Quotes about hold
page 38

James Cromwell photo
Maximilien Robespierre photo
Maximilien Robespierre photo

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution that has come to revise, so to speak, the one that broke our chains? But what sure judgement can one make of the effects that can follow these great commotions? Who can mark, after the event, the exact point at which the waves of popular insurrection should break? At that price, what people could ever have shaken off the yoke of despotism? For while it is true that a great nation cannot rise in a simultaneous movement, and that tyranny can only be hit by the portion of citizens that is closest to it, how would these ever dare to attack it if, after the victory, delegates from remote parts could hold them responsible for the duration or violence of the political torment that had saved the homeland? They ought to be regarded as justified by tacit proxy for the whole of society. The French, friends of liberty, meeting in Paris last August, acted in that role, in the name of all the departments. They should either be approved or repudiated entirely. To make them criminally responsible for a few apparent or real disorders, inseparable from so great a shock, would be to punish them for their devotion.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?
"Answer to Louvet's Accusation" (5 November 1792) Réponse à J.- B. Louvet http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_reponse_louvet.htm, a speech to the National Convention (5 November 1792)

“I bring everything I know to whatever I write, and I believe the same of other writers. A person’s complete life experience forms the basis of authorial voice, in my opinion. To hold back any part makes a narrative feel contrived.”

Tade Thompson British science fiction writer

On incorporating his medicine background into his writings in “Interview: Tade Thompson” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-tade-thompson/ in Lightspeed Magazine (October 2017)

Mahatma Gandhi photo
Patrick Henry photo
Alvin C. York photo
Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo

“There is another plane of thought into which some have entered. It holds up a vision of a society redeemed by true democracy. It believes in a time when monopoly shall be no more, and labor and capital, no longer at war, shall cooperate to the wiping out of involuntary and undeserved poverty in an era of industrial equality and social peace.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"The Basis of the Struggle", July 31, 1909, La Follette's Weekly Magazine. Quoted in Matthew Rothschild, Democracy In Print : The Best of The Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009. Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.

August Kekulé photo
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

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Eric Rücker Eddison photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Seven decades ago, the warriors of D-day fought a sinister enemy who spoke of a thousand-year empire. In defeating that evil, they left a legacy that will last not only for a thousand years, but for all time—for as long as the soul knows of duty and honor; for as long as freedom keeps its hold on the human heart. To the men who sit behind me, and to the boys who rest in the field before me, your example will never, ever grow old. Your legend will never tire. Your spirit—brave, unyielding, and true—will never die. The blood that they spilled, the tears that they shed, the lives that they gave, the sacrifice that they made, did not just win a battle. It did not just win a war. Those who fought here won a future for our Nation. They won the survival of our civilization. And they showed us the way to love, cherish, and defend our way of life for many centuries to come. Today, as we stand together upon this sacred Earth, we pledge that our nations will forever be strong and united. We will forever be together. Our people will forever be bold. Our hearts will forever be loyal. And our children, and their children, will forever and always be free. May God bless our great veterans, may God bless our Allies, may God bless the heroes of D-day, and may God bless America. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

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

2010s, 2019, June, Remarks on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in Colleville-sur-Mer, France

Gwyneth Paltrow photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“And numerous people whose families belong to the peasantry and working classes are now filling prominent positions in this National Socialist State. Some of them actually hold the highest offices in the leadership of the nation, as Cabinet Ministers, Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter.”

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

But National Socialism always bears in mind the interests of the people as a whole and not the interests of one class or another. The National Socialist Revolution has not aimed at turning a privileged class into a class which will have no rights in the future. Its aim has been to grant equal rights to those social strata that hitherto were denied such rights.
Speech by Adolf Hitler, On National Socialism and World Relations http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler1.htm, delivered in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). German translation published by H. Müller & Sohn in Berlin.
1930s

Mao Zedong photo

“Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

ibid, pp. 139
Role of the Chinese Communist Party (October 1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 国际主义者的共产党员,是否可以同时又是一个爱国主义者呢?我们认为不但是可以的,而且是应该的。

Mao Zedong photo

“It is only firmly maintaining the national united front that the difficulties can be overcome, the enemy defeated and a new China built. This is beyond all doubt. At the same time, every party and group in the united front must preserve its ideological, political and organizational independence; this holds good for the Kuomintang, the Communist Party or any other party or group.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

