockham
Opus Majus, c. 1267

Books , Color , Way , History

“And how does the God’s existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go – I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i. e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 32

God , Behavior

“It is with considerable reluctance that I criticize the monetarists, because, though I consider their proposed monetary policy unfeasible, they are after all much more nearly right in their assumptions and prescriptions than the majority of present academic economists. The simplistic form of the quantity theory of money that they hold is not tenable; but they are overwhelmingly right in insisting on how much "money matters," and they are right in insisting that in most circumstances, and over the long run, it is the quantity of money that is most influential in determining the purchasing power of the monetary unit. Other things being equal, the more dollars that are issued, the smaller becomes the value of each individual dollar. So at the moment the monetarists are more effective opponents of further inflation than the great bulk of politicians and even putative economists who still fail to recognize this basic truth.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money , Truth

“Wisdom: The first error is that of the southern people, and it consists in holding that these eastern and western places are real places. … give no quarter to that thought, whether it threatens you with fear, or tempts you with hopes. For this is Superstition and all who believe it will come in the end to the swamps to the south and the jungles to the far south. Part of the same error is to think that the Landlord is a real man:”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 117
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Wisdom , Thinking , People , Error

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death , Men , Forgiveness , Suffering

“[When people] say ‘let's do something about it’, they mean ‘let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.’ And that somebody is invariably you.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 396, “Freedom is Better,” Plain Talk, (November 1949)

People

“Well, then, Lord Jesus! I will creep if I cannot walk; I will take hold of Thy word. When I stumble, Thou wilt support me; when I fall, Thou wilt hold out Thy cross, and help me with it to rise again, until at length I reach the place where Thou art, and with all my weaknesses and wants, cast myself into Thy bosom.”

Christian Scriver (1629–1693) German hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 100.

Art , Support , Help

“I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality and moral choice—and that is precisely why we are under the obligation to recognise and respect the rights of animals.”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), p. 21

Imagination , Animals

“And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Visions of Johanna

“Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution (1975), Chapter 3, p. 88

Food , Way , Time , Personality

“Physiologists have usually represented that our species holds a middle rank, in the masticatory and digestive apparatus, between the flesh-eating and the herbivorous animals; — a statement which seems rather to have been deduced from what we have learned by experience on this subject, than to result fairly from an actual comparison of man and animals. … The teeth of man have not the slightest resemblance to those of the carnivorous animals, except that their enamel is confined to the external surface. He possesses, indeed, teeth called canine, but they do not exceed the level of the others, and are obviously unsuited to the purposes which the corresponding teeth execute in carnivorous animals. … Thus we find that, whether we consider the teeth and jaws, or the immediate instruments of digestion, the human structure closely resembles that of the simiæ; all of which, in their natural state, are completely herbivorous.”

Sir William Lawrence, 1st Baronet (1783–1867) British surgeon

Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, Eighth Edition (London: John Taylor, 1840), Section I, Chapter VI, pp. 148-150. Full text online at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/stream/lecturesoncompar00lawr#page/n5/mode/2up.

Nature , Learning , Animals

“I fully agreed with Gen. Washington that we must safeguard this young nation, as yet in its swaddling clothes, from the insidious influence and impenetration of the Roman Catholic Church which pauperizes and degrades all countries and people over whom it holds sway.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Claimed by American Fascist William Dudley Pelley in Liberation (February 3, 1934) to have appeared in notes taken at the Constitutional Convention by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney; reported as debunked in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 28, noting that historian Charles A. Beard conducted a thorough investigation of the attribution and found it to be false.
Misattributed

People , Clothes , Country

“Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

God , Religion , Way , Search

“The Vietnam War is behind us but not entirely forgotten. Like our Civil War, Vietnam holds a fascination for many Americans, and I suspect that this will grow rather than diminish as research continues and new works are published about the war. For the older military professionals who served during the Vietnam War and for the still older career military men who were perplexed by it, my advice is to look at Vietnam in a broader historical perspective. For the young military professional who did not serve in Vietnam, my advice is to learn all you can about the war and try to understand it. Finally for those military men now serving at the top military positions, as well as those who will rise to those positions later, my advice is to do all you can to improve the civilian-military interface in the highest councils of our government. This is the best way I know to better the chances that our civilian leaders truly understand the risks, costs, and probable outcomes of military actions before they take the nation to war. The United States cannot afford to put itself again at such enormous strategic disadvantage as we found ourselves in in Vietnam. How deep Vietnam has stamped its imprint on American history has yet to be determined. In any event, I am optimistic enough to believe that we Americans can and will learn and profit from our experience.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Closing words, p. 209-210
The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984)

Men , War , Way , History

“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Amory Blaine" in This Side of Paradise (1920) Bk. 2, Ch. 5
Quoted

Way , Idea

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since, — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 44

Life , God , Feeling , Boy

“He [Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); … that injury done one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (V, 24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does not leave unnoticed, in his designations of the strait gate and the narrow way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow themselves in order to evade their true moral duty, holding themselves immune through having fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13). He further requires of these pure dispositions that they manifest themselves also in works (VII, 16) and, on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine that, through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His envoy, they will make up for their lack of good works and ingratiate themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he declares that they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16), and in a cheerful mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God (XIII, 31-33).”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men , God , Religion , Justice

“I must hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to "succeed" — and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)

Failure , Sense , Effort , Past

“Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

"Terrapin Station"
Song lyrics, (1977)

Color , Sense , Light , Despair

“Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2

Freedom , Cry

“While the new physics was developing in the 20th century, the mechanistic Cartesian world view and the principles of Newtonian physics maintained their strong influence on Western scientific thinking, and even today many scientists still hold to the mechanistic paradigm, although physicists themselves have gone beyond it.
However, the new conception of the universe that has emerged from modern physics does not mean that Newtonian physics is wrong, or that quantum theory, or relativity theory, is right. Modern science has come to realize that all scientific theories are approximations to the true nature of reality; and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), p. 93.

World , Nature , Thinking , Reality

“I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

J'ay marqué plus d'une fois, que je tenois l'espace pour quelque chose de purement relatif, comme le temps; pour un ordre des coëxistences, comme le temps est un ordre des successions.
Third letter http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~berciu/PHILIP/TEACHING/PHYS340/EXTRA/FILES/Leibniz-ClarkeA.pdf to Samuel Clarke, February 25, 1716

Time , Success

“Honor, justice and humanity call upon us to hold and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty, which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children; but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty can exceed our own if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us that when arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations that ever flourished have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

From ‘A Duty to Posterity’, as contained in A Library of American Literature From the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Volume 3, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman, C. L. Webster (1892), pp. 177-178

Children , Education , Justice , Effort

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

Men , People , Way , Fashion

“The French call such an anima figure a femme fatale. The sirens of the Greeks and the Lorelei of the Germans embody these dangerous aspects of the anima-in a word, destructive illusions. The following Siberian tale gives a particularly apt portrayal of such a destructive anima:
: A solitary hunter once had the experience of seeing a beautiful woman appear on the opposite bank of a river. She waved to him and sang, "Come, come. I've missed you, missed you. Now I want to put my arms around you, put my arms around you. Come, come, my nest is nearby, my nest. Come, come, lonely hunter, right now in the stillness of twilight." As he threw off his clothes and began swimming across to her, she suddenly flew away in the form of an owl, laughing mockingly. Swimming back, he drowned in the ice-cold river.
Here the anima symbolizes an unreal dream of love and happiness, of motherly love and security (the nest), an illusion that holds a man back from life. The hunter freezes to death because of his pursuit of an erotic fantasy.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Anima as the Woman within the Man, p. 311

Love , Life , Death , Beauty

“The Secure Fence Act is part of our efforts to reform our immigration system. We have more to do. Meaningful immigration reforms means that we must enforce our immigration laws in the United States. It is against the law to hire someone who is here illegally. We fully understand that most businesses want to obey that law, but they cannot verify the legal status of their employees because of widespread document fraud. So we're creating a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility, and in the meantime, holding people to account for breaking the law. We must reduce pressure on our border by creating a temporary worker plan. Willing workers ought to be matched with willing employers to do jobs Americans are not doing for a temporary -- on a temporary basis.”

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

2000s, 2004, Signing of Secure Fence Act of 2006

People , Law , Understanding , Business

“I should be glad to know your Excellency's mind about holding all the ground from King's Bridge to the lower lines. If we attempt to hold the ground, the garrison must still be reenforced; but if the garrison is to draw into Mount Washington, and only keep that, the number of troops on the Island is too large.”

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

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Drawing

“One of our children when he was two or three years old used to rush at me when he had been naughty, and beat against me, and what he wanted by this monstrous behavior was an affirmation of love. And I would put my arms around him and hold him very tight until the dragon was gone and the loving small boy had returned.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Love , Children , Behavior , Boy

“If you examine the record of the so-called the anti-war movement in this country and imagine what would have happened had its counsel been listened to over the last 15 and more years, you would have a world in which the following would be the case:Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait, he would have succeeded in the annexation, not merely the invasion, but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state that was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations. And with these resources as we now know because he lost that war, he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying arsenal that it was possible for him to lay his hands on. That's one consequence of anti-war politics, that's what would have happened.In the meanwhile, Slobodan Milošević would have made Bosnia part of a greater Serbia, and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and also annexed. The Taliban would be still in power in Afghanistan if the anti-war movement had been listened to, and al-Qaeda would still be their guests. And Saddam Hussein, with his crime family, would still be privately holding ownership over a terrorized people in a state that's been most aptly described as a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave underneath it.Now if I had that record politically, I would be extremely modest, I wouldn't be demanding explanations from those of us who said it's about time that we stop this continual capitulation to dictatorship, to racism, to aggression and to totalitarian ideology. That we will not allow to be appeased in Iraq, the failures in Rwanda, and in Bosnia, and in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And we take pride in having taken that position, and we take pride in our Iraqi and Kurdish friends who are conducting this struggle, on our behalves I should say.”

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

Christopher Hitchens vs. George Galloway debate http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2005/09/galloway_vs_hit.html, New York City (2005-09-14): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

Time , Parting , Country , War