The Selected Readings of Mao Tse-Tung, pp. 144
Role of the Chinese Communist Party (October 1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 坚持民族统一战线才能克服困难,战胜敌人,建设新中国,这是毫无疑义的。但是在同时,必须保持加入统一战线中的任何党派在思想上、政治上和组织上的独立性,不论是国民党也好,共产党也好,其他党派也好,都是这样。

Toni Morrison photo
P. V. Narasimha Rao photo

“He surely failed as prime minister to prevent the tragedy at Ayodhya. But his rivals in the Congress did their own party such disservice by spreading the canard that his (and their) government was responsible for that crime. This, more than anything else, lost them the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar… any dispassionate reading of recent political history will tell you that this is a self-inflicted injury. The Congress has itself built a mythology whereby the Muslims have come to hold their party as responsible for Babri as the BJP … If you take Justice Liberhan’s indictment of so many in the BJP seriously, you cannot at the same time dismiss his exoneration of Rao, and the government, and the Congress Party under him. You surely cannot put the clock back on so much injustice done to him, like not even allowing his body to be taken inside the AICC building. But the least you can do now is to give him a memorial spot too along the Yamuna as one of our more significant (and secular) prime ministers who led us creditably through five difficult years, crafted our post-Cold War diplomacy, launched economic reform and, most significantly, discovered the political talent and promise of a quiet economist called Manmohan Singh.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

Shekhar Gupta in Tearing down Narasimha Rao http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/tearingdownnarasimharao/547260/1, The Indian Express, 7 September 2011.

Jeanine Áñez 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

John Adams photo
Aron Ra photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Charles Stross photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Political events are always very confused and complicated. They can be compared with a chain. To hold the whole chain you must grasp the main link. Not a link chosen at random.”

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

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

Bernie Sanders photo

“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into another financial crisis … If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

[Huntley, Steve, Steve Huntley: Sanders the socialist sure gets it right on big banks, http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/569095/sanders-socialist-sure-gets-right-big-banks, 1 May 2015, Chicago Sun-Times, 2 May 2015]
2010s, 2015

Burkard Schliessmann photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“I was the second woman to hold that position in a thirty-year period—and that wasn’t acceptable to me. Clearly, there wasn’t enough awareness of the contributions women can bring to organizations and the economy.”

Nina Vaca businessperson

Nina Vaca: The Dream Maker https://hispanicexecutive.com/2017/nina-vaca-top-ten-lideres-2017/, Hispanic Executive (November 1, 2017)

Abbie Hoffman photo
Joe Biden photo

“We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’ I don’t buy that.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Quoted by Norman Solomon in Here Comes Joe Biden and It's Worse Than You Thought,Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/11/here-comes-joe-biden-and-its-worse-you-thought (11 March 2019)
2019

Carl Sagan photo
Harold Wilson photo
Epictetus 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

Ko Wen-je photo

“There are various political views in Taiwan. People can hold different political views, (because) the most valuable elements of Taiwanese values are democracy, freedom, diversity and openness.”

Ko Wen-je (1959) Taiwanese politician and physician

Ko Wen-je (2019) cited in " Fruit, vegetable prices will not fall: Ko http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2019/02/01/2003709059" on Taipei Times, 1 February 2019.

Ko Wen-je photo

“What matters most in terms of cross-strait relations is that both sides demonstrate goodwill to each other. Nothing works if they (both sides) hold grudges.”

Ko Wen-je (1959) Taiwanese politician and physician

Ko Wen-je (2019) cited in " China's political formulas disallow ROC existence: MAC http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201901010018.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 1 January 2019.

Hugo Chávez photo

“I criticize, although I respect, my friends that hold the Marxist-Leninist idea that there should not be private property, because I do not share it.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Critico, aunque respeto, a mis amigos que sostienen la idea marxista leninista de que no debe haber propiedad privada, porque no la comparto.
In his talk show Aló Presidente, as quoted in Chavez defiende propiedad privada frente a marxistas leninistas https://web.archive.org/web/20131220044949/http://www.eluniversal.com/2007/08/26/refco_ava_chavez-defiende-prop_26A955477 (August 26, 2007), El Universal.
2007

Arthur MacManus photo
William Quan Judge photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Alfred Percy Sinnett photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Tulsi Gabbard photo

“In order to de-escalate nuclear crisis with NK, we need to understand why Kim Jong-un is holding on so tightly to their nuclear weapons — it is because he sees them as his only deterrent from the US coming in and trying to topple his regime.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter, https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/ (25 February 2019)
Twitter account, February 2019

Tulsi Gabbard photo
Toussaint Louverture photo
Toussaint Louverture photo
Toussaint Louverture photo
Alfred von Waldersee photo
Alfred von Waldersee photo
Alfred von Waldersee photo
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
William Logan (author) photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Poul Anderson photo

“He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy.”

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 5 “No Man Shuns His Doom”, Section 1 (p. 106)

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Gordon Brown photo
Ayad Allawi photo
Louis Farrakhan photo

“The Jews have control over those agencies of government. When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

How the rise of conspiracy theory politics emboldens anti-Semitism https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/31/18034256/anti-semitism-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-prejudice-right Vox.com', (February 2018)

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge. I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds.”

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

We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Frederick Douglass photo

“I hold that the Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in a man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.”

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

As quoted in Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July https://books.google.com/books?id=-m2WBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=PT106&dq=%22scaffolding+to+the+magnificent+structure%22+douglass&source=bl&ots=KT4-pHUo5-&sig=ACfU3U21MIZj_niQo7pIGSxeO5vhEkXq4w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwim6fvM3I3iAhVqiOAKHWIqDK8Q6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22scaffolding%20to%20the%20magnificent%20structure%22%20douglass&f=false
1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

Frederick Douglass photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Vasyl Slipak photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Michael Gove photo

“The day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.”

Michael Gove (1967) British politician

Speech at the Vote Leave offices in London http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/michael-gove/michael-gove-vote-leave_b_9728548.html (19 April 2016)
2016

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax photo

“The threat of military force is holding the world to ransom, and our immediate task is…to resist aggression.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
Foreign Secretary

Rajendra Prasad photo
Rajendra Prasad photo
Theresa May photo

“I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold. The second female prime minister, but certainly not the last. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Theresa May quits: UK set for new PM by end of July https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48395905 BBC News (24 May 2019)
2010s, On Brexit

“How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? How do you keep a wave upon the sand?”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

These words from The Sound of Music bring out the elusive nature of chaos. In life, most things cannot be captured for long. It is like trying to encapsulate time itself.
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. vii

Hugo Ball photo

“All these poets are ascetics, monks and priests. They despise the flesh and all ballast. This world holds no enchantment for them... Poetry for them is the ultimate expression of the essence of things and thus is hymn and worship. Their poetry is one of divine names, of mysterious seals, and of spiritual extracts.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Quote of Ball, 21 July 1920, in Flucht aus der Zeit, p. 266; as quoted by Debbie Lewer in 'Papers of Surrealism Issue 6 Autumn 2007', p. 15, note 15
while reading a book of mystic writers, Ball noted this remark
after 1916

Hannah Arendt photo

“The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

On the subject progress. Source: Interview with French writer Roger Errera, 1974. New York Review of Books. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019.

Friedrich Engels photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of Spinoza. The charge will be seen to be unfounded if we remember that his system, instead of denying God, rather recognises that he alone really is. Nor can it be maintained that the God of Spinoza, although he is described as alone true, is not the true God, and therefore as good as no God. If that were a just charge, it would only prove that all other systems, where speculation has not gone beyond a subordinate stage of the idea — that the Jews and Mohammedans who know God only as the Lord — and that even the many Christians for whom God is merely the most high, unknowable, and transcendent being, are as much atheists as Spinoza. The so-called atheism of Spinoza is merely an exaggeration of the fact that he defrauds the principle of difference or finitude of its due. Hence his system, as it holds that there is properly speaking no world, at any rate that the world has no positive being, should rather be styled Acosmism. These considerations will also show what is to be said of the charge of Pantheism. If Pantheism means, as it often does, the doctrine which takes finite things in their finitude and in the complex of them to be God, we must acquit the system of Spinoza of the crime of Pantheism. For in that system, finite things and the world as a whole are denied all truth. On the other hand, the philosophy which is Acosmism is for that reason certainly pantheistic.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Alexander Herzen photo
Giacomo Leopardi photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Catharine A. MacKinnon photo
Anders Behring Breivik photo
Alex Salmond photo
Jayant Narlikar photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo